This chief also had a bullhorn and traveled to each of the stairwells and shouted the evacuation order: "All FDNY, get the fuck out! Second, the numbers trying to use tactical 1 after the South Tower collapsed may have drowned out some evacuation instructions.
According to one FDNY lieutenant who was on the 31st floor of the North Tower at the time, "[Tactical] channel 1 just might have been so bogged down that it may have been impossible to get that order through. Fourth, some firefighters in the North Tower had been dispatched to the South Tower and likely were on the different tactical channel assigned to that tower.
Some units-including one whose officer knew that the South Tower had collapsed-either delayed or stopped their evacuation in order to assist nonambulatory civilians. Some units whose members had become separated during the climb attempted to regroup so they could descend together. Some units began to evacuate but, according to eyewitnesses, did not hurry.
At least several firefighters who survived believed that they and others would have evacuated more urgently had they known of the South Tower's complete collapse.
Other firefighters continued to sit and rest on floors while other companies descended past them and reminded them that they were supposed to evacuate. Some firefighters were determined not to leave the building while other FDNY personnel remained inside and, in one case, convinced others to remain with them.
In another case, firefighters had successfully descended to the lobby, where another firefighter then persuaded them to reascend in order to look for specific FDNY personnel.
They stood in the lobby for more than a minute, not certain what to do, as no chiefs were present. Finally, one firefighter-who had earlier seen from a window that the South Tower had collapsed-urged that they all leave, as this tower could fall as well. The units then proceeded to exit onto West Street. While they were doing so, the North Tower began its pancake collapse, killing some of these men.
The Marriott Hotel suffered significant damage in the collapse of the South Tower. Those in the lobby were knocked down and enveloped in the darkness of a debris cloud. Some were hurt but could walk.
Others were more severely injured, and some were trapped. Several firefighters came across a group of about 50 civilians who had been taking shelter in the restaurant and assisted them in evacuating. Up above, at the time of the South Tower's collapse four companies were descending the stairs single file in a line of approximately 20 men. Four survived. Many of these men were thrown off their feet by the collapse of the South Tower; they then attempted to regroup in the darkness of the debris cloud and evacuate civilians and themselves, not knowing that the South Tower had collapsed.
Several of these firefighters subsequently searched the PATH station below the con-course-unaware that the PAPD had cleared the area of all civilians by The Chief of Department issued a radio order for all units to evacuate the North Tower, repeating it about five times. At approximately , he radioed for two ladder companies to respond to the Marriott, where he was aware that both FDNY personnel and civilians were trapped. According to two eyewitnesses, however, one senior FDNY chief who knew that the South Tower had collapsed strongly expressed the opinion that the North Tower would not collapse, because unlike the South Tower, it had not been hit on a corner.
Some of these firefighters did not know that the South Tower had collapsed, but many chose despite that knowledge to remain in an attempt to save additional lives. According to one such firefighter, a chief who was preparing to mount a search-and-rescue mission in the Marriott, "I would never think of myself as a leader of men if I had headed north on West Street after [the] South Tower collapsed.
Three of the most senior and respected members of the FDNY were involved in attempting to rescue civilians and firefighters from the Marriott. At , NYPD aviation reported that the top 15 stories of the North Tower "were glowing red" and that they might collapse.
At , a helicopter pilot warned that he did not believe the North Tower would last much longer. As a result, NYPD radio communications became strained on most channels. The ESU team on the 31st floor found the full collapse of the South Tower so unfathomable that they radioed back to the ESU officer at the command post and asked him to repeat his communication.
He reiterated his urgent message. During the descent, they reported seeing many firefighters who were resting and did not seem to be in the process of evacuating. They further reported advising these firefighters to evacuate, but said that at times they were not acknowledged. In the opinion of one of the ESU officers, some of these firefighters essentially refused to take orders from cops. At least one firefighter who was in the North Tower has supported that assessment, stating that he was not going to take an evacuation instruction from a cop that morning.
However, another firefighter reports that ESU officers ran past him without advising him to evacuate. Once near the mezzanine level-where stairwell C ended-this team spread out in chain formation, stretching from several floors down to the mezzanine itself. They used their flashlights to provide a path of beacons through the darkness and debris for civilians climbing down the stairs.
Eventually, when no one else appeared to be descending, the ESU team exited the North Tower and ran one at a time to 6 WTC, dodging those who still were jumping from the upper floors of the North Tower by acting as spotters for each other. They remained in the area, conducting additional searches for civilians; all but two of them died.
They remained at this post until the North Tower collapsed, yet all survived. Immediately thereafter, they were joined by three firefighters from an FDNY engine company. One of the firefighters apparently heard an evacuation order on his radio, but responded in a return radio communication, "We're not fucking coming out! The police officers reluctantly began descending, checking that the lower floors were clear of civilians.
They proceeded down stairwell B, poking their heads into every floor and briefly looking for civilians. They struggled to regroup in the darkness and to evacuate both themselves and civilians they encountered. At least one of them died in the collapse of the North Tower.
At least one NYPD officer from this area managed to evacuate out toward 5 WTC, where he teamed up with a Port Authority police officer and acted as a spotter in advising the civilians who were still exiting when they could safely run from 1 WTC to 5 WTC and avoid being struck by people and debris falling from the upper floors. Those who survived struggled to evacuate themselves in darkness, assisting civilians as they exited the concourse in all directions. Some of these officers in the North Tower decided to evacuate, either on their own or in consultation with other first responders they came across.
Some greatly slowed their own descent in order to assist nonambulatory civilians. The North Tower collapsed at A. Incredibly, twelve firefighters, one PAPD officer, and three civilians who were descending stairwell B of the North Tower survived its collapse. The FDNY suffered fatalities- the largest loss of life of any emergency response agency in history.
The PAPD suffered 37 fatalities-the largest loss of life of any police force in history. The NYPD suffered 23 fatalities-the second largest loss of life of any police force in history, exceeded only by the number of PAPD officers lost the same day. Over the coming hours, weeks, and months, thousands of civilians and city, state, and federal employees devoted themselves around the clock to putting New York City back on its feet. Yet the calamity at the World Trade Center that same morning included catastrophic damage 1, feet above the ground that instantly imperiled tens of thousands of people.
The two experiences are not comparable. Nonetheless, broader les- The Twin Towers following the impact of American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight The Pentagon, after being struck by American Airlines Flight 77 United Airlines Flight 93 crash site, Shanksville, Pennsylvania sons in integrating multiagency response efforts are apparent when we analyze the response at the Pentagon.
The emergency response at the Pentagon represented a mix of local, state, and federal jurisdictions and was generally effective. Different agencies had different roles. The incident required a major rescue, fire, and medical response from Arlington County at the U. Since it was a terrorist attack, the Department of Justice was the lead federal agency in charge with authority delegated to the FBI for operational response. Additionally, the terrorist attack affected the daily operations and emergency management requirements of Arlington County and all bordering and surrounding jurisdictions.
The crash caused immediate and catastrophic damage. All 64 people aboard the airliner were killed, as were people inside the Pentagon 70 civilians and 55 military service members. One hundred six people were seriously injured and transported to area hospitals.
Many fire and police agencies that responded had extensive prior experience working together on regional events and training exercises. Indeed, at the time preparations were under way at many of these agencies to ensure public safety at the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank scheduled to be held later that month in Washington, D.
The incident command post provided a clear view of and access to the crash site, allowing the incident commander to assess the situation at all times. This was the first of three evacuations caused by reports of incoming aircraft, and the evacuation order was well communicated and well coordinated. There was a single incident, and it was not 1, feet above ground.
The incident site was relatively easy to secure and contain, and there were no other buildings in the immediate area. There was no collateral damage beyond the Pentagon. As the "Arlington County: After-Action Report" notes, there were significant problems with both self-dispatching and communications: "Organizations, response units, and individuals proceeding on their own initiative directly to an incident site, without the knowledge and permission of the host jurisdiction and the Incident Commander, complicate the exercise of command, increase the risks faced by bonafide responders, and exacerbate the challenge of accountability.
Cellular telephones were of little value Radio channels were initially oversaturated.. Pagers seemed to be the most reliable means of notification when available and used, but most firefighters are not issued pagers. The task looking forward is to enable first responders to respond in a coordinated manner with the greatest possible awareness of the situation. In New York, the FDNY, NYPD, the Port Authority, WTC employees, and the building occupants themselves did their best to cope with the effects of an unimaginable catastrophe-unfolding furiously over a mere minutes-for which they were unprepared in terms of both training and mindset.
As a result of the efforts of first responders, assistance from each other, and their own good instincts and goodwill, the vast majority of civilians below the impact zone were able to evacuate the towers. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has provided a preliminary estimation that between 16, and 18, civilians were in the WTC complex as of A.
At most 2, individuals died at the WTC complex who were not 1 fire or police first responders, 2 security or fire safety personnel of the WTC or individual companies, 3 volunteer civilians who ran to the WTC after the planes' impact to help others, or 4 on the two planes that crashed into the Twin Towers. Out of this total number of fatalities, we can account for the workplace location of 2, individuals, or Of this number, 1, or While a given person's office location at the WTC does not definitively indicate where that individual died that morning or whether he or she could have evacuated, these data strongly suggest that the evacuation was a success for civilians below the impact zone.
It was aided greatly by changes made by the Port Authority in response to the bombing and by the training of both Port Authority personnel and civilians after that time.
Stairwells remained lit near unaffected floors; some tenants relied on procedures learned in fire drills to help them to safety; others were guided down the stairs by fire safety officials based in the lobby. Because of damage caused by the impact of the planes, the capability of the sophisticated building systems may have been impaired.
Rudimentary improvements, however, such as the addition of glow strips to the handrails and stairs, were credited by some as the reason for their survival. The general evacuation time for the towers dropped from more than four hours in to under one hour on September 11 for most civilians who were not trapped or physically incapable of enduring a long descent.
First responders also played a significant role in the success of the evacuation. In other instances, intangibles combined to reduce what could have been a much higher death total.
It is impossible to measure how many more civilians who descended to the ground floors would have died but for the NYPD and PAPD personnel directing them-via safe exit routes that avoided jumpers and debris-to leave the complex urgently but calmly.
It is impossible to measure the calming influence that ascending firefighters had on descending civilians or whether but for the firefighters' presence the poor behavior of a very few civilians could have caused a dangerous and panicked mob flight. But the positive impact of the first responders on the evacuation came at a tremendous cost of first responder lives lost. Because 85 percent of our nation's critical infrastructure is controlled not by government but by the private sector, private-sector civilians are likely to be the first responders in any future catastrophes.
For that reason, we have assessed the state of private sector and civilian preparedness in order to formulate recommendations to address this critical need.
Lack of Protocol for Rooftop Rescues. Civilians at or above the impact zone in the North Tower had the smallest hope of survival. Once the plane struck, they were prevented from descending because of damage to or impassable conditions in the building's three stairwells. The only hope for those on the upper floors of the North Tower would have been a swift and extensive air rescue. Several factors made this impossible.
Doors leading to the roof were kept locked for security reasons, and damage to software in the security command station prevented a lock release order from taking effect.
Even if the doors had not been locked, structural and radiation hazards made the rooftops unsuitable staging areas for a large number of civilians; and even if conditions permitted general helicopter evacuations-which was not the case-only several people could be lifted at a time. The WTC lacked any plan for evacuation of civilians on upper floors of the WTC in the event that all stairwells were impassable below. No decision has been criticized more than the decision of building personnel not to evacuate the South Tower immediately after the North Tower was hit.
A firm and prompt evacuation order would likely have led many to safety. Even a strictly "advisory" announcement would not have dissuaded those who decided for themselves to evacuate.
The advice to stay in place was understandable, however, when considered in its context. At that moment, no one appears to have thought a second plane could hit the South Tower. The evacuation of thousands of people was seen as inherently dangerous.
Additionally, conditions were hazardous in some areas outside the towers. They could have been held in the lobby or perhaps directed through the underground concourse. If not for a second, unanticipated attack, the evacuation presumably would have proceeded. Once the South Tower was hit, civilians on upper floors wasted time ascending the stairs instead of searching for a clear path down, when stairwell A was at least initially passable. Although rooftop rescues had not been conclusively ruled out, civilians were not informed in fire drills that roof doors were locked, that rooftop areas were hazardous, and that no helicopter evacuation plan existed.
In both towers, civilians who were able to reach the stairs and descend were also stymied by the deviations in the stairways and by smoke doors. This confusion delayed the evacuation of some and may have obstructed that of others.
The Port Authority has acknowledged that in the future, tenants should be made aware of what conditions they will encounter during descent. Impact of Calls on Evacuation. In several ways, the system was not ready to cope with a major disaster.
These operators and dispatchers were one of the only sources of information for individuals at and above the impact zone of the towers. The FDNY ordered both towers fully evacuated by , but this guidance was not conveyed to operators and FDNY dispatchers, who for the next hour often continued to advise civilians not to self-evacuate, regardless of whether they were above or below the impact zones. Nor were operators or FDNY dispatchers advised that rooftop rescues had been ruled out.
This failure may have been harmful to civilians on the upper floors of the South Tower who called and were not told that their only evacuation hope was to attempt to descend, not to ascend. In planning for future disasters, it is important to integrate those taking calls into the emergency response team and to involve them in providing up-to-date information and assistance to the public. Preparedness of Individual Civilians. One clear lesson of September 11 is that individual civilians need to take responsibility for maximizing the probability that they will survive, should disaster strike.
Clearly, many building occupants in the World Trade Center did not take preparedness seriously. Individuals should know the exact location of every stairwell in their workplace. In addition, they should have access at all times to flashlights, which were deemed invaluable by some civilians who managed to evacuate the WTC on September It was clear that the lead response agency was the FDNY, and that the other responding local, federal, bistate, and state agencies acted in a supporting role.
There were other instances of coordination at operational levels, and information was shared on an ad hoc basis. These problems existed both within and among individual responding agencies. Command and Control within First Responder Agencies. For a unified incident management system to succeed, each participant must have command and control of its own units and adequate internal communications. Understandably lacking experience in responding to events of the magnitude of the World Trade Center attacks, the FDNY as an institution proved incapable of coordinating the numbers of units dispatched to different points within the acre complex.
As a result, numerous units were congregating in the undamaged Marriott Hotel and at the overall command post on West Street by , while chiefs in charge of the South Tower still were in desperate need of units. With better understanding of the resources already available, additional units might not have been dispatched to the South Tower at The task of accounting for and coordinating the units was rendered difficult, if not impossible, by internal communications breakdowns resulting from the limited capabilities of radios in the high-rise environment of the WTC and from confusion over which personnel were assigned to which frequency.
The FDNY's inability to coordinate and account for the different radio channels that would be used in an emergency of this scale contributed to the early lack of units in the South Tower, whose lobby chief initially could not communicate with anyone outside that tower.
Had any such attacks occurred, the FDNY's response would have been severely compromised by the concentration of so many of its off-duty personnel, particularly its elite personnel, at the WTC. The Port Authority's response was hampered by the lack of both standard operating procedures and radios capable of enabling multiple commands to respond in unified fashion to an incident at the WTC.
Many officers reporting from the tunnel and airport commands could not hear instructions being issued over the WTC Command frequency. In addition, command and control was complicated by senior Port Authority Police officials becoming directly involved in frontline rescue operations.
The NYPD experienced comparatively fewer internal command and control and communications issues. In addition, its mission that day lay largely outside the towers themselves. Although there were ESU teams and a few individual police officers climbing in the towers, the vast majority of NYPD personnel were staged outside, assisting with crowd control and evacuation and securing other sites in the city.
Significant shortcomings within the FDNY's command and control capabilities were painfully exposed on September To its great credit, the department has made a substantial effort in the past three years to address these. While significant problems in the command and control of the PAPD also were exposed on September 11, it is less clear that the Port Authority has adopted new training exercises or major incident protocols to address these shortcomings.
Certainly, the FDNY was not "responsible for the management of the City's response to the emergency," as the Mayor's directive would have required. Information that was critical to informed decisionmaking was not shared among agencies. FDNY chiefs in leadership roles that morning have told us that their decision making capability was hampered by a lack of information from NYPD aviation.
At A. Immediately after the tower's collapse, a helicopter pilot radioed that news. This transmission was followed by communications at , , and that called into question the condition of the North Tower. The FDNY chiefs would have benefited greatly had they been able to communicate with personnel in a helicopter.
The consequence of the lack of real-time intelligence from NYPD aviation should not be overstated. Because of internal breakdowns within the department, however, this information was not disseminated to FDNY personnel on the scene.
In many cases, redundant searches of specific floors and areas were conducted. It is unclear whether fewer first responders in the aggregate would have been in the Twin Towers if there had been an integrated response, or what impact, if any, redundant searches had on the total number of first responder fatalities. We believe that there are too many variables for us to responsibly quantify those consequences.
It is clear that the lack of coordination did not affect adversely the evacuation of civilians. It is equally clear, however, that the Incident Command System did not function to integrate awareness among agencies or to facilitate interagency response. Coordination entails a unified command that comprehensively deploys all dispatched police, fire, and other first responder resources. In May , New York City adopted an emergency response plan that expressly contemplates two or more agencies jointly being lead agency when responding to a terrorist attack but does not mandate a comprehensive and unified incident command that can deploy and monitor all first responder resources from one overall command post.
In our judgment, this falls short of an optimal response plan, which requires clear command and control, common training, and the trust that such training creates. The experience of the military suggests that integrated into such a coordinated response should be a unified field intelligence unit, which should receive and combine information from all first responders-including operators.
Such a field intelligence unit could be valuable in large and complex incidents. Firefighters most certainly would have benefited from that information. A separate matter is the varied success at conveying evacuation instructions to personnel in the North Tower after the South Tower's collapse. The success of NYPD ESU instruction is attributable to a combination of 1 the strength of the radios, 2 the relatively small numbers of individuals using them, and 3 use of the correct channel by all.
The same three factors worked against successful communication among FDNY personnel. First, the radios' effectiveness was drastically reduced in the high-rise environment. Second, tactical channel 1 was simply overwhelmed by the number of units attempting to communicate on it at Third, some firefighters were on the wrong channel or simply lacked radios altogether.
It is impossible to know what difference it made that units in the North Tower were not using the repeater channel after While the repeater channel was at least partially operational before the South Tower collapsed, we do not know whether it continued to be operational after Even without the repeater channel, at least 24 of the at most 32 companies who were dispatched to and actually in the North Tower received the evacuation instruction-either via radio or directly from other first responders.
Nevertheless, many of these firefighters died, either because they delayed their evacuation to assist civilians, attempted to regroup their units, lacked urgency, or some combination of these factors. In addition, many other firefighters not dispatched to the North Tower also died in its collapse. Some had their radios on the wrong channel. Others were off-duty and lacked radios. In view of these considerations, we conclude that the technical failure of FDNY radios, while a contributing factor, was not the primary cause of the many firefighter fatalities in the North Tower.
To improve radio capability in high-rises, the FDNY has internally developed a "post radio" that is small enough for a battalion chief to carry to the upper floors and that greatly repeats and enhances radio signal strength.
Since September 11, the Port Authority has worked hard to integrate the radio systems of their different commands. The losses America suffered that day demonstrated both the gravity of the terrorist threat and the commensurate need to prepare ourselves to meet it. Less than a month after the attacks, President George W Bush led an invasion of Afghanistan - supported by an international coalition - to eradicate al-Qaeda and hunt down Bin Laden. However, it was not until that US troops finally located and killed Bin Laden in neighbouring Pakistan.
He has been held in US custody at Guantanamo Bay since then, and is still awaiting trial. Al-Qaeda still exists. It is strongest in Sub-Saharan Africa but even now has members inside Afghanistan. US troops left Afghanistan this year after nearly 20 years, stoking fears from many that the Islamist network could make a comeback.
In the US, the Transportation Security Administration was created to beef up security at airports and on planes. It took more than eight months to clean up "Ground Zero" - the site of the fallen Twin Towers. A memorial and a museum now stands on the site, and buildings have risen up again, to a different design. The completed centrepiece - One World Trade Center, or "Freedom Tower" - stands even higher 1,ft m than the original North Tower, which was 1,ft.
Reconstruction at the Pentagon took just under a year, with staff back in their offices by August Image source, Getty Images. What were the targets? Derek, his Dundee friend, was one of the 2, who lost their lives in the Twin Towers attack. The pair bonded over their Scottish roots on Andrew's first day in the job. The firm lost 67 employees that day. The surviving staff spent the rest of the week in and out of New York hospitals checking logs to see if any of their colleagues had survived.
Andrew, now 51, is a history and economics teacher in South Carolina. He has attended a few memorial services since that day but prefers to keep a low profile. It is always there and it might change your life but it shouldn't stop you living it. Image source, Getty Images.
Andrew was in the South Tower when the first plane hit and was trying to descend the building when the second plane caused another explosion. It was a beautiful day. Image source, Andrew Cullen. If the lift had gone up, they would have been killed. A wall of dust and smoke races through streets as one of the World Trade Center towers collapses. Andrew was blown behind a desk in a health club as the store fronts along Wall Street were blown in. Image source, KBW.
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