NEW YORK – The former police and fire chiefs who were lionized after the World Trade Center attack came under harsh criticism Tuesday from the commission investigating the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, with one member saying the departments’ lack of cooperation was scandalous and “not worthy of the Boy Scouts.”
Almost no one believed that the twin towers were in danger of collapsing that morning, according to a report issued Tuesday by the Sept. 11 commission.
Commission members, in New York for an emotional two-day hearing attended by hundreds of survivors and victims’ relatives, focused on how leaders of the fire and police departments failed to share information effectively in the early frantic moments after two hijacked planes slammed into the towers.
Former fire commissioner Thomas Von Essen and former police chief Bernard Kerik shot back with infuriated responses to commissioner John Lehman’s questions.
“I couldn’t disagree with you more strongly,” Von Essen replied. “I think it’s outrageous that you make a statement like that.” Outside the hearing, he called the questioning “despicable.”
Later, the miscommunication was termed “a scandal” by Lehman, a former Navy secretary, who then said it was “not worthy of the Boy Scouts, let alone this great city.”
According to the 26-page report, panic-stricken workers in the World Trade Center were given conflicting information on the day of the attacks, including repeated initial instructions not to evacuate. Scores of workers in both towers rushed upward, unaware that doors to the skyscraper roofs were locked and that rescue helicopters would not be able to navigate the heat swells and rooftop antennas to rescue them, the report said.
Many emergency workers were uninformed or misinformed about the rapidly deteriorating situation, and there was no plan in place for rescuing those caught above the fire, the report found.
Families of Sept. 11 victims applauded the tough questioning and shook their heads sadly as the panel enumerated a litany of communication breakdowns between the departments. Family members sporadically mocked and booed Von Essen, Kerik and Richard Sheirer, former Office of Emergency Management commissioner, and they wept earlier in the day as they watched a videotape of the buildings collapsing.
Family members cheered when commission member Slade Gorton, a former Republican senator from Washington, launched an aggressive line of questioning about the city’s 911 emergency system to Kerik, Von Essen and Sheirer.
When the agency heads tried to defer to their successors, Gorton refused to let them. “I’m asking … what was going on Sept. 11,” Gorton said to applause from the families.
But the searing account also made clear that, despite their history of feuding, officers and firefighters from the New York Fire Department, New York Police Department and the Port Authority Police Department struggled valiantly, and in many cases against the odds, to save lives before the towers fell.
“That day we lost 2,752 people at the World Trade Center; 343 were firefighters,” Deputy Assistant Fire Chief Joseph Pfeifer told investigators in videotaped comments that were played at Tuesday’s hearing. “But we also saved 25,000 people. And that’s what people should remember, because firefighters and rescuers went in and they knew it was dangerous, but they went in to save people. And they saved many.”
Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was scheduled to testify before the commission today.
Associated Press
Lenny Crisci (left) and John Napolitano watch images during the Sept. 11 commission hearings Tuesday in New York. Crisci lost a firefighter brother and Napolitano lost a firefighter son in the World Trade Center attack.
Associated Press
Bernard Kerik (left), former New York police commissioner, and Thomas Von Essen, former New York fire commissioner, testify Tuesday.
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