http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/05/18/911.commission/index.html
By Phil Hirschkorn
CNN
Tuesday, May 18, 2004 Posted: 9:43 AM EDT (1343 GMT)
NEW YORK (CNN) -- The 9/11 commission convened the first of two days of public hearings Tuesday in New York to re-examine how emergency responders performed when terrorists crashed jets into the World Trade Center.
A statement from the panel's staff, presented at the start of Tuesday's hearing at the New School University in Manhattan, described a rescue effort hampered by communications troubles.
Its summary of the 100 minutes from the crash of American Airlines Flight 11 into the north tower to the crash of United Airlines Flight 175 into the south tower, and the subsequent collapses of the buildings, adds new details to moments widely documented since the attacks.
The New York medical examiner's office said 2,749 people were killed aboard the planes, inside the buildings or on the surrounding streets of Lower Manhattan.
Many uniformed officers died in the attack -- 343 firefighters, 23 police officers and 37 officers for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the transportation agency that owned the trade center.
Those first responders helped 25,000 people evacuate the buildings, according to a 2002 study by McKinsey & Co.
After the first plane struck the north tower between its 93rd and 99th floors at 8:46 a.m., none of the three fire stairwells was passable above the 92nd floor.
"Hundreds of civilians were killed instantly by the impact. Hundreds more remained alive but trapped," the staff statement said.
An evacuation of the north tower was ordered within one minute by its fire safety director, but that command was not heard due to a broken public address system, according to the statement. Still, most people did not require instructions to leave.
Peter Hayden, a New York Fire Department assistant chief, told the commission that commanders on the scene quickly decided not to fight the jet fuel-enhanced fire.
"We determined very early on that this was going to be strictly a rescue mission," Hayden said. "We were going to evacuate the building, get everybody out, and then we were going to get out."
Within 10 minutes, the Port Authority's commanding officer ordered an evacuation of the entire complex -- both towers and five smaller buildings, according to the staff statement.
"The order was issued, however, over a radio channel which could be heard only by officers on the Port Authority WTC command channel," the statement said. "There is no evidence that this order was communicated to officers in other Port Authority police commands or to members of other responding agencies."
Moreover, that order was contradicted by repeated announcements over the south tower's public address system urging people to stay put during most of the 17 minutes between the two crashes.
"We do not know the reason for this advice, in part because the on-duty deputy fire safety director in charge of the south tower perished in the tower's collapse," the statement said.
Only a minute before the second crash did the announcement change. "If the conditions warrant on your floor, you may wish to start an orderly evacuation," came the announcement, audible on a voice mail saved by Beverly Eckert, whose husband, Sean Rooney, had called from his office at Aon Corp., on the south tower's 98th floor.
At 9:03 a.m., the plane struck between the 78th and 84th floors, leaving Rooney and hundreds of south tower occupants above the 78th floor trapped. The first New York Fire Department fatality occurred about 9:25 a.m. when a civilian jumping from the burning north tower landed on a fireman, the staff statement said.
Unlike the north tower, one of the south tower stairwells remained passable, but no emergency workers knew it, according to the statement.
Euro Brokers Inc. executive Brian Clark led a group of seven people down to the lobby. "None of us really had known what had happened or what was about to happen," Clark told the commission.
No aerial rescue efforts were seriously considered on the cluttered and smoky tower roofs despite efforts of people trapped on the towers' highest floors to ascend. Roof doors were locked for security reasons, and there was no rooftop evacuation plan.
"The heat actually made it difficult for us to hold the helicopters because it would interfere with the rotor system," New York Police Department helicopter pilot James Ciccone told the commission.
The commission staff found that no police department helicopter transmission predicted that either tower would collapse.
After the south tower fell, fire commanders in the north one called for an evacuation, but some firefighters did not hear the order. The staff statement said radio channels were overwhelmed and that many off-duty responders didn't have their radios.
More than 120 firefighters who had a half-hour to get out didn't, the statement said.
A repeater system -- an antenna on top of one of the complex's smaller buildings to amplify radio communications inside the twin towers -- was installed after the 1993 trade center truck bombing to help firefighters maintain contact with the lobby command post.
The commission staff found that it was not activated properly in the north tower. The fire chief who tested it "concluded the system was down," the statement said. "The system was working, however, and was used subsequently by firefighters in the south tower."
Besides revisiting the events of September 11, the independent, bipartisan commission is charged with making recommendations to improve emergency response to future terrorist attacks.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani issued regulations to address the rivalry between the 40,000-member police force and the city's 11,000 firefighters and created the Office of Emergency Management to coordinate response among all agencies.
Last week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a revised incident command system to clarify in what instances the New York Police or Fire departments should take the leading role.
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