9/11 911 Tapes

'They're Jumping Out of Building One'
Newly Released Trade Center Transcripts Provide Real-Time Narrative to Sept. 11 Attacks

By Joel Achenbach and Brooke A. Masters
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 29, 2003; Page A01


NEW YORK, Aug. 29 -- "World Trade Center . . . repeat, we have something . . . going into the top of the World Trade Center!"

"The World Trade Center, it just blew up."

"Get outside! Get the hell outside!"

"They're jumping out of Building One on the south side."

These are the voices, raw, unfiltered, of police officers and civilians at the World Trade Center on the final morning of its existence.

Under a court order, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey late today released roughly 1,800 pages of transcripts, covering about 260 hours of recorded telephone calls and radio transmissions made in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

The new transcripts, based on reel-to-reel tapes recovered from the wreckage of 5 World Trade Center weeks after two aircraft were flown into the towers, provide a vivid, chaotic, real-time narrative of what happened that morning.

Confusion is epidemic. There are repeated rumors of rockets fired from the Woolworth Building. Someone claims terrorists with explosives are fleeing through New Jersey in a Ford van with New York tags. There's talk of a third plane on the way. Several callers to police, unaware of what is happening, report burglar alarms.

In the initial moments, almost everyone struggles to comprehend the dimensions of the catastrophe.

Male: Yo, I've got dozens of bodies, people just jumping from the top of the building onto . . . in front of One World Trade.

Female: Sir, you have what jumping from buildings?

Male: People. Bodies are just coming from out of the sky . . . up top of the building.

Female: That's a copy.

A police officer barks into his radio: "We need water . . . burning jet fuel on five-one."

A colleague asks, "Smell of jet fuel?"

"Negative. Burning jet fuel. Burning jet fuel."

A young man answering the phone at a police desk near the ground floor is nonchalant about a plane hitting the building.

"It will affect new paperwork. . . . Only the paperwork," he says.

A woman asks him, "It's a big plane or a little plane?"

"Gotta be small," he says.

Seconds later, the second plane hits and, with the shock wave passing through the structure, he changes his tune: "Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa -- that didn't feel good."

The transcripts reveal countless people rushing into action to save lives and comfort others.

"No individual actions! We've got people in there. We are going to go get them. I want everybody over here. We are going to do this right!" a Port Authority police officer says as he prepares a rescue mission.

Previous accounts of events inside the buildings have largely come from survivors and family members of victims, who recounted telephone calls from those trapped inside. Some who died also managed to send numerous e-mails and leave messages on answering machines. Brief transcripts of police and Fire Department transmissions also have been made public. Yet many family members say they still don't know exactly what happened to their loved ones, some of whom vanished after making fleeting farewell phone calls.

The transcripts released today won't solve most of those remaining mysteries, but they do present a sizable and often harrowing addition to the historical record of Sept. 11, 2001.The new material is largely from police radio transmissions and civilian phone calls. The calls were not to 911, but to Port Authority police lines at several locations in New York and New Jersey. The Port Authority has its own police force, and lost 37 officers, which the agency says was the worst single-day loss of any police force in U.S. history.

"It shows people performing their duties very professionally and very heroically on a day of unimaginable horror," said Greg Trevor, a Port Authority spokesman and survivor of the attack.The first plane hit the North Tower at 8:46 a.m. Not for another 16 minutes would the second plane slam into the South Tower. But in some cases, people in the South Tower were told to remain in place rather than evacuate. The South Tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m., followed by the collapse of the North Tower at 10:28 a.m.

Man on 92nd floor: We need to know if we need to get out of here, because we know there's an explosion, I don't know what building.

Officer: Do you have any smoke . . . smoke conditions up in your location at Two?

Man: No, we just smell it, though.

Officer: Okay.

Man: Should we be staying here, or should we evacuate? . . . I'm . . . I'm waiting.

After a bit of cross talk, he asks again:

Man: Should we stay or should we go?

Officer: I would wait till further notice. . . .

Man: Okay, all right. Don't evacuate.

It is unclear in the transcripts if those people survived.

Shortly after the second plane hit, Patrick A. Hoey, a high-ranking Port Authority official on the 64th floor of the North Tower (also called Tower One), called the police for instructions.

"I've got about 20 people here with me. . . . What do you suggest?"

The desk sergeant tells him to "stand tight . . . it looks like there is also an explosion in Two . . . so be careful. Stay near the stairwells and wait for the police to come up."

"They will come up, huh? Okay. They will check every floor? Look, if you would just report that we're up here," Hoey says.

"I got you," the desk sergeant says.

A little more than an hour later -- after the South Tower has fallen -- Hoey calls again.

"I'm in the Trade Center, Tower One. I'm with the Port Authority and we are on the 64th floor. The smoke is getting kind of bad, so we are going to . . . we are contemplating going down the stairway. Does that make sense?"

"Yes, try to get out," the desk sergeant says.

But it's too late. As Hoey and 15 colleagues descend the stairwell, they hear the upper floors of the tower collapsing. Two people in the group miraculously survive; Hoey and the rest do not.

Trevor, the Port Authority spokesman, pointed out tonight that he and his colleagues on the 68th floor of the North Tower were told to evacuate almost immediately, and any incorrect guidance to others was due to the confusion and uncertainty of the moment. About 25,000 people escaped the World Trade Center complex that morning.

Many of the transcripts capture the staccato utterances of gasping police officers trying to cope with a rapidly disintegrating situation. Here and there, almost hidden in the cross talk, individual stories play out. One is that of a stoic carpenter, identified in the transcripts only as "Male 103," a contract employee with a Port Authority radio. The agency declined to identify him tonight, but said that his family had received counseling after reading the transcript.

Male 103: Structure fire one-o-three open up! . . .

Male 103: Structural fire one-o-three. . . . Open up 103, can you hear me, you got a guy here. . . . (Breathing heavily) Got a body stuck on 103, place is filling up with smoke. . . .

He does not panic.

Male 103: Need instruction . . . 103 . . . smoke coming up.

For what appears to be several minutes, he continues to transmit. He says the heat is increasing.

Male 103: Structural fire, 103. . . . Need immediate purge.

Nothing more is heard from him.

Higher up yet, people are suffocating at Windows on the World. Christine Olender, the restaurant's assistant general manager, tells police, "The situation on 106 is rapidly getting worse. . . . We . . . we have . . . the fresh air is going down fast! I'm not exaggerating."

The officer answers, "Uh, ma'am, I know you're not exaggerating. We're getting a lot of these calls. We are sending the Fire Department up as soon as possible."

"What are we going to do for air?" she asks.

"Ma'am, the Fire Department . . . "

"Can we break a window?"

"You can do whatever you have to to get to, uh, the air."

"All right."

Everyone in the restaurant perished.

The documents had been sought in a lawsuit filed by the New York Times, and a New Jersey judge last Friday ordered the agency to release the transcripts. The Port Authority chose not to appeal the ruling, but pleaded with the news media to withhold gruesome and gratuitous details "that do nothing to further this discussion."

The Port Authority contacted family members of some victims so they could review the sensitive material before it was made public.

"As a family member, you can't imagine the horror of finding your loved one's last words," said Carie Lemack, whose mother, Judy Larocque, was on American Airlines Flight 11 and was killed when it hit the North Tower. "What is the reason for releasing these tapes? If it's safety, that's fantastic. But if it's entertainment, then we're very concerned."

Liz Alderman's son, Peter, had been attending a conference at Windows on the World atop the North Tower. His last communication to his family was an e-mail sent on his BlackBerry at 9:25 a.m. He wrote, "We're stuck. The room is filling with smoke. I'm scared."

His mother notes that his writing was coherent, not panic-stricken. She assumes he lived a while longer.

"The most important facts I'll never know. I don't know how long Peter lived, how he died, and whether he suffered," she says. She doesn't believe that the transcripts will change that, but she is glad they are public.

"Every time we can put a human face on this," she says, "it no longer is just a mass murder."

 

August 29, 2003
Fresh Glimpse in 9/11 Files of the Struggles for Survival
By JIM DWYER, NYTimes


Until yesterday, when the Port Authority released its raw historical records from Sept. 11, the two men were remembered from glimpses as the north tower of the World Trade Center was heaving toward collapse. One was short, the other tall. They carried a crowbar, a flashlight and walkie talkies. Beyond that, say some who survived that day, the smoke had blurred their faces and hair and clothes into gray.

With their tools, the two men — Frank De Martini, an architect, and Pablo Ortiz, a construction inspector — attacked the lethal web of obstacles that trapped people who had survived the impact of the plane but could not get to an exit.

At least 50 people stuck on the 88th and 89th floors of the north tower were able to walk out of the building because Mr. De Martini, Mr. Ortiz and others tore away rubble, broke down doors and answered calls for help. Everyone above the 91st floor died.

In the most essential ways, these men, employees of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, pushed back the boundary line between life and death in favor of the living. Both Mr. De Martini and Mr. Ortiz, who continued to help other trapped people, died in the building.

Nothing will alter the basic fabric of Sept. 11, when nearly 3,000 people were killed in Lower Manhattan, but yesterday afternoon, rich, bittersweet and harrowing new details surfaced. The Port Authority released about 2,000 pages of documents, most of them transcribed radio transmissions, from dozens of people in and around the trade center, including several short ones from Mr. De Martini. The New York Times formally requested copies of the records on March 29, 2002, one year and five months ago today, and eventually sued the Port Authority for their release.

"I think it's time for them to be released," said Nicole De Martini, the widow of Mr. De Martini.

Emerging now, as the second anniversary of the attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania approaches, the transcripts cover 260 hours. They begin a moment before the first plane struck at 8:46 a.m., and continue for nearly two hours after the final collapse at 10:28 a.m. While some limited transmissions of the city's Fire and Police Departments were made public last year, these are the first from the Port Authority, which built and owned the trade center. They include calls from Port Authority police officers and conversations on two-way radios among civilian employees who worked in building trades in the complex.

The audio of the transmissions, which were recorded in Port Authority facilities at the trade center and in New Jersey, was not made public. The printed transcripts indicate that many parts of the tapes were inaudible, and many others were fragmentary.

The transmissions arose from people in a vertical village — spread across two 110-story buildings, each floor with an acre of space — from the cavernous subbasement of the trade center to nearly the very tops of the towers. Fewer than half of the people speaking are identified.

At their most wrenching, the transmissions reflect the critical difficulties faced by those who survived the plane crashes — at least 1,100 people, an investigation by The Times found last year — yet were unable to escape the buildings. Sometimes fire blocked their paths. Often staircases at the core of the building protected only by sheetrock had become impassable. And at times, they were given mistaken advice to stay in their offices.

Few, if any, of those speaking over the radio appear to realize that the buildings are moments from total collapse. The messages include some desperate calls for help, but many of the transcripts deal strictly with the logistics of evacuations — of saving people in the building, and of survival.

While they echo the most somber and stirring notes of the day, the transmissions also provide fresh views into little-known aspects of the human struggle against a catastrophe that fell beyond the imagination. Among these were the plain words and remarkable deeds of Mr. De Martini, Mr. Ortiz and several of their colleagues. Another set of transmissions are from George Tabeek, a Port Authority official who ran up 22 flights of stairs with firefighters to free a group of authority security workers locked in a secret command bunker.

'Don't Let No People Up Here'

Still other messages come from a man identified only as Rocko, who was on the 105th floor of one tower and reported that he was in great distress. When a radio dispatcher replied that someone would be found to help him, the transcript shows that his response was a warning: "Don't let no people up here. . . . Big smoke!" While it is difficult to say with certainty who Rocko was, among the people known to have been on the 105th floor of the south tower with a walkie talkie was Roko Camaj, a window washer who had achieved modest fame as the subject of a children's book about his work.

Among the other conversations on the transcripts:

¶A group of about a dozen Port Authority employees on the 64th floor of the north tower were told early on that they should not leave the building. That instruction was not changed until minutes before the tower fell, and they all died.

¶At Newark International Airport, dispatchers struggled to learn whether one of the planes that crashed into the towers had taken off from Newark. (It had not, but United Airlines Flight 93 from Newark crashed that morning in Pennsylvania.) They also discussed the possibility that four other flights might have been hijacked.

¶Below the trade center, PATH train operators and dispatchers in the PATH station urgently discussed turning around and returning to New Jersey with the same passengers they had just carried in. They fretted over one stubborn man who would not get on board.

As for Mr. De Martini and Mr. Ortiz, the transmissions disclose only fragments of their efforts, but taken with the accounts of the people they saved, add to a powerful narrative of heroism and loss. Drawing on the transcripts, interviews with 14 of the rescued people and affidavits compiled by Roberta Gordon, a lawyer with Bryan Cave who represents Mr. De Martini's widow, it is now possible to explain how the two men managed to save the lives of others. The transcript hints at reasons why they were unable to save their own, but does not provide clear evidence.

That morning, Mr. Ortiz, 49, arrived at work well before 7. His wife, Edna Ortiz, recalls that he kissed her goodbye before 5 a.m., when he caught a bus from their home in Tottenville to the Staten Island Ferry to Lower Manhattan.

Mr. De Martini, also 49, and his wife traveled together, having dropped their son and daughter off at a new school that morning, Ms. De Martini recalled. She worked in 2 World Trade Center, the south tower, as a structural inspector for an engineering firm. He worked on the 88th floor of 1 World Trade Center as construction manager for the Port Authority. That morning, he persuaded his wife to join him for a cup of coffee and a visit with his colleagues.

At 8:46, when the first plane struck the north tower between the 94th and 99th floors, few on the 88th or 89th floor realized what had happened, but the building swayed so far that they knew something serious had taken place. Anita Serpe, a principal administrator who worked for Mr. De Martini, said she ran back to her office and changed into socks and sneakers. Smoke and fire broke out at one end of the floor. A woman who worked on the floor was badly burned near the elevator bank. Gerry Gaeta, a member of Mr. De Martini's staff, said, "To say the least, it was chaos."

'Frank Had a Calming Effect'

Mr. De Martini began assembling people in a large office at the southwest corner of the building, the farthest from where the plane had hit. He began to give instructions, recalled Joanne Ciccolello, a negotiator in the real estate department.

"Frank had a calming effect," she said. "He organized his staff, to find a way out, to get flashlights."

Those who survive recall that 25 to 40 people were on the 88th floor when the plane hit. While there was some debate in those early minutes about waiting for help, circumstances quickly made that unrealistic. The ceiling had collapsed in the main public corridor, recalls Mak Hanna, a resident engineer who worked on the floor. There was fire in the northeast corridor. The walls around the elevators had vanished. The men's bathroom had disappeared. Around that time, the first radio transmission from the floor was sent out from an unidentified man.

"We're on the 88th floor," he said. "We're kind of trapped up here and the smoke is, uh, is — " The rest of the message was cut off, but a moment or two later came another.

"We also have a person that needs medical attention immediately."

"What's the location?" the dispatcher responded.

"88th floor, badly burned."

Mr. Hanna, Mr. Gaeta, Mr. Ortiz and Mr. De Martini hunted for a way out.

"After about 15 minutes, Frank returned to the corner office," Ms. Serpe said in a statement she provided to the De Martini family. "He was covered with gray soot — even his hair looked gray with smoke — and his eyes were completely red. Frank then told us he found a clear stairwell, but we would have to climb over to it."

Mr. Ortiz and Mr. Hanna were dispatched to move some of the debris. Mr. Gaeta and Doreen Smith accompanied the burned woman, Elaine Duch.

Among those leaving was Ms. De Martini. She said she urged her husband to come along, and he assured her he would be coming down behind her. "How could he come down the stairs and step over his secretary — or anyone?" she asked. "He wouldn't have done that. He did what he had to do."

The floor was all but clear. At the end of the line of people were Mr. De Martini, Mr. Ortiz and Mr. Hanna. "Somewhere, out in the stairwell, we heard banging from upstairs," Mr. Hanna recalled.

On the 89th floor, the biggest tenant was MetLife, which occupied most of the eastern side of the building. Thirteen people were at work when the plane hit. "The building bent so far, I thought we were going into the ocean," said Rob Sibarium, now a managing director for the company.

With fires breaking out, the people from MetLife moved from their office to a law firm down the hall, Drinker Biddle & Reath. The receptionist, Dianne DeFontes, said she was knocked out of her seat when the plane hit.

"I don't know why, but it seemed like everybody on the floor came into my office," she said. A friend, Tirsa Moya, who worked for an insurance brokerage, Cosmos Services America, came in with an older man, Raffaele Cava, who was working by himself in a shipping company.

The public corridor was filling with smoke and flames. "The floor was actually melting," Mr. Sibarium said.

Stairway Door Jammed Shut

Walter Pilipiak, the president of Cosmos, looked for an exit, but any stairway door he could safely reach was jammed shut. "And bone can't break steel on steel," he said. He retreated into his office.

Others tried to fight with meager weapons. Rick Bryan, a lawyer who works at MetLife, actually found an extinguisher and tried to douse a fire in the elevator shaft, then realized the futility. "We were doomed," he said. "We had only minutes."

Nathan Goldwasser, a MetLife employee, recalled the frustration, and then a moment of deliverance.

"We were pounding on those doors," Mr. Goldwasser said, "and almost like a miracle, we heard a voice on the other side yelling, `Get away from the door!' The next thing, there's a crowbar coming through the wall."

Mr. Goldwasser felt sure that it was Mr. De Martini who broke through the wall. Mr. Hanna, who was in the stairway, said it was actually Mr. Ortiz who did it, as he and Mr. De Martini looked on. Mr. De Martini held the door open, and the MetLife employees poured into the stairwell from the law office.

Then Mr. Ortiz noticed a door on the other side of the hall. It was the Cosmos office, where Mr. Pilipiak and his staff were trying to figure out their next move.

"This distinguished-looking man with an earring sticks his head in," Mr. Pilipiak said. "It was Pablo. He said, `Come on, let's go.' "

The 23 people on the 89th floor were launched into the stairways, and toward life. The people on the 88th floor — whether 25 or 40 — were already making their way down.

Mr. Pilipiak says he believes that Mr. Ortiz headed up the stairs, toward the 90th floor. None of the transcripts released yesterday show any messages from Mr. Ortiz, but they are clearly incomplete.

Mr. De Martini was next heard from about a half-hour after the plane hit, perhaps 10 minutes after the people on the 89th floor were freed. He does not identify himself by name, but by his job title, construction manager.

"Construction manager to base, be advised that the express elevators are in danger of collapse. Do you read?"

Only his end of the conversation is recorded. A few minutes later, he returns with another message: "Relay, that, Chris, to the firemen that the elevators — "

There is an interruption in the transmission.

"Express elevators are going to collapse."

He did not give his location, but Gerry Drohan, a colleague who was outside the building, said he also had a radio conversation with Mr. De Martini about the conditions on the 78th floor. Mr. De Martini wanted structural engineers brought up to the floor to look at steel, Mr. Drohan said, but police officers would not let them back into the building.

Mr. Drohan said that Mr. De Martini had asked him to pass his two-way radio to a police official in an attempt to persuade him, but that he was unsuccessful.

None of these conversations appear on the transcripts.

Another reason Mr. De Martini might have gone to the 78th floor was to help free Anthony Savas, who worked with him and was stuck in an elevator. He had sent out repeated radio requests for help. Alan Reiss, the former director of the World Trade Department for the Port Authority, who worked with both men, said Mr. Savas apparently did get out of the elevator, because his body was found in the remnants of a stairwell.

Not everyone who left the 88th floor got out alive. Two other Port Authority employees, Carlos Da Costa and Peter Negron, are heard on the radio, talking about a stuck elevator on the 87th floor.

Edna Ortiz remembers her husband as a very human man. "I'm very proud of what he did." she says. "But I wish he had come home." His children from his first marriage plan a memorial service for him on Sept. 11 in upstate New York, and Tirsa Moya and others Cosmos employees who were saved plan to be there.

She Knew He Had Died

Ms. De Martini said that from the moment she saw the building collapse, she knew her husband had died, and knew it was his character — the one she had embraced and loved — that had kept him in the building. Yet she could feel the ache of loss for herself, and especially for their two children.

She would not use the word "pride" to describe her feelings about what her husband had done, she said, but "true." And after she read the transcripts last week, she realized that also went for many of the people who died alongside him.

"I knew a lot of the people on those transcripts," Ms. De Martini said. "A lot of them did not get out. They all did their share of trying to get to people. They didn't run away. There was a lot of heroism. They had an immense pride in their work. They did everything they could to be helpful, to do whatever could be done to save the people."