Copyright 2006 Newsday, Inc.
Families wrestle with emotions after hearing final words of loved ones; some lobby for tapes’ release
By SAMUEL BRUCHEY
Newsday (New York)
When Wendy Cosgrove imagined her husband, Kevin, on the day he died, she saw him trapped in the dark, 105 stories above ground, choking on smoke.
“It’s extremely painful,” she said. “It’s horrific.”
But hearing his voice recorded on a 911 call from inside the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, Cosgrove knew he was thinking about her and their three children, and helping others, even in the last few moments before the towers came down.
“He kept saying, ‘I’m not ready to die. I have young children. I told my wife I’m coming home,’” she recalled her husband saying on the tape.
“It helped put me at ease,” said Cosgrove, 48, who lives in West Islip with their three children.
Cosgrove’s husband was among 28 voices identified on 911 calls from inside the burning towers. Only one of those identified callers survived.
After a three-year legal battle with the city’s fire department, snippets of about 130 taped conversations between emergency operators and those inside the Twin Towers were released by the city’s Law Department Friday. In CDs made available to the public, the voices of the callers have been edited out. But the families of those identified have been allowed to hear both sides.
While Cosgrove plans to get a set of the CDs for her children to remember their father — who worked for Aon, a reinsurance company on the 100th floor of the south tower - she said she has previously heard a copy of the tape.
“It’s his last words,” Cosgrove said. “It’s important to have that.”
For Eric Thorpe’s family, hearing his voice was a balm, his sister Sue Burghouwt said.
They knew Thorpe, 35, a salesman at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, had been trapped on the 88th floor of the south tower. What they weren’t sure was whether or not he had suffered greatly before he died.
During the 2-minute, 27-second exchange between Thorpe and an emergency operator, people can be heard screaming in the background, but Thorpe sounds assured, his sister said.
On the tape, Thorpe, who lived in Manhattan, appears to sense the magnitude of the destruction. He seemingly asks the operator how many calls have come in about the incident.
“A lot of calls, sir. I can’t even tell you exactly,” the operator responds.
“My parents were calmed to hear that he wasn’t in a great panic at that point,” said Burghouwt, 42, of Portsmouth, R.I. Burghouwt said she has chosen not to listen to the tape because she fears it will upset her, though she has heard about the contents from her parents.
Before the call is transferred to a fire department dispatcher, the 911 operator attempts to comfort Thorpe.
“Sir? Do you want to leave the line open?” the operator says. “I’ll stay on the line with you. You don’t have to talk. OK?”
Despite the praise some dispatchers were given for trying to instill calm, many families who lost loved ones during the attacks, including eight who joined The New York Times in the 2002 lawsuit that led to the release of the tapes, have said emergency operators had not been sufficiently informed about the attacks and were unable to give helpful information.
“Seeing the way it was handled that day, there was a tremendous lack of preparation,” said Rosemary Cain of Massapequa, whose son George, a firefighter from Ladder 7, died on Sept. 11.
Cain, a party in the lawsuit, appeared at a news conference Friday to urge families of the identified callers to make the tapes public as a historical record.
Besides the lack of information the dispatchers were given to pass along, the 9/11 Commission’s final report in 2004 determined some callers were unable to get through to emergency operators, heard an “all circuits busy” recording or were disconnected altogether.
Corine Mardikain, 33, of Manhattan, said it made all the difference to her that her husband, Peter, did not waste precious moments with a futile call to 911 but instead called her directly from a land line at Windows on the World.
“It’s a huge solace to me,” she said. “Our last words to each other were ‘I love you.’”
James Bueche, of Hicksville, whose wife, Nancy, died in the south tower, said he believes lessons can be learned from the 911 system’s failures, but sees no benefit in making the tapes public.
“People say it will help us in the future, but there’s nothing to help the mailman that watches on TV,” he said.
Cosgrove agreed. Making the tapes public, she said, only reacquaints victims’ families with their loss and does not improve the likelihood that necessary improvements to 911 protocol will be made.
“This will be too painful for people to hear,” she said. “It’s not necessary.”
But Burghouwt said the more lessons learned, and learned publicly, the safer things will be in the future. People were given bad advice during the attacks, she said. Many of those who heeded that advice died, while a few ignored what they were told and got out alive.
“He had time to get out,” she said about her brother. “He just needed the right direction.”
Sarah Garland and staff writer Joie Tyrrell contributed to this story.