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BY MICHAEL SHERIDAN - DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Sirens blared through the streets of lower Manhattan on the afternoon of August 19, heading to an out-of-control blaze on the 17th floor of the former Deutsche Bank building. Within hours it would develop into a chaotic, seven-alarm inferno that tragically claimed the lives of two of New York's Bravest.
Just south of Ground Zero and a victim of the 9/11 attacks, the building was being taken down floor-by-floor. The cause of the fire has not yet been determined, but plywood and plastic sheeting turned the floors into mazes, and standpipes failed to deliver water to firefighters on the upper floors, officials said.
The audio clips found here are radio transmissions between the firefighters in the former skyscraper and FDNY command officers. The two are compilations, pieced together from a 43-minute recording obtained by the Daily News. In dramatic fashion they detail the difficulty faced by the men who fought the blaze, and the brotherhood that comes with being a New York City firefighter.
"I want a roll call!" demands someone from FDNY command. "I don't give a s--t about the building. I give a s--t about the guys!"
They also detail the moments in which the FDNY began to realize something was wrong -- that two of their own were missing. "I heard Engine 24 had a couple of members missing also, can you confirm that?" someone asks in the transmission.
"That's what we're trying to find out," came a response. "Engine 24?"
Before the fire was brought under control, two members of Company 24/Ladder Company 5 would be lost: Firefighters Robert Beddia, 53, and Joe Graffagnino, 33, both ran out of air on the 14th floor and died of cardiac arrest. They were the latest victims from a firehouse that has seen its share of fallen friends. Eleven of its former firefighters died on September 11, 2001.
Includes 2 audio files: FDNY radio transmissions from Deutsche Bank blaze
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WASHINGTON -- One of the nation's largest firefighters unions has accused Republican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani of committing "egregious acts" against firefighters who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
In a draft letter, the International Association of Fire Fighters criticize the former New York City mayor for cutting back on the number of firefighters searching the rubble of Ground Zero for the remains of other firefighters.
The letter reads in part: "Many people consider Rudy Giuliani 'America's Mayor,' and many of our members who don't yet know the real story, may also have a positive view of him. This letter is intended to make all of our members aware of the egregious acts Mayor Giuliani committed against our members, our fallen on 9/11, and our New York City union officers following that horrific day."
The union has long assailed the former mayor, but the latest criticism comes as several polls put Giuliani ahead in the race for the Republican nomination.
Union officials said the letter was drafted as leaders were deciding whether to invite Giuliani to a presidential candidate forum, but it was never distributed.
"The fundamental lack of respect that Giuliani showed our FDNY members is unforgivable - and that's why he was not invited. Our disdain for him is not about issues or a disputed contract, it is about a visceral, personal affront to the fallen, to our union and, indeed, to every one of us who has ever risked our lives by going into a burning building to save lives and property," the letter said.
The Giuliani campaign fought back against the charges Friday in part by posting a letter on its web site from retited New York firefighter Lee Lelpi.
"I was deeply disappointed and disheartened to learn of the recent partisan political activities by the International Association of Firefighters," Lelpi said.
"Those of us who have worked with him know that Rudy Giuliani has always been a steadfast and unrelenting supporter of firefighters and first responders. The IAFF’s accusations in its “draft letter,” which made its way into the hands of the media, flies in the face of the facts. It is offensive and inaccurate."
The campaign also posted a release saying Giuliani had the support of about 100 South Carolina firefighters.
The announcement followed a town hall meeting Giuliani hosted at the firehouse in North Spartanburg, S.C.
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By JIM DWYER AND KEVIN FLYNN
For much of the last year, New York City has said the devastating breakdown in fire communications at the World Trade Center was largely caused by the failure of an electronic device in the complex called a repeater, which was designed to boost radio transmissions in high rise buildings.
Now, however, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's analysis of its 78-minute tape of firefighter communications from Sept. 11 flatly contradicts the city's version of what went wrong. It also raises questions about the thoroughness of the city's investigations into the worst loss of life any fire department has ever experienced -- 343 men.
If the Port Authority's position is correct, it raises the possibility that different factors -- failure of other equipment, design of communications consoles in the tower lobbies, or a simple mistake made at a moment of high stress -- might have accounted for the communications breakdowns. Many firefighters believe those breakdowns contributed to the department's staggering losses.
On the tape, which recorded transmissions as they were passed through the repeater, firefighters in the south tower can be heard speaking over their radios until the building collapses. Practically no communications are recorded from firefighters in the north tower, even though the same repeater served both of the towers.
Before the voices from the south tower are heard, a series of coded tones are captured on the tape, marking the moment that the radio repeater was turned on, a spokesman for the Port Authority said.
In the view of Port Authority officials, those transmissions show beyond any doubt that the repeater worked, contrary to the accounts given in an official study of the emergency response that has been endorsed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta.
Asked, then, what would account for the communications failures, a spokesman for the Port Authority, Greg Trevor, said, ''You will have to put those questions to the Fire Department.''
The tape is likely to be remembered as far more than a record of what went wrong. It contains the only permanently preserved voices of firefighters from the tower stairwells, including transmissions from the fire chief who climbed highest into the building. As the firefighters raced up the stairs of the south tower, and right until the final seconds, they can be heard calmly organizing help for injured civilians as high as the 78th floor.
''All right, Tommy,'' a firefighter from Ladder 15 is heard saying minutes before the collapse, ''it's imperative that you try to get down to the lobby command post and get some people up to 40. We got injured people up here on 70. If you make it to the lobby command post, see if they can somehow get elevators past the 40th floor. We got injured people all the way up here.''
A spokesman for the Fire Department, Francis X. Gribbon, said yesterday that the department still believed the machinery had failed in some way. ''The system was tested in the lobby by two experienced chiefs who came to the conclusion that it was not functioning,'' he said, referring to the north tower.
That leaves unanswered one of the most stinging of all the questions about fire operations that day. Even though the north tower stood 29 minutes longer than the south tower, at least 121 firefighters did not escape from it. While chiefs in the north tower lobby issued orders to come down, they received no response.
The accounts of witnesses and firefighters who survived suggests that most of the men in the building simply did not know how much trouble they were in. Witnesses said that scores of firefighters, unaware of the peril, were resting on the 19th floor of the north tower during its final minutes. Some firefighters who managed to get out said they had no idea the other building had already fallen, and said that they thought that few of those who perished knew.
In February, even as the department was beginning a study of its Sept. 11 response, fire officials declined invitations to listen to the Port Authority's tape, which was recovered by Port Authority police officers from the rubble.
Not until the tape's existence was reported by The New York Times in July did fire officials decide to listen to it. Mr. Scoppetta has said that his aides did not tell him about the tape.
By then, the department's study of the Sept. 11 response was all but complete. The consulting firm that was conducting the study, McKinsey & Company, sent one of its associates to listen to the tape and to hear the analysis by the Port Authority, according to Carlos Kirjner, the McKinsey official who led the study.
In the end, Mr. Kirjner said that, even with the tape, it was not clear that the repeater had worked flawlessly throughout the buildings. No one could prudently ignore the perspective of senior fire chiefs, who had tested the system and believed it was not operating, he said.
''We came to the conclusion that arguing about the different versions was not a fruitful exercise,'' Mr. Kirjner said. So the report from McKinsey addressed the communications failure from the perspective of the fire chiefs, who believed the repeater did not work. Mr. Kirjner, who has a doctorate in electrical engineering and specializes in wireless communication, said his firm did not take a position on the repeater.
At the Port Authority, officials have long felt that the complaint about the failure of the repeater simply shifted the blame. While blame for the catastrophe is the subject of many lawsuits, Port Authority officials have resented the suggestion that their equipment failed.
The repeater was installed on the top floor of 5 World Trade Center after the first terrorist bombing in 1993. ''During our radio coverage tests, we concluded that the system worked exceptionally well,'' Deputy Fire Commissioner Steven Gregory wrote in a 1994 letter to Allen Reiss, the Port Authority official who oversaw the installation.
On Sept. 11, it did not seem to be working well to Battalion Chiefs Joseph Pfeifer and Orio Palmer, two of the first chiefs to respond. They tested their radios but could not hear each other, an effort that was recorded by the repeater tape.
One possible explanation, according to a Port Authority radio expert who reviewed the tape, is that the problems originated with a radio console that had been set up in the lobby by the Port Authority at the request of the Fire Department. The console resembled a telephone and served as a fire radio. The official suggested that a broken earpiece could have made it impossible for Chief Pfeifer to hear Chief Palmer. Another possible explanation is that the volume had been turned all the way down before they arrived.
In any event, Chief Pfeifer needed to establish communications quickly, so he turned to a backup repeater in his car, the tape makes clear. That repeater also did not appear to work. When the second plane hit, Chief Palmer was dispatched into the south tower with a senior chief, Donald Burns. There, both were able to speak over the trade center's repeater channel that had stymied Chief Palmer a few minutes earlier.
Chief Palmer took an elevator to the 40th or 41st floor, and then climbed on foot to the 78th floor within 30 minutes. As he ascended, he radioed reports on the conditions to the chief in the lobby and to other firefighters in the stairwells.
To Port Authority officials, those reports from the core of the building showed the repeater worked in the most difficult of environments.
Despite a public position that the repeater did not work, the city's top officials now want to replicate the trade center's system in high rises all over the city. Indeed, two weeks ago, Mr. Scoppetta sent a letter to the Port Authority saying that the mayor wanted the technical plans for the trade center's repeater system.
''The City of New York contemplates using the WTC Radio Repeater system as a model for future system development throughout the City,'' Mr. Scoppetta wrote.
NY Times article link |
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By KEVIN FLYNN and JIM DWYER
The voices, captured on a tape of Fire Department radio transmissions, betray no fear. The words are matter-of-fact.
Two hose lines are needed, Chief Orio Palmer says from an upper floor of the badly damaged south tower at the World Trade Center. Just two hose lines to attack two isolated pockets of fire. "We should be able to knock it down with two lines," he tells the firefighters of Ladder Company 15 who were following him up the stairs of the doomed tower.
Lt. Joseph G. Leavey is heard responding: "Orio, we're on 78, but we're in the B stairway. Trapped in here. We got to put some fire out to get to you."
Ladder 15 had finally found the fire after an arduous climb to the 78th floor, according to the tape. They were in the B stairwell. On the other side of the fire were hundreds of people, blocked from fleeing by smoke and flame on the stairs. Chief Palmer was facing similar fires in the A stairwell, across the floor.
"We're gonna knock down some fire here in the B Stair," Lieutenant Leavey is heard telling one of his firefighters. "We'll meet up with you. You get over to the A Stair and help out Chief Palmer."
The time was 9:56 a.m. The firefighters had just arrived at a place where, 54 minutes earlier, many people had been waiting for elevators when the second plane came crashing through the building. Now Chief Palmer and Ladder 15 were surrounded by the wounded whom they hoped to evacuate.
Like the cockpit voice recorder from a downed jetliner, this tape, discovered in an adjacent building several weeks after Sept. 11, is providing a glimpse into unseen corners of the tragedy and the resolute advance of firefighters as they encountered the largest catastrophe of their lives.
The 78-minute tape, which was found in a room at 5 World Trade Center where radio transmissions were monitored, is the only known audiotape of firefighters at the scene. In recent months, officials of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which maintained the recording system, have allowed fire officials and family members to listen to it. It was not publicly released, however, until this week. The release came after federal prosecutors, responding to a court motion by The New York Times, said that making it public would not interfere with the prosecution of terrorists.
Officials from the Port Authority and the Fire Department are still debating what the tape tells them about the breakdowns in radio communication that day. There are several long stretches of silence on the tape. Transmissions from only a few of the companies that operated in the south tower are recorded. A few additional snippets of conversation can be heard from firefighters in the north tower, where radios using the same frequency were also monitored.
But sections of the tape provide vivid images of the firefighters: the breathless voice of Chief Palmer, a marathon runner, after dashing up dozens of flights; the assurances from firefighters to him that they are coming on his heels; the effort to create a medical staging area for the wounded on the 40th floor.
At several points in the tape, fire commanders can be heard speaking with urgency. A commander alerts a colleague that he needs more companies to handle what he is facing in the south tower. The chiefs discuss the need to get more elevators into service, to carry firefighters up and to transport the injured back down.
But nowhere on the tape is there any indication that firefighters had the slightest indication that the tower had become unstable or that it could fall.
"Chief, I'm going to stop on 44," Stephen Belson, an aide to Chief Palmer, tells him at 9:25 as he ascends.
"Take your time," the chief responds.
A half-hour later, the tape reveals, firefighters from Ladder 15 had loaded 10 injured people into an elevator and begun a descent to the lobby. Down below, fire commanders were waiting, hoping to use that elevator, the only working one in the building, to ferry additional firefighters back up to the heavily damaged floors. But suddenly the elevator stopped, according to the tape.
"You're going to have to get a different elevator," a firefighter from Ladder 15 says over the radio. "We're chopping through the wall to get out."
A few seconds later, at 9:58 a.m., Chief Palmer tries to raise someone from the ladder company. "Battalion 7 to Ladder 15," he calls.
But the tape remains silent.
NY Times article link |
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VERENA DOBNIK - Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) -- Emotional relatives of firefighters killed in the collapse of the World Trade Center pored over newly released transcripts and recordings Friday, listening intently for the voices of their loved ones and clues to their final minutes alive.
The records show some firefighters never heard the order to get out of the tower, said Antonia Fontana, who lost her son Lt. David Fontana on Sept. 11, 2001. Batteries in some firefighters' radios died; others never worked.
''I heard 'Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.' But there was no response,'' Fontana said.
''I knew this, but today I heard it,'' she said, her lips quivering. ''This is the truth.''
Identifying the remains of the 343 firefighters and other victims of the collapse has been slow, ending just this year. Fontana has received her son's remains ''in bits and pieces,'' she said. ''We got the ninth piece of David back in January of this year.''
Bent over laptops in a Manhattan office tower Friday, Fontana and a half-dozen other firefighters' family members went over dispatches of frantic emergency calls, recorded on nearly two dozen CDs.
Two fire officers who survived the attack helped the group understand the department jargon as the families took notes and compared details.
''I never heard any of this before _ the chaos,'' said retired Lt. Jerry Reilly, who escaped the trade center's north tower. His eyes teared up as he explained that ''the radio communication was terrible. But I knew before 9/11 _ that these new radios were terrible in the field. And we got no training for them.''
Sally Regenhard, whose son Christian Regenhard died in the collapse, said the response to the attack ''has been sanitized by the city of New York in an effort to put all this under the rug.''
She and her husband, retired police Sgt. Al Regenhard, learned a sliver of information about their son's last minutes during the three-hour session. He had been filling in that day for a firefighter in Engine 279, which was told to head toward the south tower; she even learned the name of his commander.
''It's very emotional. It's very difficult,'' she said. ''But it's no harder than knowing every day that my son is gone.''
Al Fuentes, a retired fire captain, said communications were so bad before he was pulled from the rubble that some firefighters resorted to hand signals.
The department released the hours of radio transmissions and transcripts of more than 500 firefighters' oral histories after The New York Times successfully sued for the records.
''It's a disgrace that the families have had to fight for every single little bit of information that they have gotten,'' said Rosemary Cain of Massapequa, who lost her son, George Cain of Ladder 7.
Firehouse.com article link |
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By DEAN E. MURPHY - The New York Times
Listen to the survivors who escaped down the staircases of the doomed World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, and expect to be overwhelmed by the aching appreciation for the faces on these pages.
For thousands of horrified office workers who fled the terrorist attacks, the most remarkable sight during their descent was the wave of determined firefighters advancing toward the burning sky.
"One fireman stopped to take a breath, and we looked each other in the eye," said Louis G. Lesce, who was on his way down from the 86th floor of 1 World Trade Center, the first tower hit. "He was going to a place where I was damn well trying to get out of. I looked at him thinking, 'What are you doing this for?' He looked at me like he knew very well. 'This is my job.'"
In all, 343 firefighters were reported missing or were identified among the dead. The number of casualties was staggering. Entire companies were lost. The previous biggest loss of life for the Fire Department was in 1966, when 12 were killed in a fire on East 23rd Street.
But the numbers tell only a fraction of the story. The faces and names say far more. A father and son. A chaplain. A commander. A rookie. Strangers to most of those they passed on Sept. 11, but heroes to them all.
"They were perspiring profusely, exhausted," said David Frank, a salesman who escaped from the 78th floor of 1 World Trade Center. "And they had to go all the way to the 90's - straight into hell. This was not lost on the crowd. We all broke out into applause at one point. It was a wonderful moment."
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