A harrowing review of communications failures by the NY fire department on 9/11: “It’s a disgrace,” [one firefighter] said: “The police are talking to each other. It’s a no-brainer: Get us what they’re using. We send people to the moon, and you mean to tell me a firefighter can’t talk to a guy two floors above him?” I was a volunteer firefighter during college, but have no context to imagine rushing up the stairs of those towers.
The first chief on the scene could not keep contact with the firefighters he sent upstairs, including the company led by his brother, who did not survive. James Ellson, a former deputy in the city’s Office of Emergency Management, said recently: “On that day, Sept. 11, all the plans, all the scenarios that we had developed, everything, everything was blown up.”
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