New York – As burned and frightened office workers swarmed down the stairs of the north tower, with hundreds more trapped above, Capt. Patrick Brown stopped on the 35th floor and called fire dispatchers with a hopeful message.
“Just relay to the command post: We’re trying to get up,” he said.
All over the city, hundreds of his brethren were desperate to join him in the rescue.
Lt. Michael Healey called in from the Bronx and asked the supervisor to “keep us in mind” for the job. He and his guys left for the towers shortly after that call.
Chief Dennis Devlin reported from a command post at the scene. “We’re in a state of confusion,” he told a dispatcher.
They are among the 343 firefighters who died that day, but their voices endure in a set of Sept. 11, 2001, emergency calls released Wednesday.
In clipped words and voices tight with adrenaline, they paint a picture of those final hours, and of what drove so many to rush into the towers when everyone else was running out.
The 1,613 calls were released after The New York Times and Sept. 11 families sued to get them.
Within minutes of the first plane hitting at 8:46 a.m., firefighters – some off-duty, some even retired – began calling dispatchers to volunteer their help.
“We’re available for the Trade Center,” Lt. Timothy Higgins said at 8:51 a.m.
“OK, thanks,” replied the dispatcher. Higgins, with five other members of Brooklyn’s Squad 252, made the trip to Lower Manhattan. All six died.
Healey called just before the second plane hit at 9:03 a.m.
“This is Mike Healey over in Squad 41,” he said. “I was just seeing if he could maybe possibly get us over there, so, just keep us in mind, over into Manhattan.” “OK,” the dispatcher said. They responded, with Healey and five other squad members killed.
For the horrified dispatchers who sent the men into the towers, then watched in agony as the buildings collapsed, there was already angry talk of war and revenge.
“I’m sick to my stomach about all these firemen,” one said minutes after the second skyscraper crumbled.
Barbara Hetzel, who lost her firefighter son Thomas, has listened to such tapes before, but she said it doesn’t get easier with time.
“It’s even deeper and sadder,” said Hetzel, who listened with a group of family members in a Midtown Manhattan high-rise.
Family members on Wednesday repeated complaints that their loved ones were betrayed by poor communication that could have steered them outside before the buildings fell.
“We’re still looking for information for how we can fix what went wrong that day,” said Aggie McCaffrey, whose firefighter brother, Orio Palmer, was killed.
Most of the calls involved firefighters and dispatchers. The voices of 10 civilians calling from inside the World Trade Center were edited out because of privacy concerns.
Attorneys for the Times and victims’ relatives said they brought the lawsuit because they wanted to find out what happened in the towers and what dispatchers told workers and rescuers.
In March, the city released transcripts of 130 calls from people trapped in the towers, including only the voices of operators and other public employees. The callers’ voices were cut out after city attorneys argued that their pleas for help were too emotional and intense to be publicized without families’ consent.
Thousands of pages of emergency workers’ oral histories and radio transmissions were released last August. Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta ordered his department to search for additional recordings when another tape turned up shortly after the March release.
