|
|
 |
 |
WASHINGTON -- The Sept. 11 commission's finding that radio problems were not a primary cause of firefighter deaths in the World Trade Center is getting a second look in another federal investigation.
In the latest of a series of interim reports, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) said that although police helicopter units broadcast warnings about the impending collapse of both Tower 1 and Tower 2 before the two buildings fell, "no evidence has been found to suggest that the information was further communicated to all emergency responders at the scene."
Yesterday, however, NIST spokesman Michael Newman said the Institute finding applied only to radio communications and was not necessarily at odds with the commission report -- which said news of the alerts was quickly spread via word of mouth by police officers in the buildings and by firefighters who heard the helicopter broadcasts.
"We do not have anything in there that contradicts what the commission was saying," he said.
NIST investigators were still analyzing their interviews with dozens of surviving firefighters to determine what occurred in the towers moments before they fell.
"We are still trying to put together the sequence of events," said Newman.
Under an agreement with the city, NIST and commission investigators interviewed the same group of about 70 surviving firefighters earlier this year. Both also were given access to the transcripts of Sept. 11 Fire Department radio transmissions, which the city has refused to release to the public.
The radio issue is viewed as particularly critical in the case of Tower 1, where 121 of the firefighters killed at Ground Zero were believed to be within striking distance of safety when a police helicopter hovering outside issued a collapse warning about 20 minutes before the building went down at 10.26 a.m.
In its July report, the 9/11 commission said police officers in the building were passing the word to firefighters about the alert. At the same time, FDNY supervisors in the tower used bullhorns to relay evacuation orders issued by ground commanders shortly after Tower 2 collapsed at 10:03 a.m.
But instead of leaving the building immediately, many firefighters chose to keep searching for missing comrades or to continue aiding civilians, the commission reported.
The report angered some relatives of firefighters who died.
"I don't think the commission properly addressed this issue at all," said Joanne Barbara of West Brighton, whose husband, Deputy Chief Gerard Barbara, died in Tower 2. "I know for a fact that those radios were inoperable."
She was among a group of firefighters' relatives who traveled here in August to urge a followup congressional inquiry into failure of radio communications at the World Trade Center.
Mrs. Barbara stressed yesterday that she was not a plaintiff in any of the lawsuits filed by firefighter families against the radios' manufacturers. "There is no monetary advancement in this for me," she said. "It's a moral issue, as far as I am concerned."
Newman said NIST investigators believed that some "special operations" firefighters inside the towers received the police helicopter alerts.
NIST has been probing radio communications as part of its two-year investigation into the towers' collapse. The agency's final report is due to be released in December or early January.
 |
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
