Left Photo Ronald Jeffers; Right Photo Courtesy NOAA

Five years ago this month, EMT Alexander Loutsky, Fire Department of New York (FDNY) EMS, and his partner, EMT Eric Ramos, were at an intersection near the Brooklyn Bridge with the World Trade Center (WTC) in front of them. That’s when Loutsky noticed a plane going down. “It was flying low,” he said in an interview with the editors of JEMS (the Journal of Emergency Medical Services) conducted a few weeks later. “I interrupted [Eric]. ‘Look at that! Look how low that plane is! It’s gonna hit. It’s gonna hit!’ A few seconds later, it exploded. We just shook.

“Quickly, I took my radio, and I thought, ‘I have one shot to get it right,’ because the radios are terrible down here. You always have to repeat yourself, or they put us out with no response and stuff. I said, ‘01 Charlie for the priority.’

“‘01 Charlie, go.’

“‘01 Charlie. We have just witnessed a plane hit the World Trade Center.’

“[The dispatcher] went ‘What?!’ and then everything went crazy on the radio. You couldn’t transmit anymore.”

Ground Zero
As we now know, moments after American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into 1 World Trade (the North Tower), emergency calltakers and dispatchers received a flood of phone calls reporting the carnage. The 9-1-1 system was not equipped to handle the enormous volume of calls that came in. Many callers received an “All circuits are busy” message.

At 0846 HRS, the Manhattan Fire Communications Office (CO) transmitted a first-alarm assignment for 1 World Trade atManhattan Box 8087. At 0848 HRS, a Signal 10-40 (aircraft crash) was transmitted over the FDNY EMS Citywide frequency. By 0859 HRS, the Manhattan CO had transmitted a full fifth-alarm assignment for Box 8087. Additional, successive alarm assignments rapidly occurred.

Then, approximately 18 minutes after Flight 11 crashed into 1 World Trade, United Airlines Flight 175 hit 2 World Trade (the South Tower). No one anticipated that both towers would soon collapse.

The principal first responders to the WTC were from FDNY, the New York Police Department (NYPD), the Port Authority Police Department (PAPD) and the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM). The number of missing-person reports peaked at 6,886 amid confusion and calls from frantic relatives following the WTC attacks. The final death toll of 2,749 at the WTC could not be verified until January 2004. Counted in that number are 71 police officers, 341 firefighters and officers and eight EMS providers killed in the line of duty while responding to the WTC attacks.

Second Site
At 0938 HRS, American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon. Fort Myer (Va.) Fire Dept. firefighters Allan Wallace, Mark Skipper and Dennis Young were in the plane’s path. Wallace was able to use the radio in a badly damaged foam unit stationed at the Pentagon heliport to call Fort Myer dispatch and report the crash. Although badly burned themselves, all three firefighters immediately started evacuating people from the first-floor windows of the Pentagon.

At 0939 HRS, the National Airport control tower transmitted “Crash! Crash! Crash!” over the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority frequency and activated an airport alert. In addition to the 64 passengers and crew aboard Flight 77, 125 military service members, employees and contract workers died in the attack on the Pentagon.

An Empty Field
The initial dispatch for, “Plane down, Skyline Drive at Lambertsville Road,” in Shanksville, Pa., went out at 1006 HRS. United Flight 93 was carrying 44 people (37 passengers, including the four hijackers, and seven crew members). There were no survivors.

9/11 Commission Report Highlights Communications Problems
When we spoke with Loutsky following the attacks, he mentioned communications issues that were already problems prior to 9/11.

In a Jan. 31, 2002, interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune, FDNY EMS Deputy Chief John Peruggia also mentioned communications problems. “We didn’t have the tools that we normally have to communicate with our agency,” he said. “The cell phones were not working, and radios were spotty. I don’t have a fire ground radio, so I had no direct communications with my boss at that time.”

The 9/11 Commission Report (available for download at www.gpoaccess.gov/911/index.html) also noted communications problems in theWTC emergency response. Some sections of the report are particularly noteworthy for public safety communications personnel. It states:

“Most Port Authority police commands used ultra-high-frequency radios. Although all the radios were capable of using more than one channel, most PAPD officers used one local channel. The local channels were low-wattage and worked only in the immediate vicinity of that command. The PAPD also had an agency-wide channel, but not all commands could access it.

“As of September 11, the Port Authority lacked any standard operating procedures to govern how officers from multiple commands would respond to and then be staged and utilized at

a major incident at theWTC. In particular, there were no standard operating procedures covering how different commands should communicate via radio during such an incident. …

“The NYPD precincts were divided into 35 different radio zones, with a central radio dispatcher assigned to each. In addition, there were several radio channels for citywide operations. Officers had portable radios with 20 or more available channels, so that the user could respond outside his or her precinct. ESU teams also had these channels but at an operation would use a separate point-to-point channel (which was not monitored by a dispatcher).

“The NYPD also supervised the city’s 911 emergency call system. Its approximately 1,200 operators, radio dispatchers, and supervisors were civilian employees of the NYPD. They were trained in the rudiments of emergency response. When a 911 call concerned a fire, it was transferred to FDNY dispatch. …

“As of September 11, FDNY companies and chiefs responding to a fire used analog, point-to-point radios that had six normal operating channels. Typically, the companies would operate on the same tactical channel, which chiefs on the scene would monitor and use to communicate with the firefighters. Chiefs at a fire operation also would use a separate command channel. Because these point-to-point radios had weak signal strength, communications on them could be heard only by other FDNY personnel in the immediate vicinity. In addition, the FDNY had a dispatch frequency for each of the five boroughs; these were not point-to-point channels and could be monitored from around the city.”

According to the report, the repeater system that had been installed at the WTC following the 1993 bombing was never fully activated. The 9-1-1 system was plagued by a lack of awareness on the part of the telecommunicators of what was occurring on scene. Information was not flowing back to them. “Command and control decisions were affected by the lack of knowledge of what was happening,” the report states. Radio problems prevented many FDNY personnel from hearing the eventual evacuation order. And the report also states, “There is no evidence that PAPD officers without WTC Command radios received an evacuation order by radio.”

In contrast to the chaotic emergency response to the WTC, the report states, “The emergency response at the Pentagon represented a mix of local, state, and federal jurisdictions and was generally effective. It overcame the inherent complications of a response across jurisdictions because the Incident Command System, a formalized management structure for emergency response, was in place in the National Capital Region on 9/11.”

However, the Pentagon response did include significant problems with both self-dispatching and communications: An independent after-action report states, “Organizations, response units, and individuals proceeding on their own initiative directly to an incident site, without the knowledge and permission of the host jurisdiction and the Incident Commander, complicate the exercise of command, increase the risks faced by bonafide responders, and exacerbate the challenge of accountability.”

Moving Forward
So what steps have public safety communications professionals taken since 9/11 to overcome the challenges presented by massive terrorist incidents? In the following pages, you’ll read accounts from two individuals involved in the 9/11 emergency response — one from FDNY and one from the Arlington, Va., 9-1-1 Emergency Communications Center — and learn their perspectives on what has been done to improve public safety communications and what remains to be done.

About the Author
Keri Losavio has been writing and editing publications for public safety professionals since 1998 and is the managing editor of Public Safety Communications. On 9/11, she was the senior editor of JEMS (the Journal of Emergency Medical Services) and personally interviewed many of the first responders to and survivors of the WTC and Pentagon attacks. Contact her at [email protected].

Originally published in Public Safety Communications, 72(9):24-26, September 2006.