Posted by Tom Hayes (165.247.13.158) on October 05, 2001 at 22:01:08:
For 911 dispatchers, memories linger from
life-and-death decisions made during
terrorist attacks
TOM HAYS, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, October 4, 2001
Breaking News Sections
(10-04) 22:37 PDT NEW YORK (AP) --
When the 911 calls began flooding in from the inflamed upper
reaches of the World Trade Center, dispatcher Monsitah Corney
did what she's trained to do: She told callers to wait for help.
Moments later, a tower collapsed, the calls stopped and Corney
wondered what she had done.
"I felt guilt when the building came down," Corney said Thursday.
"I felt very bad because I told them to stay there. I had no idea
they weren't going to get out -- never, in my wildest dreams."
At a news conference, Corney and other New York Fire
Department dispatchers described grappling with guilt and grief
over the life-and-death decisions they made Sept. 11 from a
command bunker in Central Park. Among their fears: that they
dispatched firefighters to their death.
"A lot of us feel remorse about sending them in," said dispatcher
John Lightsey, his eyes red.
The dispatchers spoke to reporters in response to broadcasts of
unofficial tapes of radio transmissions from the morning of the
terrorist attacks. The tapes capture the dispatchers' frantic attempts
to locate trapped victims and get them help, sometimes too late.
Even when the first jetliner hit, the dispatchers thought the
emergency was manageable, Cheryl Phillips said.
Corney's duty was to field 911 calls from people trapped in the
building. "There were some of them that wanted to run for their
lives," she said.
Not knowing the towers were in danger of collapse, Corney
advised the callers that trying to flee through smoke-choked
hallways in a high-rise was too dangerous. Instead, they should
wait for firefighters, she said.
An "executive type" kept calling back demanding instructions on
"how to handle this."
"Finally I told him, 'Look, the best thing to do is to not talk so
much and conserve your air," she said. "We'll get to you."
The dispatchers tried to focus on the steady stream of voices of
firefighters searching for victims and victims pleading for help.
Some firefighters radioed that they were trapped under the rubble.
Lightsey helped direct units to fire Capt. Alfredo Fuentes, who
was pulled out alive.
He fielded another call from an emergency worker, fate unknown,
who was caught under a fallen pedestrian bridge.
"I don't have much air," the voice said. "Please send somebody."
But the most enduring memory, the dispatchers said, is what
followed the towers' collapse: a deafening silence.
When the lines went dead, the dispatchers desperately radioed for
firefighters' locations.
"You call and no one answers you," said Brian O'Hara, who
staffed a mobile command center near the disaster site. "I've been
on the job a long time and I've never had that situation where you
can't contact anybody. Somebody always answers."
Three weeks later, the dispatchers say they're still haunted by the
voices and the silence.
Corney said her doctor eased her sorrow over the victims by
telling her, "Perhaps we were of comfort to them."
Lightsey, despite his pain over putting firefighters in harm's way,
knows he couldn't have kept them away.
"You're not going to stop a firefighter from going into a building,"
he said. "You're not going to stop them from saving people ...
That's what they do."