36 identified on 9/11 tapes

2003-08-28 17:31

New York - The voices of at least 36 victims of the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center have been identified on tapes of emergency calls and radio transmissions from that morning, according to a published report.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owned the trade center, was scheduled to release transcripts of the tapes on Thursday after a New Jersey judge ruled the agency is bound to an agreement it made last month with The New York Times.

The victims who identified themselves on the tapes or whose voices were recognized by co-workers include 19 Port Authority police officers, 14 civilian Port Authority workers and three people who did not work for the agency, the daily newspaper Newsday reported on Thursday.

The Port Authority lost 37 police officers and 38 civilian employees in the attack.

The agency had argued that it would be insensitive to victims' families to release the tapes to the media. The Port Authority later agreed to release transcripts of the tapes, but then decided that the transcripts had the same impact as the recordings.

Last week, spokesperson Greg Trevor said the agency's greatest fear was that a family member would recognize the voice of a loved one who died in the attack in a media report.

The transcripts include communications between Port Authority police officers and department employees, along with calls between command centers at the trade center and several sites in New Jersey.

"You can really see why and how the evacuation of the complex was so successful," Catherine Pavelec, the Port Authority's manager of administration and protocol, told Newsday.

Pavelec, a survivor of the attacks, is overseeing the transcription process.

"People are on their game, professional, no panic," she told Newsday. "They're there to do a job, and they do it."

She said the tapes give "a very real sense of how many people needed help and how short a period of time we had to help them."

- AP