Copyright 2006 Newsday, Inc.
Emergency tapes paint vivid picture of confusion
By MELANIE LEFKOWITZ
Newsday (New York)
They suggested damp towels for the doorways. They warned people that panicking would waste their oxygen. They urged them to sit tight, stay low and not break windows.
But in the end, the best that 911 dispatchers could offer those trapped in the highest floors of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, was solace.
“If you feel that your life is in danger, do what you must do, OK?” one dispatcher told a caller at 9:02 a.m., just 16 minutes after the first plane struck. “I can’t give you any more advice than that.”
Helplessness was the common theme in the approximately 130 calls made to 911 operators from the World Trade Center the morning of Sept. 11, which the city released Friday under a court order. Faced with a disaster that rendered decades of training obsolete in an instant, dispatchers — fielding almost unimaginable reports of bodies hanging from windows, a leg caught in an elevator, anxious groups of men and women trapped a quarter mile off the ground as the tops of the towers glowed red — handled the cascade of events as best they could.
Most operators, not informed of orders to evacuate both buildings, relied on standard advice to remain in place and await rescue. But they remained professional, if agitated, as the clock ticked and callers grew increasingly desperate, urging people to stay calm even as they ran out of oxygen and out of hope.
“It’s an awful thing. It’s an awful, awful, awful thing to call somebody and tell them you’re going to die,” one police operator, who had just finished talking to a group trapped on the 83rd floor of south tower, told another operator at 9:53 a.m. “I hope they’re all alive because they sound like they went - they passed out because they were breathing hard, like snoring, like they’re unconscious.”
The city was able to identify only 28 callers on that morning’s 911 tapes, and only one of those survived. According to the city Law Department, which released the tapes but withheld the names and voices of those calling to protect their privacy, there were few callers because often a single person was phoning on behalf of a large group. Twenty-one of the 28 families contacted by the city about whether they wished to hear the 911 tapes never even responded.
Wendy Cosgrove of West Islip, whose husband, Kevin, called 911 from the 105th floor of the south tower, has heard what may have been her husband’s last words.
“He’s in a lot of pain. You can just imagine there’s no oxygen; he can’t see,” she said Friday. “He just wants to be with his family.”
Families listen together
Friday, the eight families who sued for the tapes’ release along with The New York Times - none of whose relatives were heard calling 911 — listened to the tapes together, later expressing awe and admiration for the dispatchers but frustration that it took the city so long to release incomplete records.
“It’s an important lesson to be learned. That’s what can come out of this, a legacy to another generation,” said Rosemary Cain of Massapequa, who lost her son, Firefighter George Cain, 35. “This world never has to have another calamity like this.”
Nevertheless, for Cain and thousands of others whose friends and relatives were among the 2,749 people who died at the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, Friday was a searingly difficult day.
“It’s a knife in your heart all over again,” she said.
In the nearly 100 minutes of calls, operators offered a wide range of advice in the face of confusion and chaos, their sometimes contradictory suggestions adding another layer to the almost surreal environment that the tapes reveal. As they talked to people weighing their options in hot and airless rooms, the operators at times seemed to be feeling their way in the dark themselves, grasping for logical answers to an unfathomable, hopeless situation.
“I agree with you that you need air. But I can’t tell you to break a window. Now I can tell you if you break a window you might let more smoke and debris ... " one operator told someone on the 86th floor of the north tower at 9:41. " ... and then if you break a window you will break the foundation more. ... No sir, we’re not figuring out what to do. It’s just ... we don’t want to give you the wrong information. I feel so bad that we can’t do more. You don’t know. Oh boy. Um. God forbid. Oh.”
Though most exhorted callers not to break the windows, warning them that it could feed the fire or bring in black smoke from outside, some did suggest opening or breaking windows. One EMS operator told a caller that the fire was far away, since the floor and doors didn’t feel hot.
“That’s good. That means no fire should be near you,” that operator said. “So smoky conditions ... is the worst thing you should be concerned about now.”
Another dispatcher advised someone to listen to the radio.
“The news, [880] AM,” the dispatcher said. “Or 1010 AM. OK?”
Promises of help
Nearly all the operators repeatedly told people to “sit tight,” in some cases promising that help would come to them.
“We’re getting up to you, sir. We’re taking care of it. Just stay where you are. Just stay where you are. Don’t do nothing. I don’t know. They’re coming, sir,” one dispatcher said at 9:49. “We’ll get to you, I can’t stay on the line, sir. We’ll get to you as soon as we can. I swear to you. I swear to you, we’ll get somebody up to you.”
But three minutes later, another operator told a caller on the 86th floor of the north tower, “There are no firefighters available.
“And I don’t know what to tell you,” the operator said, in what is a heartbreaking refrain throughout the tapes. “I’m so sorry I don’t know what to tell you to do.”
In its final report on the terror attacks, the 9/11 Commission criticized the city for failing to provide its 911 emergency operators with information they could use to help callers trapped in the towers. Norman Siegel, the attorney representing the families who sought the tapes, said Friday that they showed that the dispatchers were, perhaps, fatally misinformed.
“The 911 tapes clearly demonstrate the 911 operators were not given a uniform script. The 911 tapes clearly demonstrate the 911 operators’ unfamiliarity with the building. Over and over they told callers to open the windows and - you can’t open the windows in the World Trade Center,” Siegel said. “As we listened and read the 911 operators comments, at times they were inconsistent and contradictory. You had generally the mantra of 911 operators saying, just sit tight.”
Mayor fought release
But Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose administration has vigorously fought the tapes’ release and whose fire and police commissioners praised the operators Friday for their grace and professionalism, said it is unfair to scrutinize the 911 dispatchers’ advice since in nearly every instance, the trapped callers would have died anyway.
“You know exactly what’s going to happen to the tapes. They’ll be blasted all over and made a spectacle,” Bloomberg said Friday on his weekly radio show. “We will do whatever the courts want but my personal opinion has always been, we should remember those that we lost and not focus on that particular day, or those conversations. As far as I can tell, everything that was done - everything that could have been done to save the lives of anybody above the two floors that the planes hit was done, and it just wasn’t possible to do anything else. And it was a great tragedy. And let’s learn from that.”
The eight hours of tapes, which span the first seconds after the jet hit the north tower to the final reports of groups trapped before the buildings collapsed, unfold like a play in three acts, with operators at first reacting in disbelief, then in a frenzy of activity, and finally with sympathy and sadness for those who seem further and further from hope of rescue. Many operators and dispatchers, faced with the first flurry of seemingly impossible reports - of a plane, a helicopter or a bomb - seemed stunned.
“I don’t know why these people keep calling,” one operator says to a colleague.
“This is a new one, though,” the other operator says.
A few seconds later: “Another plane now?”
“Another plane. This is a whole new thing now.”
As more and more calls poured in, operators assured frightened callers that help was on the way. “I’ve got almost every fireman in the city coming to help you,” one dispatcher said. Some began to seem frustrated or overwhelmed, both by their inability to help the callers and by the volume of reports.
“You do what you think is best,” a dispatcher told a caller at 9:02. “No, cannot do that. We are getting millions - millions of calls, sir. All I can say to do is stay near [a] window, stay low, put a towel by the door.”
Another operator angrily told a colleague it was like the 1993 World Trade Center bombing all over again.
“How could you have a big building, and no way to get out of it?” she said. “That’s ridiculous. Anyway, if you had a chute, that you just slide down, that way people don’t have to walk down. And more people could get out. You slide down the chute and you’re out the door. That’s what you should have. But you can’t tell rich people nothing, I guess.”
‘Try not to panic’
But when talking with the trapped and terrified callers inside the towers, whose heavy, scared breathing could sometimes be heard behind the operators’ voices, they were calm and consoling. “Listen to me, try not to panic. You can save the air supply by doing that,” one dispatcher told someone on the 105th floor around 9:20. “OK, calm yourself down. I know it’s hot.”
The last call, received one minute before the north tower fell and 22 minutes after the collapse of the south tower, may have come from someone trapped beneath rubble.
“All right. We’ll get - we’ll get you some help over there. You are off Liberty Street, right?” the dispatcher said. “All right. Don’t worry about it. We’ll get to you as soon as we can.”
9:06 a.m.
Roof, North Tower
FDNY: Fire Department FDNY 827. What’s the address of the fire?
NYPD: 827. This is at the World Trade Center, sir. I have a woman that’s hanging from the building.
FDNY: She’s hanging from where?
NYPD: From the - she’s hanging from the top of the One - One World Trade Center . . .
10:17 a.m.
97th floor, unspecified tower
FDNY: I understand your concern, sir, and I understand your panic, but we are there in the building. We’re getting there, as soon as we can.
CALLER: (Words omitted. )
FDNY: OK. I’ll let them know again. All right?
CALLER: (Words omitted. )
FDNY: Try to remain calm. Stay low to the floor. Keep the door blocked from smoke. OK?
CALLER: (Words omitted. )
FDNY: I understand. Please.
CALLER: (Words omitted. )
FDNY: Stop talking, and let the air - You’re losing your oxygen. So try to be quiet and remain calm. OK?