[Mb-civic] 9/11 tapes reveal panic, heroism - The Boston Globe

[William Swiggard]

<>9/11 tapes reveal panic, heroism
Oral histories also released

By Tatsha Robertson, Globe Staff  |  August 13, 2005

NEW YORK -- Under court order, the New York City Fire Department 
yesterday released hours of chilling radio communications with rescue 
workers on Sept. 11, 2001, along with thousands of pages of oral 
histories collected from emergency personnel who rushed to the fiery 
scene at the World Trade Center.

Firefighters described in 12,000 pages of oral history how some did not 
hear or disobeyed orders to evacuate, and how they rushed inside to save 
fleeing civilians before the towers collapsed into massive clouds of 
debris and dust.

''I was watching every person coming down, looked at their face, just to 
make them happy that they were getting out and we were going in, and 
everything was OK," said Kirk Long, a firefighter who went up the stairs 
of the north tower with his colleagues.

Firefighter Maureen McArdle-Schulman recalled in her account the 
horrible realization that some of the victims in the World Trade Center 
were jumping to their deaths.

''The jumpers started coming. We didn't know what it was at first, but 
then the first body hit and then we knew what it was. . . . I was 
getting sick. I felt like I was intruding on a sacrament," she said. 
''They were choosing to die, and I was watching them and shouldn't have 
been. So me and another guy turned away and looked at a wall and we 
could still hear them hit."

The 15 hours of radio transmissions revealed a patchwork of emotions 
from rescue workers, who at turns sounded frustrated, angry, confused, 
or calm during the earliest moments after the attacks.

The exchanges started at 8:46 a.m. with a calm message: ''The World 
Trade Center tower Number One is on fire!"

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/08/13/911_tapes_reveal_panic_heroism/

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