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Panic of 9/11 relived
29/08/2003 09:43 - (SA)
New York - Frantic calls for help, horrified accounts of falling bodies and the desperate efforts of rescue services cover 2 000 pages of transcripts released on Thursday of emergency calls from the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre.
The transcripts include calls from people working on the top floors of the Trade Centre, incoming calls from anxious relatives seeking news of family members, and radio transmissions chronicling the emergency response to the disaster before the final collapse of the twin towers.
"The World Trade Centre ... it just blew up," says one unidentified male speaking on a civilian radio channels operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Panic
The transcripts underlined the panicked atmosphere of uncertainty and wild speculation in the immediate aftermath of the attack, with differing reports of the towers being hit by a plane, a bomb and a missile.
"We have an explosion on one of the top floors. We don't know if it's an aircraft. We don't know if it's a bomb. We have multiple injuries, we are doing an evacuation of the building. We mobilised everybody," says one Port Authority police officer.
"We've got so many hurt, people jumping out the windows left and right," reported another.
The Port Authority, which owns the World Trade Centre site and was responsible for security, released the transcripts after the New York Times filed a freedom of information lawsuit demanding access to the documents.
The agency had sought to block their release, citing privacy concerns and sensitivity to the victims' families, but was left with little option after a state superior court ruled in favour of the Times last week.
The transcripts included a series of ever more desperate calls to the Port Authority police desk from a manager working for the Windows of the World restaurant on the 107th floor of the trade centre's north tower.
"The situation is rapidly getting worse. We ... we have ... the fresh air is going down fast. I'm not exaggerating," the manager tells the on-duty police officer.
"What are we going to do for air? Can we break a window?" she continues. Body parts
The restaurant lost 79 staff when the tower collapsed.
"There's got to be hundreds of people killed here," says another male voice. "There's body parts like five blocks away."
Some victims' families had criticised the release of the transcripts, saying they would only serve to open old wounds, although others voiced hope that the radio transmissions would give them a better idea of how events transpired.
"I still have no real idea of the sequence of events on that day," said Sally Regenhard, who lost her son, a firefighter, on September 11 and queued on Thursday with scores of journalists to get a copy of the documents.
"I hope they might help me find out what happened to him and so many others," Regenhard said
But Nikki Stern, who lost her husband and is now a member of the board of directors of the organisation "Families of September 11" was less hopeful.
"It'll obviously reopen a lot of wounds and I'm not sure whether it'll give us a lot of new information," Stern said. "A lot of families don't want to get it or even hear about it." Better understanding
Lawyers for The New York Times had argued that the release of the transcripts would help provide a better understanding and evaluation of how emergency operations were handled in the immediate wake of the attack.
In a media release accompanying the documents, the Port Authority said they showed people "performing their duties very heroically and very professionally on a day of unimaginable horror."
The agency lost 84 personnel in the attack, including 37 police officers. Timing 'awful'
Gus Danese, president of the Port Authority Police Association, said the manner in which the transcripts were being released was especially hurtful for the relatives of those who died.
"They are being released to the media before a lot of family members have had the opportunity to see them, and we think that's totally unfair," Danese said.
"And the timing is awful; We're coming up on the second anniversary of the attack, which in itself opens old wounds. This is only going to add to that."
- AFP
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