Report outlines missteps and confusion on 9/11 at trade center
 
Mark Prendergast NYT
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
NEW YORK Barely half an hour before the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed at 9:59 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, none of the fire chiefs briefing the mayor and police commissioner at a meeting on a nearby street expressed concern that the 110-story building was in danger of falling, the staff of the 9/11 investigating commission said in a report issued Tuesday.
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"None of the chiefs present believed a total collapse of either tower was possible," the report said, recounting the impromptu meeting that occurred at 9:20 a.m. Only after Mayor Rudolph Giuliani left did one senior chief present "articulate his concern that upper floors could begin to collapse in a few hours," the report added.
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"And so he said that firefighters should not ascend above floors in the 60s." The findings were made public as the independent, bipartisan commission created by Congress began two days of hearings in Manhattan in advance of its final report, due in July.
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Tuesday's report, one of more than a dozen already made public by the 10-member commission, was read aloud at the televised hearing, along with videotaped interviews of witnesses and officials quoted in the report and graphic scenes from the disaster. Many family members of 9/11 victims were in the audience at the New School University.
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The commission staff said the purpose of this report was only to offer a "reliable summary of what happened" on Sept. 11 without "much commentary." A follow-up report on Wednesday will "offer more analysis and suggest some lessons that emerge for the future."
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Much of the information released Tuesday has been previously reported. The commission staff said: Rescue operations were hampered by flawed radio communications systems or an inability to operate them properly. In one case, a radio relay device, called a repeater, that was intended to boost radio signals in the high-rise trade center complex, was thought to be inoperative; in fact, the fire chief who had tested it in the north tower failed to push one of two needed buttons.
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"When he could not communicate," the report said, "he concluded that the system was down. The system was working, however, and was used subsequently by firefighters in the south tower." Partly because they lacked comprehensive radio communications with firefighters deep inside the building, the commission said, "the chiefs in the north tower were forced to make decisions based on little or no information."
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Although firefighters, police officers and other "first responders" performed heroically, often at the cost of their lives, interdepartment rivalries, especially between the police and fire departments, added to the confusion over what has happening and how to deal with it.
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Although the administration of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani issued a directive in July 2001 intended to eliminate potential conflict among emergency agencies, each department "considered itself operationally autonomous," the report said.
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The confusion, agency conflicts and radio problems not only kept many tenants from leaving the towers, but also led to many police officers and firefighters entering or staying in the buildings even after superiors had decided that the fires could not be fought or that everyone, including rescue workers, should evacuate.
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After the first hijacked airliner struck the north tower at 8:46 a.m., conflicting information was given to tenants in both towers about the dangers they faced and whether and when they should evacuate. Public address systems were damaged by the successive impacts to each building, and announcements that did get heard were sometimes erroneous or confusing.
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"All the emergency officials that morning quickly judged that the north tower should be evacuated," the commission staff said. "The acting fire director in the north tower immediately ordered everyone to evacuate the building, but the public address system was damaged and no one apparently heard the announcement."
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People who sought information from emergency telephone operators fared no better. The report said, "911 operators and FDNY dispatchers had no information about either the location or magnitude of the impact zone and were therefore unable to provide information as fundamental as whether callers were above or below the fire."
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Many people in the south tower "were unaware initially of what happened in the other tower," the report said. "The evacuation standard operating procedures did not provide a specific protocol for when to evacuate one tower in the event of a major explosion in the other."
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"According to one fire chief," the report said, "it was unimaginable, 'beyond our consciousness,' that another plane might hit the adjacent tower." As a result, officials initially thought the wiser course was for people in the south tower to "stay in place" - standard procedure for conventional high-rise fires for occupants not in the immediate vicinity of smoke and flame.
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"Indeed, evacuees in the sky lobbies and the main lobby were advised by building personnel to return to their offices," the report said in recounting the confusion in the south tower from the time the first plane struck the north tower to the time the second plane struck the south tower 17 minutes later. "As a result of the announcement, many civilians in the south tower remained on their floors. Others reversed their evacuation and went back up."
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By 9:02 a.m. officials decided that the south tower should be evacuated as well, which its tenants were told via public address system. "One minute later," the report noted, "a plane hit the south tower."
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The New York Times


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