[LeArc] From the "New York Times"

[Joseph L. Rossmiller]

This is from the New York Times web page.  It talks about the radio
communications problems they had during the events of September 11.  It
may not be ham radio related, but I found the information of interest
and felt other's might also.

73 de Joe - AG9Y


January 30, 2002

Before the Towers Fell, Fire Dept. Fought Chaos

By JIM DWYER

In scores of emotionally searing interviews conducted by the Fire
Department for an internal inquiry, the agency's most senior commanders
have provided new and, in some cases, alarming revelations about the
events of Sept. 11.

They said they had little reliable radio communication that morning,
could not keep track of all the firefighters who entered the towers, and
were unable to reach them as the threat of a collapse became
unmistakable.

The commanders decided early on that roaring fires on the high floors of
the towers could not be subdued. Many worried aloud that the buildings
were in danger of at least partial failure. Confusion extended, for
some, to which tower was which. Although they feared that the buildings
were doomed, they could not bring their troops back in time.

One chief estimated that at the moment the north tower fell, nearly
every civilian below the floors directly hit by the airplane had already
evacuated, and that only firefighters remained inside the stairwells of
a building that was seen as a lost cause.

So poor were communications that on one side of the trade center
complex, in the city's emergency management headquarters, a city
engineer warned officials that the towers were at risk of "near imminent
collapse," but those he told could not reach the highest-ranking fire
chief by radio. Instead, a messenger was sent across acres, dodging
flaming debris and falling bodies, to deliver this assessment in person.
He arrived with the news less than a minute before the first tower fell.

Taken together, the interviews with virtually every surviving member of
the department's top command offer the most detailed and intimate
portrait yet of the strategy and problems on Sept. 11. By themselves,
they do not answer difficult questions such as whether lives might have
been saved with different equipment or procedures. But for the
department and the city, officials said, these accounts will be a
starting point in an inquiry about the Fire Department's emergency
response procedures.

For history, these accounts accomplish a separate but equally rich task:
they mark with precision acts of bravery, struggles to live, and the
widespread feelings of being unmoored from reality on that sunny
morning.

They also reflect the actual spoken voices of the department, men and
women of all ranks: firefighters, doctors, chaplains, paramedics, fleet
mechanics, support staff who responded to the catastrophe without having
to be asked. By one turn or another, their lives were spared, and in
many cases they were able then to rescue others. As they rushed to the
scene, many said they reflected that the day would expose them to
dangers beyond their experience.

Walter Kowalczyk, the senior Emergency Medical Service officer on duty
that day, recalled driving up West Street and seeing body parts and
debris. "My mouth went dry," he said. "I had the sensation that I had a
job to do. I had to ensure the safety of the E.M.S. work force. But how
do I do this if I can't talk?"

A chaplain, the Rev. John Delendick, recalled fleeing from the collapse,
next to a police officer who asked the priest, midstride, to hear his
confession. Invoking a little-used power, the priest said he believed an
act of war had taken place and was declaring "general absolution" for
sins that covered all believers in the area.

Chief Kowalczyk and Father Delendick were among 500 members of the Fire
Department interviewed since late September, under an oral history
project started by the commissioner at the time, Thomas Von Essen. Mr.
Von Essen had felt that the department needed a rigorous outside
examination of how and why so many of its members died Sept. 11.

The department has so far declined to release the transcripts of the
interviews, but some 50 were made available this week to The New York
Times. Last night, Mr. Von Essen's successor, Nicholas Scoppetta,
announced that he intended to hire an investigator to review the
department's operations that day.

"The Fire Department is seeking the services of a consultant to perform
an independent evaluation and study of the department's response and
operations during and after the attacks on the World Trade Center on
Sept. 11, 2001," Mr. Scoppetta said in a statement. "The purpose of this
study will be to make findings and recommendations that will help
improve the department's response to catastrophic emergencies."

              100 Terrible Minutes

As chaotic as the events of those 100 minutes seemed, it is clear from
the accounts that they unfolded for the fire officials in distinct
phases, beginning with the first attack at 8:48. That was followed by
the second plane, which hit the south tower at 9:03; the collapse of the
south tower at 9:59; and the failure of the north tower at 10:28.

Nearly all of the department's highest-ranking and most experienced
leaders arrived at the World Trade Center within minutes of the first
attack, having a clear view of the calamity from the Fire Department
Headquarters less than two miles away in downtown Brooklyn. As they sped
across the harbor, many of them worried about what lay ahead.

>From the Brooklyn Bridge, Albert Turi, the deputy assistant chief of
fire safety, tried to measure how much of the north tower was on fire.

"I knew right from the start that there was no way this Fire Department
could extinguish six or eight floors of fire, fully involved, in a high-
rise building," Chief Turi said. "It's just not possible, because we
don't have the means to do it."

Just entering the building had lethal risks: the debris and bodies
falling from the upper floors were killing people on the ground.

The first chief on the scene was Joseph Pfeifer, who had been at Church
and Lispenard Streets with probationary fire officers and a
documentary-film maker when the plane roared overhead. On his way to the
trade center, Chief Pfeifer alerted the dispatchers to sound the alarm
for a major catastrophe.

He ordered a staging area at West and Vesey Streets, set up a command
center in the lobby of 1 World Trade Center, and learned that people
were trapped in the elevators. Others could not get down from the floors
above the fire. He sent the first firefighters up to begin rescue work.

"I told engines, half the group to take hose, the other half not to, at
least early on, and started their way up," Chief Pfeifer said. "Also, I
saw my brother, who was a lieutenant in 33, and we spoke a little bit,
and then he went up also." (His brother, Lt. Kevin Pfeifer of Engine
Company 33, was on his way down when the building collapsed. He did not
survive.)

Peter Hayden, whose title at the time, deputy chief for Division 1, gave
him authority for that area of Manhattan, joined Chief Pfeifer in the
lobby of the north tower. They tried, he said, to get the building's
elevators working. They set up a command board, to keep track of which
companies were on the scene.

"In the initial stages, it wasn't chaotic," Chief Hayden said. "It was
under control, very calm."

              Saving Lives Comes First

When the second plane hit 2 World Trade Center, the south tower, a
second command center was set up in that lobby. The chiefs had already
been discussing the stability of 1 World Trade Center.

"The potential and the reality of a collapse was discussed early on,"
Chief Hayden said. "But we were at a level of commitment. We also
received numerous distress calls. We realized we had a lot of dying and
fire up there."

When Mr. Von Essen, and two of his top deputies, William Feehan and
Thomas Fitzpatrick, arrived in the lobby, they discussed the approach.

"I specifically remember telling Commissioner Von Essen that we were not
attempting to extinguish this fire," Chief Hayden said. "We were not
trying to put this fire out. We had thousands of people coming down the
stairs, and that was our focus."

Around the time that the second plane hit, a ranking chief, Joseph
Callan, had seen enough.

"Approximately 40 minutes after I arrived in the lobby, I made a
decision that the building was no longer safe," Chief Callan said. "And
that was based on the conditions in the lobby. Large pieces of plaster
falling, all the 20-foot-high glass panels on the exterior of the lobby
were breaking. There was obvious movement of the building, and that was
the reason I gave the order for all Fire Department units to leave the
north tower."

The communications, though, frustrated the commanders. They were
particularly stymied by the failure of a device called a repeater inside
the building that was supposed to boost the signal.

"At one point after the second plane hit, I think, I'm not positive of
the time line, I know Chief Callan asked over the radio to come down to
the lobby," Chief Pfeifer said. "But with difficulty with
communications, that didn't happen. It didn't fully happen. I'm not too
sure who heard that or how many people came down. There was no way of
really telling at that point."

That was a problem across the complex that morning, not just in 1 World
Trade Center. At 7 World Trade Center, the city's Office of Emergency
Management was evacuating based on a report that a third plane had been
hijacked. John Peruggia, an Emergency Medical Service chief assigned to
the Office of Emergency Management, met with officials from other
agencies, including an "engineer-type person," as he put it.

"They were very confident that the building's stability was compromised
and they felt that the north tower was in danger of a near-imminent
collapse," Chief Peruggia said.

The problem was getting this word to the chief of the Fire Department,
Peter Ganci, who had set up a command post on West Street, across from
both towers.

"We didn't have the tools that we normally have to communicate with our
agency," Chief Peruggia said. The cellphones were not working, he added,
and radios were spotty. "I don't have a fire ground radio, so I had no
direct communications with my boss at that time."

Instead, he told an emergency medical technician to deliver the message
directly to Chief Ganci, several blocks away. The message reached Chief
Ganci about a minute before the south tower collapsed.

In 1 World Trade Center, Chief Hayden was becoming more disturbed about
the flow of firefighters into the building.

"Early on, we realized that a number of the companies were coming in and
were not reporting to any staging area we established," Chief Hayden
said. "So we were losing control of the companies coming. There was also
communication problems later on with companies coming in, units
responding to the second alarm after the other plane hit. They weren't
sure which was World Trade Center 1 and World Trade Center 2. So that
became confusing.

"Of course, off-duty members were coming and they were reporting
directly upstairs," Chief Hayden said. "So at one point in time � I want
to say that Chief McGovern was still in the lobby � we had to account
for everybody going upstairs. That became a critical issue."

The chiefs called the firefighters down several times, Chief Hayden
said. "However, we didn't get a lot of acknowledgement."

"The last report we had from anybody at all," Chief Hayden said, "was
that there were people heading up around the 48th floor. That was
several minutes prior to this collapse. So we had people as high as the
50th floor while we had communications."

Similar concerns were first raised publicly last week by Deputy Chief
Charles Blaich in a speech at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

The commanders considered an airborne rescue. "At one point I was asked
to get the operations with the helicopter into motion," Chief Pfeifer
said. "Unfortunately, or fortunately, I could not get ahold of the
dispatcher to do that. One of the citywide radios got moved around and I
couldn't grab that, and there were no phone lines."

              A Chaplain's Death

Among those in the lobby of 1 World Trade Center was the Rev. Mychal
Judge, a Fire Department chaplain. Although some early reports said that
he died while giving last rites, officers at the scene described him
praying in the lobby. When the other tower collapsed, he and others
rushed around a corner. During that flight, Father Judge apparently
collapsed.

Chief Pfeifer said Father Judge had no obvious injuries that he could
see in the gloom. "He was lying on the ground and I went over to him,
took off his collar, I opened up his shirt, checked for a pulse," Chief
Pfeifer said. "I knew at that point he didn't have any."

As the firefighters carried the dead chaplain, another chief, Richard
Picciotto, was in a stairwell of 1 World Trade Center, calling for the
firefighters to evacuate. At that point, the civilians below the impact
area had all but finished evacuating.

"So the only people in building tower one are firemen," Chief Picciotto
said, in an account he gave on "The Montel Williams Show," which was
included in the oral histories. With no response from the command
center, he said, he issued an order to evacuate.

As the firefighters descended, Chief Picciotto said, he heard a voice on
the radio countermanding his order, delaying them for a minute. Before
his group reached the bottom, the building collapsed, trapping them for
hours.

Out in the street after leaving 1 World Trade Center, Chief Pfeifer
recalled, he did not know the first tower had totally failed.

"I knew we had a big collapse but I had no idea," Chief Pfeifer said.
"What people saw on TV I didn't see, and nobody told me that's what had
occurred, and I didn't hear any radio communications of that, either."