Copyright 2006 Newsday, Inc.
By ELLIS HENICAN
Newsday (New York)
Say what?
By now, all of us are trained in the modern art of one-sided eavesdropping, hearing half a conversation and mentally filling in the rest.
Of course we are. We practice every day on the sidewalks and in the malls.
A man walks toward us, speaking animatedly, seemingly to himself. Is he psychotic - or just someone else with a cell phone? Only when the man gets nearer do we see the little wire dangling from his ear.
And from a passing snatch of half-conversation - the words, the tone, the background atmospherics - a whole new world presents itself, and then it’s gone.
Half is all we got Friday from the nine hours of emergency calls that went to 911 operators from the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Half is never fully satisfying. But it’s amazing how much half a conversation can teach.
“Fire Department 408,” the dispatcher says in one of these chilling tape recordings that were finally released Friday. “Where’s the fire? ... OK, 106th floor. ... What building are you? ... Do not leave, OK? There’s a fire or an explosion or something in the building. All right, I want you to stay where you are. ... Get the windows open, if you can open up windows, and just sit by it. It’s going to be a while because there’s like a fire going on downstairs.”
Sit tight? Open a window? Doesn’t sound so smart 4 1/2 years later. An explosion or something in the building? If only it were just that.
But that’s what it was like in the early minutes after the terror attack. These tapes prove it. Gradual and frustrating and so inadequate. These were human beings answering these calls - imperfect like all of us - their eyes slowly opened by horrific and unfolding events.
“I’ve got a guy on the 106th floor and he wants to know how to deal with a hundred people,” a fire operator says. “He wants some directions. I don’t know.”
In those first crucial minutes, no one did.
But slowly, painfully slowly, we hear as the emergency dispatchers put one and one together just as millions of Americans were doing - and coming to the same jaw-dropping realization. It’s two planes - not one - and that has to be more than an accident.
“Another plane,” a police operator is heard to say at one point. “This is a whole new thing going on. ... They’re saying it was a terrorist attack.”
It’s that growing realization - and the thousand little fumbles of the moment - that re-creates 9/11 so jarringly.
It really isn’t fair. We can listen now through knowledgeable ears as people speak in understandable ignorance. If only they knew then what we know now.
And the calls keep coming. These are fire and police operators, people who field emergency calls all day. They are taking in frantic reports of something beyond anything any of them have even had to contemplate.
By and large, the operators responded as they were trained to, giving every kind of direction but the one that might have been useful: Run, run for your life!
You can hear the frustration build as the callers get more frantic. “The Fire Department, EMS, is crawling all over the place,” a Fire Department operator assures one caller trapped with dozens of others on the 106th floor. “They’re trying to help everybody as much as they can, OK?”
“I’m still here,” an operator tells one caller trapped on the 105th floor. “The Fire Department is trying to get to you. OK, try to calm down.”
Eventually, a call comes in from an office across the street from the trade center. The caller “states that on the northwest side, there’s a woman hanging from - an unidentified person hanging from the top of the building,” a police operator is telling the fire dispatcher.
“All right, we have quite a few calls,” the fire dispatcher says.
“I know,” sighs the police operator, falling back on the only other thing that seems to make sense.
“Jesus Christ,” the operator says.