 "Photo: Julia Gaines/Newsday")
The Dallas Morning News (KRT)
NEW YORK -- Though the thousands of firefighters and police officers who raced to the World Trade Center acted with unquestioned heroism, the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks painted a grim portrait Tuesday of major communications failures that may have hampered the rescue operation.
A commission staff report that chronicles the lack of coordination between the police and fire departments was issued at the start of an emotional two-day hearing that is providing the most detailed account yet of how local officials reacted in the chaotic first hours after the nation's deadliest terrorist attack.
Some relatives of the 2,752 people who perished at the Twin Towers clutched tissues and held back tears as they sat in a packed Manhattan auditorium where the commission played TV footage of the hijacked planes slamming into the 110-story buildings and chronicled the confusion for emergency responders and civilians alike in the 100 minutes between when the first plane hit and the second tower collapsed.
"It's very hard because we went through the last moments of my mother's life obviously this morning," said Terry McGovern, whose mother, Ann McGovern, was trapped on the 78th floor.
Fresh from a hard-eyed look at federal policy-makers' failures prior to Sept. 11, the independent commission trained its criticism on local fire and police officials as well as the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operated the World Trade Center.
Age-old rivalry between the New York City police and fire departments fueled their resistance to a unified command structure for major emergencies and led to a lack of coordination on Sept. 11, the commission found.
"Each was accustomed to responding independently to emergencies," the staff report said.
In the confusion, the crush of radio traffic and the inability to communicate across departments, crucial information didn't make its way effectively to on-scene officials, the panel found.
Firefighters operating in the North Tower, for example, were unaware that the South Tower, which was hit second, collapsed. Without that knowledge, the staff report said, the firefighters "lacked a uniform sense of urgency in their evacuation."
Visual information provided by the police department's helicopters, including the imminent fall of the North Tower, wasn't shared with firefighters.
"We didn't have a lot of information coming in," Deputy Assistant Fire Chief Joseph Pfeifer told the commission in an on-camera interview aired Tuesday. "We didn't receive any reports of what was seen from the helicopters. It was impossible to know how much damage was done on the upper floors, whether the stairwells were intact or not."
The men who were the police, fire and emergency management commissioners on that September day rejected the Sept. 11 panel's finding of interagency confusion, at times bristling at the commissioners' questions.
"I did not see nor was ever made aware of an instance where there was a lack of coordination between our respective departments," said former Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik.
Former Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen grew angry when commission member John Lehman described the communications difficulties as a "scandal" and said New York's command-and-control is "not worthy of the Boy Scouts, let alone of this great city."
"There is nothing scandalous about the way New York City handles its emergencies," Von Essen retorted. "You make it sound like everything was wrong about Sept. 11. I think it's outrageous that you are making that statement."
Richard Sheirer, the former director of Office of Emergency Management created by the city in the mid-1990s to force more collaboration between the police and fire departments, also rejected the criticism.
"I have yet to hear a single instance where anybody shows me anything where the agencies did not work together and did not coordinate their efforts," Sheirer said.
Commission member Jamie Gorelick disagreed. "In fact, our staff has found lots of miscommunication," she said. "A lot of that is attributable to the sheer magnitude of these horrific acts," she added.
Some family members were angered by the officials' insistence that there were no major communications problems, noting that hundreds of firefighters were unaware they were working in doomed buildings.
"There was miscommunication and poor communication; otherwise, firefighters wouldn't be dead," said Beverly Eckert, whose husband, Sean Rooney, was among the World Trade Center casualties.
Retired police officer Lenny Crisci, who attended the hearing wearing a photo of his brother, Lt. John A. Crisci, said the firefighter should not have been inside the building. "His death was not necessary," Crisci said.
Testifying after the former officials, New York's current police and fire commissioners said strides have been made in the past 2 { years to foster closer collaboration and fix communication problems.
Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said he was "extremely proud" of his department's accomplishments since Sept. 11. But, he added, "Much remains to be done."
The commission staff statement, the 13th issued to date in advance of a final report due in late July, chronicled other information gaps. Among them: information about conditions within the towers and possible evacuation routes wasn't shared by on-scene responders with 911 operators, who advised callers to remain in place and await emergency personnel.
The Port Authority also came in for criticism for not having protocols to rescue people trapped in floors above the fire, and for evacuating one tower in the event of catastrophe in the other. The authority also was faulted for not warning tenants that there was no rooftop evacuation plan and that roof level doors were locked.
Alan Reiss, the former World Trade Center overseer, acknowledged some of the failings but noted that the Port Authority had spent $250 million improving security after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Reiss expressed amazement that an estimated 25,000 workers were safely evacuated from the two towers, which on a typical day were home to 50,000 office workers and 40,000 visitors. "We were able to get the people out in an hour, which is absolutely amazing," he said. ___ (c) 2004, The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
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