Edition: U.S. / Global

A Vigorous, Improvised Response in a City That Remains a Prime Target

Published: July 23, 2004

In its chronicle of the blunders, lapses and shortsightedness that permitted hijackers to attack New York, the Sept. 11 commission found that the city's emergency response was plagued by many of the same failures of imagination and preparedness that it cited in the nation's antiterrorism policies.

Yet that cascade of systemic failures and institutional weaknesses, while leading to its awful toll in human life, was overcome in part by the vigorous, improvised response in New York, where thousands of people escaped from the World Trade Center, the commission found.

Those who worked in the trade center, and those who came to help them, "did their best to cope with an unimaginable catastrophe - unfolding furiously over a mere 102 minutes - for which they were unprepared in terms of both training and mind-set," the commission said.

The commission warned that New York and Washington remain prime targets of even bigger terrorist attacks that not only are possible, but probable. Those cities, the 10 commissioners said in their unanimous report, should receive the bulk of federal homeland security money. They urged Congress to drop the current system of spreading the funds across the country based on population. "Congress should not use this money as a pork barrel," the commission recommended.

The panel also recommended that federal money be granted only when cities routinely trained their emergency response personnel to work together, using a command system designating one agency as the leader at a particular emergency. Elsewhere in the report, the commission said that New York's current emergency system, revised in May, "falls short of an optimal response plan."

A spokesman for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said the city's plan was still being refined and had not yet been submitted to federal authorities. Mayor Bloomberg, who made a presentation to the commission in May urging that the city get a bigger share of homeland security money, said, "This commission agrees with us that we've got to get homeland security funds in this country allocated based on where the risks are."

In the commission's final report, the chapter on the emergency response, titled "Heroism and Horror," describes the high-velocity events at the trade center, revisiting shortcomings that have been well documented before, either in news accounts or management studies.

Many people who called the city's 911 system for help were told by operators to stay where they were, even though fire commanders had ordered an evacuation. The report found that the city had no way to get valuable information to 911 operators, who are employees of the Police Department, or fire dispatchers, who also handled some 911 calls.

As a result, people on the 83rd floor in the north tower, and the 73rd floor in the south, were advised to stay put, even though both buildings were already in flames and their floors were below the fire. The commission obtained the tapes and records of those calls and others from the Bloomberg administration only after the commission had issued a subpoena and accused the city of "seriously impeding" the investigation.

The mayor said yesterday that 911 operators would now be given useful information from the scenes of emergencies.

For most of those below the floors struck by the planes, the evacuation was a great success, the commission found.

The panel said that a tide of human effort carried many to safety, much faster than when the buildings were bombed in 1993. "As a result of the efforts of first responders, assistance from each other, and their own good instincts and good will, the vast majority of civilians below the impact zone were able to evacuate the towers," the report said.

One central lesson, the commission said, was the importance of people finding out how to get out of their workplaces. Preparation by tenants in the trade center was uneven, the report noted, with some companies rigorously conducting drills, but many companies and individuals not taking the practice sessions seriously. It noted that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the owner of the trade center, had no plan for people trapped above a fire, and had not specifically instructed tenants during drills not to go to the roof.

Many people tried to go to the roof on Sept. 11, the report noted, only to find the doors locked - they were controlled by a computer that failed. The report suggested that those trips upstairs diverted them from their only realistic prospect of escape, particularly in the south tower, where a stairway remained open.

Many apparently hoped to be rescued by helicopter, which was how a few dozen people left the towers after the 1993 bombing, the report said. They were unaware, as were the 911 operators, that roof rescues had been ruled out by a police commander. The Port Authority police were poorly prepared, the commission found, with officers responding from the agency's airports, tunnels and bridges but unable to find a common radio frequency or a command post for instructions. Individual sergeants, lieutenants and captains tried to organize on the fly.

The commission said that there had been "a lack of communication and coordination among responding agencies," but that this had not hurt the evacuation; it said it was unclear whether it had contributed to the casualties among the rescue workers.

"Information that was critical to informed decision-making was not shared among agencies," the commission said. Rescuers from the Police, Fire and Port Authority Police Departments often searched the same floors over and over. Firefighters did not know what police helicopter pilots were seeing.

The commission offered a number of explanations for one of the day's most enduring mysteries: why scores of firefighters did not escape from the north tower before it collapsed, 29 minutes after the south tower fell. The report said the evacuation order did reach many firefighters, even if it was secondhand, from others who had heard that it was time to leave.

Technical difficulties with radios were only one factor that slowed the communication of the order; the commission said the system was overloaded, firefighters were tuned to the wrong channel, and others were without radios. Some firefighters who were told to get out simply refused, the report said, citing several incidents in which they stayed behind with slow moving civilians.

The report related the accounts of police officers who said that as they scrambled out of the north tower, they met firefighters who did not seem to want to hear orders delivered by a police officer.

"At least one firefighter who was in the north tower," the report continued, "has supported that assessment, stating that he was not going to take an evacuation instruction from a cop."