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Transcripts from Sept. 11 calls released, revealing chaos, bitter ends

http://www.jewishworldreview.com | (KRT) Transcripts of a relentless chorus of confused police radio dispatches and desperate phone calls from dying workers during the attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, reveal an extraordinary record of a hellish day.

Released at 5 p.m. Thursday in Manhattan on a judge's order, the 2,000 pages of documents from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey chronicle events beginning at 8:45 a.m. - when American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the north tower and ending around noon.

The documents depict the extreme disorder caused by the attacks, the scope of which people were slow to comprehend: two plane crashes guided by suicide attackers; jet fuel melting structural steel; two landmark giant buildings that anchored the New York skyline about to collapse.

In some instances, police told people in the south tower not to evacuate after the north tower was attacked, possibly choking off their one chance of survival.

Rumors of incoming missiles from the nearby Woolworth Building and further waves of crashing planes "from those guys, the Palestines" filled phone lines and occupied dispatchers' time.

One civilian answering police phones spent some of his time talking to his girlfriend on another line, telling her, "I got rocked badly," to which she responds, "Baby, get over here."

The documents offer snapshots into individual experiences, some of it communicated in clipped police code that gradually slipped into a more informal, sometimes more profane, tone. Taken together, the transcripts are a dialogue of chaos:

_A Port Authority police officer issues "Mayday" calls while his brethren field calls from citizens saying Manhattan was under siege by rockets and waves of incoming "kamikaze" jets.

_The wife of Officer Donald McIntyre, who was to die in the attacks, calls a police dispatcher several times, saying, "I know he's in there. Have you heard from my husband?"

_A male caller on the 92nd floor of the south tower asks whether people should leave the building after the north tower is attacked. "I would wait," an officer tells him, possibly sealing his doom.

_A general manager from Windows on the World, on the 106th floor of the north building, calls for help three times - the last asking a police dispatcher, "What are we going to do for air? Can we break a window?"

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"Whatever you have to," says the dispatcher, unable to send help.

_ "No individual actions!" an officer barks to his subordinates. "We've got people in there. We are going to get them. I want everybody over here. We are going to do this right."

_Shouting out possible avenues of escape, an elevator worker radios to another: "Hurry up, Brian, the lobby is a f---ing mess."

The conversations - many short and abrupt - may have, in some cases, been people's last words.

The transcripts include radio calls made by Port Authority police officers and employees at the World Trade Center, as well as telephone calls that were received at Port Authority police stations. The Port Authority, which owns the site on which the trade center stood, had its headquarters at the twin towers. It was in charge of security, and 37 Port Authority officers, along with 38 civilian employees, were among the 2,792 people who died at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.

The transcripts were released to the media after a Newark judge ruled last Friday that the Port Authority had to make them public.

Their release came in response to a lawsuit by the New York Times, which initially asked the Port Authority for the transcripts in March 2002.

Exchanges that clearly occurred at the start of the attacks show how hard it was for police and others to understand what was happening.

"This isn't an emergency or anything," a Port Authority employee tells a police officer. "We just had an explosion at the World Trade Center."

Many residents called in to ask whether the trains were running. Police had to handle a report of a man sleeping on the tracks under the towers.

Quickly, the volume of calls seemed to build, and the severity of the situation became clearer.

"There's a major explosion," a police official says. "There is smoke and fire coming out."

After the second plane struck, area residents began flooding the Port Authority with calls of what they were watching on the news.

They just had another plane hit the building," a caller tells police. "I'm watching the news."

At that point, many wives of Port Authority police began calling. A woman named Debbie says she's searching for her husband, an officer at the World Trade Center.

"Everyone's fine right now, ma'am," she is told by a Port Authority police sergeant. "None of our guys are hurt, but we do have, you know, it's another big one."

The transcript details some good moments as well. A group of people trapped on the 22nd floor of the north tower called for help within 30 seconds of the first attack. "We are stuck on 22. The door is blocked. There is a fire," says a center worker identified as Josie. For the next hour, Josie and her co-workers blocked smoke from filling the room while firefighters trudged up the stairs and saved them.

Soon, however, things became more desperate. Fifty-four minutes after the first plane struck, police get a call from an unidentified man saying, "Yo, I've got dozens of bodies, people just jumping from the top of the building … in front of One World Trade."

A Port Authority officer says, "Sir you have what jumping?"

"People," the man says. "Bodies are just coming out of the sky."

By then, according to the transcripts, police were growing grimly aware of the extent of the disaster. The documents are larded with accounts of individual calamities with which police busied themselves, such as, "We have a female that fell through the (elevator) shaft."

As the morning wore on, Port Authority radios and phones seemed overloaded as the calls grew increasingly frantic.

With both towers collapsed into rubble and countless people dead, a Port Authority worker tells a colleague, "Tell everybody you know (to) stay away from New York, OK?"

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