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SlowwHand
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of The Cooler
Sep 1999
time: 23:30
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42 minutes ago
by LARRY McSHANE, Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK - On the 78th floor of the World Trade Center, Anthony Savas waited vainly for help in a stranded elevator. Fifty-six stories below, a woman used wet tissues to keep out the smoke as Gene Raggio climbed to her aid. And outside the doomed twin towers, Ed Strauss waited for two co-workers. These final glimpses of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack, along with the first frightening peek behind the scenes of the nation's worst terrorist attack, emerged Thursday from 2,000 pages of transcripts released by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the trade center's owner.
Savas, Raggio and Strauss were three of the 47 civilian Port Authority employees killed in the attack that collapsed the twin towers.
"Listen, this is Tony Savas," the Port Authority construction inspector says. "I'm on the 78th floor. I'm trapped in the elevator. Water and debris is coming down. ... Please send somebody to open the doors."
The transcripts also detailed the frenzy of phone calls that followed the terrorist attack on the trade center: Trapped workers begging for an escape route from its 106th-floor restaurant. Anguished wives desperately seeking lost husbands. Screams and sirens echoing in the background as bodies dropped from the sky.
Many callers were inaudible, yet the horror and hysteria of the September morning jumps off the typed pages.
"Yo, I've got dozens of bodies, people just jumping from the top of the building onto ... in front of 1 World Trade," says a male caller. "People. Bodies are just coming from out of the sky ... up top of the building."
"Bodies?" replies a female operator.
Raggio, 55, an operations supervisor at the trade center, responded to a call for help from a woman trapped when the doors wouldn't open on the 22nd floor.
"How are you doing up there?" he asked.
A woman responded they had used wet tissues to keep the smoke out, but they couldn't escape.
"OK," said Raggio. "We are working our way up to 22."
Strauss, 44, of Edison, N.J., called for help from co-workers in the midst of the disaster.
"Can you send me a couple people?" he asked. Strauss said he would meet them on "Church Street, kinda, right by the steps here." He was not heard from again.
A spokesman for the Port Authority praised the efforts of its workers under an extraordinary strain compounded by confusion and miscommunication.
The transcripts "show people performing their duties very heroically and very professionally on a day of horror," Port Authority spokesman Greg Trevor said.
The transcripts were created from tapes of emergency calls and radio transmissions made after the hijacked planes were slammed into the twin towers by al-Qaida operatives. Their release comes two weeks before the second anniversary of the attack.
Callers reported missiles fired downtown from the top of the Chrysler Building, and a bomb scare came in from the George Washington Bridge. There were decisions that proved disastrous, like setting up a command center in the doomed north tower.
For some, there was the sweet relief of breathing in the temporarily fresh air.
"I'm alive, Dennis," said one man who was not identified. "I'm outside the building and I'm healthy."
At least two wives, unaware they were to be widows, tried to learn their husbands' whereabouts. Neither Port Authority Officer Donald McIntyre nor his boss, Executive Director Neil Levin, ever made it home.
People were stranded throughout the buildings, with calls for help pouring in from the 78th floor, the 88th, the 103rd, the 107th. One male caller from the 92nd floor of the second tower asked a Port Authority police officer, "Should we stay or should we not?"
"I would wait 'til further notice," the officer replied.
A similar call — with the same police response — came in shortly after. No one in the top floors of the tower survived after the second plane hit around the 80th floor shortly after 9 a.m.
The evacuation of 2 World Trade Center, the second tower hit, became a source of anguish to the victims' families. Some survivors have already said they were advised to remain in the building.
The transcripts illustrate the contradictory information within the Port Authority itself in the initial moments, with one conversation reflecting an early discussion of evacuating people from the two buildings after the first plane hit. In all, an estimated 25,000 people successfully evacuated the towers.
Windows on the World assistant manager Christine Olender called to report people stranded on the 106th floor.
"We need direction as to where we need to direct our guests and our employees, as soon as possible," she says, citing increasing smoke.
"We're doing our best," replied a Port Authority officer. "We're trying to get up to you, dear."
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Pekka
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em seu burro dos pais!
Feb 2002
time: 07:30
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Defiant, thanks for the definition. Learning never stops.
I don't have a position on this myself, but these transcripts are new, and news stations all over the world has reported this same thing, so making thread about it is not rehashing in negative way I think. It's big news.
Besides, Iraq is on the news every single day that's all I get from my news channels. This is new 'inside info' on the case, so I think it matters.
Personally I think the worst mistake one can make is to be careless. Too much confidence kills, you have to be informed and people are not very smart creatures, they need to be informed again and again and again. Not to forget, that OBL is still free, so I think we shouldn't let this thing go away slowly and unnoticed. We should be chasing this mofo and the rest of the crews like the first day it started. And furthermore, if someone doesn't want to read them or experience the horror by the words of the ones inside, don't read it.
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SpencerH
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Co-Ruler of my patch of land south of Birmingham Alabama
Feb 2002
time: 23:30
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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...glesforsurvival
quote:
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
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Defiant
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WISCONSIN
Aug 1999
time: 05:30
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quote:
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.
Last edited by Defiant on 29-08-2003 at 19:49
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29-08-2003 18:32
have their party's convention in NYC in September 2004. Yeah, never forget. 
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