Expert answer:Article Synopsis

Expert answer:Write a three pages(exclude cover page and refference) synopsis of this article.Use APA format. Be sure to reference your text in your response. Be certain to:1) Point out the errors in the response to the event.2) Discuss how the errors can be corrected.3) Discuss how events like this can be avoided in the future.
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9/19/2016
FATAL CONFUSION: A Troubled Emergency Response; 9/11 Exposed Deadly Flaws In Rescue Plan ­ The New York Times
N.Y. / REGION
FATAL CONFUSION: A Troubled
Emergency Response; 9/11 Exposed
Deadly Flaws In Rescue Plan
This article was reported and written by JIM DWYER, KEVIN FLYNN and FORD
FESSENDEN. JULY 7, 2002
Minutes after the south tower collapsed at the World Trade Center, police
helicopters hovered near the remaining tower to check its condition. ”About 15 floors
down from the top, it looks like it’s glowing red,” the pilot of one helicopter, Aviation
14, radioed at 10:07 a.m. ”It’s inevitable.”
Seconds later, another pilot reported: ”I don’t think this has too much longer to
go. I would evacuate all people within the area of that second building.”
Those clear warnings, captured on police radio tapes, were transmitted 21
minutes before the building fell, and officials say they were relayed to police officers,
most of whom managed to escape. Yet most firefighters never heard those warnings,
or earlier orders to get out. Their radio system failed frequently that morning. Even
if the radio network had been reliable, it was not linked to the police system. And the
police and fire commanders guiding the rescue efforts did not talk to one another
during the crisis.
Cut off from critical information, at least 121 firefighters, most in striking
distance of safety, died when the north tower fell, an analysis by The New York
Times has found.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/nyregion/fatal­confusion­troubled­emergency­response­9­11­exposed­deadly­flaws­rescue.html
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Faced with devastating attacks, the city’s emergency personnel formed an
indelible canvas of sacrifice, man by man and woman by woman. They helped rescue
thousands. They saved lives. They risked their own.
From the first moments to the last, however, their efforts were plagued by
failures of communication, command and control.
Now, after months of grief, both the Fire and Police Departments are
approaching the end of delicate internal reviews of their responses to the attack.
Those reviews have concluded that major changes are needed in how the agencies go
about their work and prepare for the next disaster, senior officials say.
A six­month examination by The Times found that the rescuers’ ability to save
themselves and others was hobbled by technical difficulties, a history of tribal
feuding and management lapses that have been part of the emergency response
culture in New York City and other regions for years.
*When the firefighters needed to communicate, their radio system failed, just as
it had in those same buildings eight years earlier, during the response to the 1993
bombing at the trade center. No other agency lost communications on Sept. 11 as
broadly, or to such devastating effect, as the Fire Department.
*Throughout the crisis, the two largest emergency departments, Police and Fire,
barely spoke to coordinate strategy or to share intelligence about building
conditions.
*During those final minutes, most firefighters inside the north tower did not
know the other building had crumbled, and how urgent it was for them to get out.
Instead, dozens of firefighters were catching their breath on the 19th floor of the
tower, witnesses say. Others were awaiting orders in the lobby. Still others were
evacuating the disabled and the frightened.
*To this day, the Fire Department cannot say just how many firefighters were
sent into the towers, and where they died. It lost track of them, in part because some
companies did not check in with chiefs. Individual firefighters jumped on
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overcrowded trucks, against policy. Others, ordered off the fire trucks, grabbed rides
in cars.
*The city’s intricate network of safety coverage showed signs of unraveling that
morning because of the headlong rush to Lower Manhattan. Police officers left their
posts, senior police officials said. A chief with the Emergency Medical Service said
they had no ambulances for more than 400 calls. The region’s bridges, tunnels, and
ports were drained of protection, said the chief of the Port Authority police.
*Although Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani created the Office of Emergency
Management in 1996 and spent nearly $25 million to coordinate emergency
response, trade center officials said the agency had not conducted an emergency
exercise there that included the Fire Department, the police and the Port Authority’s
emergency staff.
The Fire Department began its first self­examination in December, when nearly
50 senior fire officials took part in a two­day planning exercise with the United
States Naval War College. The college evaluators concluded: ”As a function of
command and control, it was evident that the Fire Department has no formal system
to evaluate problems or develop plans for multiple complex events. It was equally
evident that the Fire Department has conducted very little formal planning at the
operational level.”
Thomas Von Essen, the city’s fire commissioner from 1996 through 2001, and a
former president of the main fire union, said he agreed with that analysis, which was
undertaken to explore the ability to respond to major disasters. The fire
commissioner has limited authority to hold senior chiefs accountable, Mr. Von Essen
said, because nearly all enjoy Civil Service protection.
”The pain is still there and it’ll be there forever,” Mr. Von Essen said. ”But you
have to start thinking about the reality of the world that we live in today. And that
demands better leadership, more accountable leadership, a better­trained
leadership, a more disciplined leadership that then filters down to a better­trained
and more disciplined set of troops.”
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FATAL CONFUSION: A Troubled Emergency Response; 9/11 Exposed Deadly Flaws In Rescue Plan ­ The New York Times
Many chiefs, for their part, have long cited Mr. Von Essen’s leadership as a
major department failing. The results of other reviews, covering police and fire
performance, are due within a few weeks from the consulting firm McKinsey &
Company.
For Mr. Von Essen, a searing topic is the high number of firefighter casualties in the
north tower. The collapse of the south tower after 57 minutes shocked the fire
commanders. Yet more than a third of the 343 firefighter deaths were in the north
tower, even though it stood 29 minutes longer. The failure of more firefighters to
escape in those 29 minutes baffles Mr. Von Essen. He believes many got word to
leave.
”Should we know the answers to all of that stuff by now? Absolutely,” Mr. Von
Essen said. ”But do we really want to know the answers to these questions? I don’t
think the department really wants to know.”
He could not explain why the police had not reported to fire commanders, the
official leaders of the response. ”That day the police did not hook up with the Fire
Department,” Mr. Von Essen said. ”I don’t know why.”
Too many firefighters, he said, were sent into the towers, and too many came
without being told they were needed. ”I’ve been a firefighter since 1970, and have
often stood on floors where we needed 10 people and had 30,” Mr. Von Essen said.
”There’s a lack of control that’s dangerous on an everyday basis to firefighters.”
Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said the eagerness to respond could
put both police officers and the city at risk. ”People got on the subway and came
down,” he said. ”We need a much more controlled response these days. Why?
Because we have to be concerned about secondary events.”
Both Mr. Von Essen and Mr. Kelly said rigorous scrutiny of their agencies was
vital. ”We should not second­guess the people at the scene, or the way they handled
it that day ­­ they did a terrific job at the scene, and you will not find better chiefs
anywhere in the country than the ones who ran things,” Mr. Von Essen said. ”I think
we should second­guess our procedures, our policies, our history.”
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Mr. Kelly, who led the police a decade ago and returned in January, said: ”Now,
literally, that the dust has settled, we are obligated to look at these things and to
learn lessons. We are in the business of emergency response. That’s our business,
every day. We have to think in a systematic way.”
To explore the emergency response on Sept. 11, Times reporters interviewed
more than 100 firefighters, police officers, emergency medical workers, government
officials and witnesses. Those interviews were supplemented by reviews of 1,000
pages of oral histories collected by the Fire Department, 20 hours of police and fire
radio transmissions and 4,000 pages of city records, and by creating a database that
tracked 2,500 eyewitness reports of sightings of fire companies, individual
firefighters and other rescue personnel that morning. The city has refused to release
thousands of pages of accounts by firefighters and their superiors.
On Friday, Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said the city intended to
create a radio channel that could be shared by police officers and firefighters, among
other changes. ”There is no question there were communications problems at this
catastrophic incident,” he said.
Bernard B. Kerik, the police commissioner at the time, said he did not believe
that any communication problems between the agencies had significantly affected
their performance. ”I was not made aware that day that we were having any
difficulty coordinating,” he said.
Communications
‘Down to the Lobby,’ But No One Came
Battalion Chief Joseph Pfeifer held his two­way radio to his ear. He tried to edge
away from the noise in the north tower lobby, hoping the reception would improve.
Still no good. Minutes before, he stood on a street corner in Lower Manhattan and
watched as American Airlines Flight 11 flew directly overhead and crashed into the
north tower of the World Trade Center.
Now, as the first chief to reach the building, he was sending fire companies up
the stairs, including one led by his own brother, Lt. Kevin Pfeifer, who did not
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survive. Then he found that he had no way to speak with the rescuers starting the
long climb: once again, the firefighters were having terrible radio problems inside
this high­rise building.
More than eight years earlier, hundreds of firefighters came to the World Trade
Center after terrorists tried to bomb one of the towers off its foundation.
”Communications were a serious problem from the outset,” Anthony L. Fusco, then
chief of the department, had warned in a 1994 federal report on the Fire
Department’s response to that attack. They had lost touch with firefighters trying to
extinguish the smoldering bomb crater underground, and with others who had
climbed clear to the top of the towers.
Now, Chief Pfeifer tried to turn on a device known as a repeater, which had been
installed at 5 World Trade Center to help solve those problems by boosting the radio
signal strength. The repeater didn’t seem to be working, Chief Pfeifer said later.
Another fire chief arriving at the trade center tried a second repeater in his
department car. That did not work, either.
As hundreds of firefighters climbed toward the upper floors where 1,100 people
were trapped, one communications post after another was proving unreliable. Even
commanders spread among four separate posts could not get through.
”I wasn’t getting communications and I couldn’t communicate into the
building,” Deputy Assistant Chief Albert J. Turi, now retired, said in an interview.
By 9:30 a.m., after both planes had struck, a rumor was circulating that a third
hijacked plane was headed to New York. Assistant Chief Joseph Callan recalled
feeling the north tower move. ”I made the decision that the building was no longer
safe,” the chief told the Fire Department’s oral history interviewers.
”All units in Building 1,” he announced over the radio at 9:32. ”All units in
Building 1, come out, down to the lobby. Everybody down to the lobby.”
Virtually no one answered his call. It seemed that few people, apart from those
standing near him, heard it. Chief Peter Hayden, who was at the scene, said: ”We
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/nyregion/fatal­confusion­troubled­emergency­response­9­11­exposed­deadly­flaws­rescue.html
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had ordered the firefighters down, but we weren’t getting acknowledgments. We
were very concerned about it.”
When Assistant Chief Donald J. Burns arrived, he reminded his colleagues of
the severe communication problems during the 1993 bombing, Chief Hayden
recalled. Commanders were forced that day to rely on runners to deliver vital
messages. ”Pre­plan and build contingency plans,” Chief Burns wrote in the 1994
federal report. ”Our effectiveness is only as good as our ability to communicate.” On
Sept. 11, he took command of operations in the south tower, the second building to
be hit, and was killed.
The radios the firefighters carried into the buildings that day were identical to
the ones they had brought into the trade center eight years earlier. By the
department’s own estimation, those radios, some of which were 15 years old, were
outdated. ”There were problems with the radios at virtually every high­rise fire,” said
Deputy Chief Nicholas J. Visconti, who was the commander in Midtown Manhattan
for three years.
The radio problems, many officials say, are a symptom of the department’s
resistance to new technology. ”We’re dinosaurs,” said Richard J. Sheirer, the former
director of the city’s Office of Emergency Management and a former fire dispatcher.
David Rosensweig, the president of the fire alarm dispatchers’ union, says the city
has been talking for more than a decade about improving its computer­aided
dispatch system.
Early in 2001, the department replaced its old analog radios with a new
generation that used digital technology. The new models operated on higher
frequencies and were judged somewhat better at penetrating buildings, but several
firefighters said they had been unable to communicate in emergencies, so the digital
radios were pulled from service in March 2001.
Other cities have been no swifter at solving the problems of communication at
high­rise fires, industry professionals said.
The department did try to make some improvements after the terrorist bombing
at the trade center in 1993, like the repeater installed on 5 World Trade Center to
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amplify the radio signal. The city police and Port Authority police have similar
repeaters and neither agency experienced significant radio problems on Sept. 11,
officials said.
Even now, the source of the Fire Department’s radio problems remains murky.
”I’ve asked five people in the Fire Department already, and I get a different answer
from most of them,” Mr. Von Essen said.
For a while, officials from the Fire Department and the Port Authority said the
Fire Department repeater had been disabled by debris from the first plane. Now,
however, Port Authority officials say they have proof that the repeater did work: tape
recordings discovered in January or February with fire radio transmissions that
were successfully routed through the repeater that day.
Some companies on higher floors were able to communicate. Squad 252 had
been leaving the north tower, but it decided to help another company, Rescue 1, that
was on a higher floor, said Firefighter Steve Modica, who heard the two companies
talk over the radio. Neither company survived.
Other firefighters appear to have been using one radio channel while evacuation
orders went out over another, according to the accounts of several firefighters.
In many other instances, firefighters said they simply never got the order to
leave because the radio system worked only intermittently. Firefighter Modica said
he tried different channels, without success, to reach a friend who had gone up
ahead of him.
”It’s a disgrace,” he said. ”The police are talking to each other. It’s a no­brainer:
Get us what they’re using. We send people to the moon, and you mean to tell me a
firefighter can’t talk to a guy two floors above him?”
Command
Distrust Separates Police and Fire
Almost an hour after the first plane struck, the wind shifted, and for a moment
the blanket of smoke on the roofs of the towers lifted slightly. Perhaps there was a
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chance to save some people at the top of the buildings.
”As soon as it’s feasible, we need to go on the roof,” one police officer said on his
radio.
From the air, a second police officer replied: ”Aviation 12, we’re taking a look;
we’re going to look at the northwest corner of north building.” On the ground, a
team of police emergency service officers gathered rappelling outfits for the
helicopters.
For fire chiefs, the police helicopters could also be invaluable: the firefighters’
climb to the 80th floor during the 1993 attack lasted four hours, and the blaze in the
north tower was 15 floors above that. Even if roof rescues proved too risky, as police
commanders later decided, the fire chiefs wanted to see what the fires were doing to
the buildings.
”At one point, I was asked to get the operations with the helicopter into
motion,” Chief Pfeifer said in his oral history, but he could not reach the dispatcher.
He recited problems ­­ a missing radio, jammed phone lines, no one answering ­
­ but the simplest solution of all was not available to Chief Pfeifer: a face­to­face
conversation with a police supervisor. No police supervisors reported to the lobby
command posts set up by the Fire Department to coordinate efforts. The police
established their command post three blocks away at the corner of Church and Vesey
Streets.
In the end, no firefighter boarded the helicopters. When police pilots reported
”large pieces” falling from the south tower 10 minutes before it collapsed, only police
officers had seen it from the sky, and only police officers on the ground could hear
their warnings. When the pilots saw that the north building was near collapse 21
minutes before it fell, their warnings reached some police officers on the street and
inside the tower, but not firefighters. Although the two departments had talked for
years about establishing a common radio channel, they could not reach agreement.
Nearly every state, including New York, and the federal …
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