9-11 Transcripts Reveal Haunting Images

[Defiant]

Slow, tell Sava to take a long walk off of a short plank.
"Never Forget" is the mantra of the compassionate.
If I was a family that lost someone, I would want people to never forget of for that matter a family with a soldier across seas to remember the reason why.

[Defiant]

Originally posted by Feephi


You mean getting Bush reelected by invading Iraq to find WMD? Lining the pockets of VP Cheney's former company, Haliburton? Protecting Middle East oil business interests of Republican campaign contributors? Or did you mean inflating the budget deficit with an ill-conceived post-war rebuilding plan for Iraq as American blood is shed on a daily basis while no diplomatic progress is made to involve other nations in the rebuild/police efforts??

How about this idea, SO IT DOESN'T HAPPEN AGAIN, or are you not able to think that advanced.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Defiant
Slow, tell Sava to take a long walk off of a short plank.
"Never Forget" is the mantra of the compassionate.
It I was a family that lost someone, I would want people to never forget of for that matter a family with a soldier across seas to remember the reason why.

Yeah, it's compassionate to make victims relive tragedies... over and over again. Hey, why not strap them to a chair and force them to watch a looped tape of the planes hitting the towers... you know, just so they "NEVAR FORGET!"

[Defiant]

Originally posted by Sava
Yeah, it's compassionate to make victims relive tragedies... over and over again. Hey, why not strap them to a chair and force them to watch a looped tape of the planes hitting the towers... you know, just so they "NEVAR FORGET!"

It's much better to forget, let it go so liberals can sway their argument against the administration for the war on terror anyway they want and not for it to be remembered for the real reason.
The families will always remember this day, they will "rehash" it and we should with them, especially in the middle of a war.

[SpencerH]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=68&ncid=68&e=2&u=/nyt/20030829/ts_nyt/freshglimpsein911filesofthestrugglesforsurvival

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."

True Heros

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
How can you overdo transcripts?
Why would anyone not want to know exactly how terrible it was, for all?

For the same reason most people don't flick through albums of autopsy photographs, and for the same reason news media don't routinely show the images of people leaping to their deaths, or impacting on the ground. We don't need to put our fingers in the wound, we can imagine what it was like.

I applaud the everyday heroism of ordinary people in the face of a disaster beyond their comprehension, but I'm not sure I want to hear the last moments of people about to die in fire, or smoke or rubble.

I think there's something morbid about this, but of course it will sell newspapers and magazines and books and television programmes will be made... I hope that some of the profits will go towards people whose loved ones were murdered, otherwise it becomes another 'Lady Di' industry, something to put on supermarket magazines in a slow week.

[GePap]

While I don't particularly feel the need to read them, there is no problem in releasing these transcripts. They round out a picture we already know. Some people want the info (which is why the NYTimes went to court to force the Port Authority to release them).

I do find the "this shows us what we are fighting for" line to be, well, silly. (at least when it comes to Iraq, for which 9/11 is a pretext, not a cause).

[Jac de Molay]

It's much better to forget, let it go so liberals can sway their argument against the administration for the war on terror anyway they want and not for it to be remembered for the real reason.

Or on the conservative side, link the events of 9/11 to some tinpot dictator and corrupt war. Or better yet, have their party's convention in NYC in September 2004. Yeah, never forget.

The families will always remember this day, they will "rehash" it and we should with them, especially in the middle of a war.

What does the war have to do with the grieving of families of 9/11 victims? Does the fact that we rained death and destruction on innocent people supposed to give them some small comfort or mitigate their loss?

[SlowwHand]

No, Molly. Here's the deal.
People like you and the other jackass want to just forget.
Again, tough.
If it's morbid now for you now, it was even more morbid for them then.
Get over it and always remember.

[Defiant]

Originally posted by GePap
While I don't particularly feel the need to read them, there is no problem in releasing these transcripts. They round out a picture we already know. Some people want the info (which is why the NYTimes went to court to force the Port Authority to release them).

I do find the "this shows us what we are fighting for" line to be, well, silly. (at least when it comes to Iraq, for which 9/11 is a pretext, not a cause).

Well Gepap, I believe different then you and I believe Iraq is a direct result of 9/11. It shows some real short sightedness on your part. That's fine, that's why we have elections to elect a representative with our interests at heart.

[Lefty Scaevola]

Originally posted by Sava
shoving this crap in everyone's face.

You are an expert in this field.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Defiant
Well Gepap, I believe different then you and I believe Iraq is a direct result of 9/11.

You are more than entitled to your beliefs

It shows some real short sightedness on your part. That's fine, that's why we have elections to elect a representative with our interests at heart.

Now this part makes no sense.

[Defiant]

Originally posted by Jac de Molay


Or on the conservative side, link the events of 9/11 to some tinpot dictator and corrupt war. Or better yet, have their party's convention in NYC in September 2004. Yeah, never forget.



What does the war have to do with the grieving of families of 9/11 victims? Does the fact that we rained death and destruction on innocent people supposed to give them some small comfort or mitigate their loss?

Don't you get the point, let me spell it out, SO IT DOESN'T HAPPEN AGAIN, that's why we are there.

[Defiant]

Originally posted by GePap


You are more than entitled to your beliefs



Now this part makes no sense.

GePap,
What I am saying is, you and I will never come to an agreement why we are fighting in Iraq, all we have left is to vote for the elected officials that will reflect our beliefs, if there are more of you then your official will reflect you point of view, if me, then mine, that's all.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
No, Molly. Here's the deal.
People like you and the other jackass want to just forget.
Again, tough.
If it's morbid now for you now, it was even more morbid for them then.
Get over it and always remember.

Gosh, 'jackass'. True praise indeed. How you divine my intentions I'll never know. I would have imagined a prerequisite for mind reading (especially long distance) was a mind of one's own...

Must be a 'Lone Star state of mind', to quote the lovely Nanci Griffiths.

Cheap insults, poor reasoning: Texas, nul points.