9/11 Commission Cites Communication Flaws Among Rescuers

9/11 Commission Cites Communication Flaws Among Rescuers

NewsMax.com Wires
Tuesday, May 18, 2004

NEW YORK – Rescuers on Sept. 11 were forced to make rapid-fire, life-and-death decisions based on incomplete communications, according to a new report by the federal commission investigating the attacks.

Two days of hearings by the commission investigating the terrorist attacks began Tuesday with a stark warning from the commission's staff: "The details we will be presenting may be painful for you to see and hear."

More than 100 family members, some with photos of victims pinned to their chests, were at the hearing. It was to be the first time they would hear an official account of the 100 minutes between the first plane strike and the crumbling of the second World Trade Center tower.

In a vivid departure from previous commission hearings, the panel will revisit the jarring sights and sounds of the attack and its aftermath. Videotapes to be aired at the hearings show the confusing, rushed recovery efforts, and the recollections of those who survived.

One critical issue, early public address announcements in Tower 2 telling workers to remain at their offices, is recounted verbatim by a survivor.

A 26-page staff report reconstructing events through first-person survivor accounts found:

A fire chief failed to notice a critical second button on a device that carried radio signals up the buildings, leaving the chief to wrongly believe the equipment wasn't working. It was, and was later used by other fire personnel in Tower 2, the south tower.

Other communications gaps that day included a lack of coordination between the police and fire departments, a crush of radio traffic that sometimes blotted out information, and an inability to share information effectively between on-scene officials and 911 phone operators.

A helicopter rescue of trapped workers on the upper floors was not a practical option because of equipment attached to the roof, and the heat and smoke of the fire below.

Though many of the safety procedures put in place after the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center helped employees escape, others proved ineffective or possibly even dangerous in response to a very different type of attack eight years later.

One survivor, Brian Clark, president of Euro Brokers Relief Fund, said the PA system advised: "Your attention please, ladies and gentlemen, Building 2 is secure. There is no need to evacuate Building 2. If you are in the midst of evacuation, you may use the re-entry doors and the elevators to return to your office. Repeat, Building 2 is secure."

The report offers no concrete explanation for that direction. But it does suggest two possible reasons: a concern for workers being injured by falling debris from the other tower, and the knowledge that in the 1993 bombing, many of the injuries were sustained in the crowded evacuation of the building.

The panel's findings on planning and emergency response set the stage for testimony at the New School University, about 1.5 miles from ground zero, by current and former officials of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the New York fire, police and emergency management departments, the Homeland Security Department and the Arlington, Va., fire department.

In the years since the attacks, a rising chorus of New Yorkers has demanded a tough-minded probe of the city's emergency response, a public airing of shortcomings that would assign responsibility for systemic flaws.

Though the report does find fault in a few instances, it largely sympathizes with officials and rescue personnel forced to improvise in the face of an overwhelming catastrophe.

The commission, scrutinizing the long-standing rivalry between the NYPD and the Fire Department, said that in many instances the two agencies did not communicate effectively or quickly.

On the day of the attacks, neither agency "had demonstrated the readiness to respond to an incident commander" from another department, the report concluded.

Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has described the efforts, in which 25,000 people were saved and 2,749 people died, as the "greatest rescue mission in the history of the United States."

Last month, commissioners heard from President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, former President Bill Clinton and ex-Vice President Al Gore, as well as national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, CIA Director George Tenet, Attorney General John Ashcroft and others.

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