In Operators' Voices, Echoes of Calls for Help (Difficult to read.)

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: In Operators' Voices, Echoes of Calls for Help
By JIM DWYER

The city released partial recordings today of about 130 telephone calls made to 911 after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, stripped of the voices of the people inside the World Trade Center but still evocative of their invisible struggles for life.

Only the 911 operators and fire department dispatchers can be heard on the recordings, their words mapping the calamity in rough, faint echoes of the men and women in the towers who had called them for help.

They describe crowded islands of fleeting survival, on floors far from the crash and even on those that were directly hit: Hallways are blocked on 104. Send help to 84. It is hard to breathe on 97.

Be calm, the operators implore. God is there. Sit tight.

The recordings, contained on 11 compact discs, also document a broken link in the chain of emergency communications....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/nyregion/31cnd-tapes.html?ei=5094&en=7974754cad2d453e&hp=&ex=1143867600&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

[amitten]

1. And Bush allowed it to happen.

Repeatedly ignoring memos that America was likely going to be attacked.

He's going to rot in hell.

[LisaM]

3. You are so right.

I can't understand why he doesn't have to account for it.

[amitten]

4. Someday, he will be held accountable.

I don't know when or how, but it will happen.

[Bunny]

2. How very sad.

So much inefficiency between departments, and such an unprecedented catastrophe.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

5. I'm not sure what purpose

the releasing of these tapes serves. It feels like a vicarious peek into hell. No thanks, but I'd rather not listen to the voices of fellow human beings trapped and facing death in such a terrible fashion........

[UpInArms]

6. ...

:cry:

[TallahasseeGrannie]

7. Reading it is enough for me

I have not forgotten.

I don't know who did it; I don't know whose fault it was. But there will come a reckoning.

[Jankyn]

8. If releasing these tapes...

...leads to a reassessment of operator protocols and a redesign of the emergency communications system, then I'm all for it.

But what it will probably do is stir up PTSD in the operators for no good reason, and they'll be criticized for doing what they were trained to do: give the advice that the department proscribes for the situation.

I was a 911-operator for nine years. Basically, it's a direct line to listen to someone else's moment of hell. I still have nightmares in which phones are ringing and I can't find them, and it's been 11 years since I moved on. The sense of powerlessness as you listen to someone beat a family member, or scream that his baby's not breathing...and all you can do is keep them calm, give the advice that the department has approved, and wait for help to get there.

I'll never forget the popping sound--it was a surprisingly small sound--that a gun made when a man killed himself while I was on the line with him.

I'm glad someone else can do that job. I can't.

[Catch22Dem]

9. God is there?

Too bad he wasn't about 20 minutes earlier. No further comment.