|
Newly Released Trade Center Transcripts Provide Real-Time Narrative to Sept. 11 Attacks
As Fred says, "never forgive, never forget.""World Trade Center . . . repeat, we have something . . . going into the top of the World Trade Center!"These are the voices, raw, unfiltered, of police officers and civilians at the World Trade Center on the final morning of its existence. Under a court order, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey late today released roughly 1,800 pages of transcripts, covering about 260 hours of recorded telephone calls and radio transmissions made in the immediate aftermath of the Sept 11, 2001 attacks. The new transcripts, based on reel-to-reel tapes recovered from the wreckage of 5 World Trade Center weeks after two aircraft flew into the towers, provide a vivid, chaotic, real-time narrative of what happened that morning. Confusion is epidemic. There are repeated rumors that rockets have been fired from the Woolworth Building. Someone claims terrorists with explosives are fleeing through New Jersey in a Ford van with New York tags. People are in shock. Several callers to police, unaware of what is happening, report burglar alarms going off in the towers. In the initial moments, almost everyone struggles to comprehend the dimensions of the catastrophe. MALE: Yo, Iâve got dozens of bodies, people just jumping from the top of the building onto . . . in front of One World Trade.A man calls his daughter: His fate is unknown. A police officer barks into his radio: "We need water . . . burning jet fuel on five-one."A young man answering the phone at a police desk near the ground floor is nonchalant about a plane hitting the building. "It will affect new paperwork. . . . Only the paperwork," he says.Seconds later, the second plane hits and, with the shock wave passing through the structure, he changes his tune: "Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa -- that didnât feel good." Previous accounts of events inside the buildings have largely come from survivors and family members of victims, who recounted telephone calls from those trapped inside. Some who died also managed to send numerous e-mails and leave messages on answering machines. A 78-minute transcript of Fire Department transmissions also has been made public. Yet many family members say they still donât know exactly what happened to their loved ones, some of whom vanished after making fleeting farewell phone calls. The transcripts released today wonât solve most of those remaining mysteries, but they do present a sizable and often harrowing addition to the historical record of Sept. 11, 2001. The material is largely from police radio transmissions and civilian phone calls. The calls were not to 911, but to Port Authority police lines at several locations in New York and New Jersey. The Port Authority has its own police force, and lost 37 officers, which the agency says was the worst single-day loss of any police force in U.S. history. More than half of those officers are identifiable on the tapes. "It shows people performing their duties very professionally and very heroically on a day of unimaginable horror," said Greg Trevor, a Port Authority spokesman and survivor of the attack. "We always knew in our hearts that these people were heroes to the end. Now we know for sure." The first plane hit the North Tower at 8:46 a.m. Not for another 16 minutes would the second plane slam into the South Tower. But in some cases, people in the South Tower were told to remain in place rather than evacuate. The South Tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m., followed by the collapse of the North Tower at 10:28 a.m. MAN ON 92ND FLOOR: We need to know if we need to get out of here, because we know thereâs an explosion, I donât know what building.After a bit of cross talk, he asks again: MAN: Should we stay or should we go?It is unclear in the transcripts if those people survived. Shortly after the second plane hit, Port Authority police received a call from a Port Authority official. "Iâm on the 64th floor . . . in Tower One. . . . Iâve got about 20 people here with me. . . . What do you suggest?"A little more than an hour later, the official calls again. "Iâm in the Trade Center, Tower One. Iâm with the Port Authority and we are on the 64th floor. The smoke is getting kind of bad, so we are going to . . . we are contemplating going down the stairway. Does that make sense?"But itâs too late. The tower collapses. Trevor, the Port Authority spokesman, pointed out tonight that he and his colleagues on the 68th floor of the North Tower were told to evacuate almost immediately, and any incorrect guidance to others was due to the confusion and uncertainty of the moment. Many of the transcripts capture the staccato utterances of gasping police officers trying to cope with a rapidly disintegrating situation. Here and there, almost hidden in the cross talk, individual stories play out. One is that of a stoic carpenter, identified in the transcripts only as "MALE 103," a contract employee with a Port Authority radio. The agency declined to identify him tonight, but said that his family had received counseling after reading the transcript. MALE 103: Structure fire one-o-three open up! . . .For what appears to be several minutes, he continues to transmit. He says the heat is increasing. MALE 103: Structural fire, 103. . . . Need immediate purge.Nothing more is heard from him. Higher up yet, people are suffocating at Windows on the World. A woman tells police, "The situation on 106 is rapidly getting worse. . . . We . . . we have . . . the fresh air is going down fast! Iâm not exaggerating."The documents had been sought in a lawsuit filed by the New York Times, and a New Jersey judge last Friday ordered the agency to release the transcripts. The Port Authority chose not to appeal the ruling, but pleaded with the news media to withhold gruesome and gratuitous details "that do nothing to further this discussion." The Port Authority contacted family members of some victims so they could review the sensitive material before it was made public. "As a family member, you canât imagine the horror of finding your loved oneâs last words," said Carie Lemack, whose mother, Judy Larocque, was on American Airlines Flight 11 and was killed when it hit the North Tower. "What is the reason for releasing these tapes? If itâs safety, thatâs fantastic. But if itâs entertainment, then weâre very concerned." Liz Aldermanâs son, Peter, had been attending a conference at Windows on the World atop the North Tower. His last communication to his family was an e-mail sent on his BlackBerry at 9:25 a.m. He wrote, "Weâre stuck. The room is filling with smoke. Iâm scared." His mother notes that his writing was coherent, not panic-stricken. She assumes he lived a while longer. "The most important facts Iâll never know. I donât know how long Peter lived, how he died, and whether he suffered," she says. She doesnât believe that the transcripts will change that, but she is glad they are public. "Every time we can put a human face on this," she says, "it no longer is just a mass murder." With every respect to Ms. Alderman and all the other victims, it most certainly was mass murder. Never forgive, never forget. Posted by: Steve White 2003-08-29 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=18107 |