Joined: 26 Mar 2006 Posts: 707 Location: Toronto,Canada (biggest Canadian city)
[abc news] NYC Releases 9/11 WTC Emergency Calls
Quote:
NEW YORK Mar 31, 2006 (AP)— Nearly nine hours of emergency calls, some made from inside the doomed World Trade Center, were released by the city Friday, detailing the responses of 911 operators to frantic callers caught in the chaos of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack.
"You saw an explosion at the twin towers?" asks an operator receiving the first call on Fire Department transcripts. The time was 8:47 a.m., one minute after the first plane hit.
The words of the operators but not the callers were released after The New York Times and a group of victims' relatives sued to get them. An appeals court ruled last year that families should have the option to release the tapes made by 28 callers who could be identified.
The Times and family members hoped the audiotaped calls, even with the callers comments edited out, would reveal details of what happened inside the towers and whether 911 operators misdirected the victims. The Sept. 11 commission concluded in 2004 that many operators didn't know enough about the attacks to give the best information to those trapped.
The transcripts reflect the chaos amid the attacks that killed 2,749 people.
One fire department operator mentions problems with the computer crashing. Another exchange between police and fire operators indicates frustration in trying to deal with a once-unimaginable situation.
A caller from a downtown business "states that on the northwest side (of the trade center), there's a woman hanging from an unidentified person hanging from the top of the building," a police operator says. "This is at One World Trade Center."
"Alright, we have quite a few calls," responds a fire operator.
"I know," says the police operator. "Jesus Christ."
The transcripts have long blank spaces where the callers' words would have appeared. One call came from the 103rd floor of the building, where a large number of people were trapped.
"He says people are getting sick from the smoke that's coming in," the operator says. "There's a lot of people. He's thinking that they are trapped."
