Tapes capture anguish of 9/11
In the frenzy of phone calls that followed the attack on the first of the World Trade Centre towers on September 11, 2001, trapped workers begged in vain for an escape route and anguished wives desperately sought lost husbands. Screams and sirens echoed in the background as bodies dropped out of the sky.
"Yo, I've got dozens of bodies, people just jumping from the top of the building on to ... in front of One World Trade," says a male caller.
The haunting images emerged as the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owned the trade centre, released 2,000 pages of transcripts from emergency calls and radio transmissions that provided the first glimpse into the confusing and devastating circumstances facing the agency and the building's occupants in the moments after the attack.
There were references to howling sirens in the background, while callers repeatedly spoke over each other after the plane crashed into the first tower at 8.46am. Many callers were inaudible, yet the horror and hysteria of the morning jumps off the typed pages.
Jeannine McIntyre, whose police officer husband Donald died in the attack, saw the first tower fall and immediately called one of his co-workers. "Is my husband in that building that just collapsed?" she asked. "He was going up."
She was assured there were no reports of injured Port Authority police, but repeated her sad mantra four times: "He was going up."
From One World Trade Centre, Christine Olender the assistant manager of the Windows on the World restaurant, made four phone calls pleading for help as 100 people remained trapped with her on the 106th floor of the 110-story tower. "We're trying to get up to you, dear," a police officer tried to reassure her.
In another section of the transcripts, a male caller from the 92nd floor of the second tower told a Port Authority police officer, "We need to know if we need to get out of here, because we know there's an explosion."
The officer asked if there was smoke on the floor, and the caller replied there was not. "Should we stay or should we not?" the caller asked. "I would wait 'til further notice," the officer replied. "OK, all right," the caller said. "Don't evacuate." He then hung up. A second, similar call with the same police response came in shortly after.
No one in the top floors of the tower survived after the second plane hit around the 80th floor shortly after 9am. The evacuation of Two World Trade Centre, has been a source of some anguish to relatives of those who died. Some survivors have previously said they were advised to remain in the building.
The release of the transcripts comes two weeks before the second anniversary of the attacks that collapsed the twin towers and killed 2,792 people. In all, the port authority lost 37 police officers and 47 civilian employees in the attack.
Quotes from tapes:
"Yo, I've got dozens of bodies, people just jumping from the top of the building on to ... in front of One World Trade," says a male caller. "People. Bodies are just coming from out of the sky. ... up top of the building."
"Bodies?" replied a female operator.
A port authority police officer named Tommy telephones his mother and tells her to stay at home because more planes might attack:
Tommy's mother: Hello?
Tommy: Hey, Ma.
Mother: Are you OK?
Tommy: Yeah, I'm at work. Just stay in. Don't do nothing. There's ... this is bad. They got planes all over the radar, coming into the New York area. They think everything is going to start hitting.
Mother: Oh, Tommy, please promise you'll call me again!
Tommy: Right, Ma, it's going to be a while, all right? But just don't even go out. I mean, they got planes on the radar. They think they are going to start crashing all over Manhattan.
Mother: Keep a mask on, keep (overlap)
Tommy: I'll call you later.
A woman calls to see if her husband, an officer who told her he was going up the stairs at the trade centre, is all right after one of the towers collapses. He died:
Jeannie McIntyre: Yes, Sgt Holland, this is Jeannie McIntyre. Is my husband in that building that just collapsed?
Holland: Yeah, we heard from him. There's ... none of ... none of our guys are hurt and injured right now.
McIntyre: Are you sure? Because he was going up the stairs. He told me. (upset)
Holland: I understand. We don't have ... we don't have any reports of any ... of any of our people injured. All right? I ... I understand, it's going to be awful, you know.
Call from Christy Ferer, looking for her husband, port authority executive director Neil Levin, who was killed on September 11. She spoke to Alan Reiss, who was director of the World Trade Centre:
Ferer: Hi. I know you're crazed..... I don't want to bother you, but the governor is looking for Neil, and so am I. And no one can find him.
Reiss: Right, and they ... . I tried his cell phone a number of times. I've sent him pages. And I really don't know where he is, or Ernesto Butcher, or Karen Eastman.
Ferer: Right..... And, um, but, um, you all ... do you know for a fact that he wasn't in the office?
Reiss: I don't know that for a fact.
Ferer: Uh-huh. He had a seven ... did you see his driver, John, around?
Reiss: No. I'm at the police desk. I was on the mall when this thing happened.
Ferer: Right. Oh, I'm sorry to bother you ...
