FDNY Learning From 9/11 Response
— -- FDNY Learning From 9/11 Response
N E W Y O R K, Aug. 19 — Police and fire officials pledged today toimprove command procedures and communications as they released tworeports examining emergency response in the wake of the World TradeCenter attack.
The two reports were prepared by high-ranking departmentofficials and management consultant McKinsey & Co., who togetherconducted dozens of interviews and reviewed hundreds of pages ofcomputer records and hours of radio transmissions.
"There is no doubt in my mind that we are doing today what theheroes of 9-11 would have wanted us to do," Mayor MichaelBloomberg said. "It is in that spirit that we present thesereports."
Both Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and Fire CommissionerNicholas Scoppetta promised to improve they way they deployofficers and firefighters in disasters.
"We've revised our mobilization procedures, controlling thenumber of personnel who respond at any one time to an event," saidKelly.
Dozens of firefighters directed to go to staging points onstreets surrounding the twin towers on Sept. 11 instead wentstraight into the buildings, officials have said. Kelly said toomany police officers also went directly to the scene.
A total of 343 firefighters and 23 NYPD officers died that day.
City officials also discussed improving the fire department'sradio system and linking it to police communications.
The roughly 100-page fire department document also recommendsthat the department bolster its single hazardous materials unitwith new staff and equipment, allowing the FDNY to better respondto potential chemical, biological or radiological attacks.
It says the FDNY and neighboring fire departments should developmutual-aid procedures for assisting each other during massiveemergencies.
Similarly, procedures should be developed under which the firedepartment, police department and agencies as diverse as the CIAand Coast Guard could better coordinate the dissemination ofinformation.
The FDNY document praises what it calls firefighters' historicevacuation of an estimated 25,000 people from the twin towers. Itemphasizes that it would have been nearly impossible for any firedepartment to prepare for an event of such unprecedented scale.
"The goal was to learn from the events of 9-11 so that the citycan learn from the experiences of that day — from what worked andwhat didn't so that we can be better prepared for any futurelarge-scale emergency," Bloomberg said.
Beyond the sheer loss of life, the fire department wasdevastated by the deaths of some of its most senior commanders,including Chief of Department Peter Ganci. A number of commanderswere in the lobbies of the towers and others were stationedelsewhere in the trade center complex.
One of the FDNY's most senior officers should overseelarge-scale emergencies from the department's Brooklyn operationscenter instead of the scene itself, the report said.
— The Associated Press
Baggage Screening Deadline Hard to Meet
W A S H I N G T O N, Aug. 19 — Managers at some major airports believe bigtravel problems could lie ahead come the Dec. 31 deadline to begininspecting every piece of checked luggage for explosives. They alsoare raising questions about whether the bomb-screening equipment issophisticated enough and in adequate supply.
The prospect of long lines and finding space for theminivan-sized machines in already cramped airports have ledCongress to consider delaying the screening requirement by a year.
"I see disaster coming," said Bruce Baumgartner, aviationmanager at Denver International Airport. "If it doesn't work andpeople are inconvenienced, people are going to stop flying."
Airports without enough of the explosive detection machines inplace by year's end must check bags with smaller hand-heldequipment that finds traces of explosives.
The trace detectors require more employees and take longer toexamine luggage than the larger machines.
Without enough employees and equipment, passengers could facewaits of three hours to have their baggage checked for explosives,said Kevin Cox, senior executive vice president at Dallas/FortWorth Airport.
"It will be catastrophic," he said.
Congress, which imposed the deadline in security legislationpassed after Sept. 11, is having second thoughts. The House lastmonth voted 217-211 to extend the deadline by a year. A Senatecommittee will consider the idea when lawmakers return from theirsummer vacation in September.
Rep. Peter DeFazio, a member of the House Transportationaviation subcommittee, said Sunday that the deadline should be metto prevent terrorists from blowing up an airplane with explosiveshidden in luggage, as was done on Pan Am Flight 103.
"I believe an explosives attack is much more likely than atakeover," DeFazio, D-Ore., said on NBC's Meet the Press.
Some airport managers say the government is installing obsoleteequipment. They say the two systems licensed for use at U.S.airports are slow and often mistake ordinary substances forexplosives.
Jerry Orr, aviation director at North Carolina'sCharlotte/Douglas Airport, calls the machines "yesterday's news."
"We ought to take whatever time is necessary to do it right thefirst time," Orr said.
Baumgartner said the federal government should wait for betterequipment. With the current bomb-detection machines, which detectonly density and shape, "you can't tell the difference betweenchocolate and plastique explosives," he said.
Richard Lanza, a Massachusetts Institute of Technologyscientist, said the U.S. machines — made by InVision Technologiesof Newark, Calif., and L-3 Communications of New York — do notalways distinguish between plastique explosives and chocolate. Still,he said, "of all the possible technologies, I think they're thebest."
The Transportation Security Administration said it plans to meetthe year-end deadline by buying 1,100 of the large explosivedetection equipment and 4,000 trace machines.
"We are on pace at this point to meet that deadline," TSAspokesman Greg Warren said.
InVision and L-3 said they would deliver 114 machines by the endof June. The Transportation Department's inspector general said 100were delivered and only 29 of them were working as of July 27.
David Pillor, InVision's executive vice president, said it takestime to install the machines. "We're pretty close to our deliveryschedule," he said.
Messages left for a spokesman for L-3 were not immediatelyreturned.
Pillor said a bomb-detection machine operator can tell within 20seconds whether a substance is chocolate or plastique by looking atthe shape, size or whether it has a detonator. If the machines areslow, he said, it's either because of a poorly trained operator orbecause they're part of an inefficient bag-handling system.
At Boston's Logan Airport, officials decided they needed tobuild 11 baggage-screening rooms, make seven major buildingadditions and install five new electrical substations. It isunclear whether the airport will meet the deadline.
"It's going to be tight," said Craig Coy, executive directorof Massport, which runs Logan. "I touch wood every day."
Hal Wight, who manages the tiny airport in Klamath Falls, Ore.,said he will have to move some walls, remodel the ticket countersand change the baggage belt to make room for federal employees tocheck baggage with hand-held equipment.
"I don't think everything will be in place on time," he said.
— The Associated Press
Web Site Seeks to Create Virtual Library of Sept. 11
F A I R F A X, Va., Aug. 19 — After a long walk uptown to escape theunfolding disaster at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, LisaBeaty made her way to a Manhattan office, sat down in front of acomputer and e-mailed two words that friends and relatives wereanxious to see: "I'm OK."
That message and hundreds of other e-mails, photographs andvideo images are part of a virtual library of the attacks beingcompiled by scholars in Virginia and New York.
The September 11th Digital Archive "will serve as a newplatform in which people can make their own history," said JimSparrow, one of the organizers of the project, which is accessibleonline.
Chrissie Brodigan, a graduate student working with Sparrow onthe site at the Center for New Media and History at George MasonUniversity in this Washington suburb, said the goal is to create anational memory of the attacks.
Sparrow and his colleagues at George Mason, about 20 minuteswest of the Pentagon, started the project in January by visitingvictims and families in New York, Washington and Shanksville, Pa.,where one of the four hijacked planes crashed.
Since then, the researchers have collected hundreds of e-mailand chat room messages, photos and online personal diaries frompeople nationwide relating to their Sept. 11 experiences.
Also sought are text messages transmitted by beeper that dayfrom people trying to reassure friends and loved ones.
Beaty and her husband, Kirk, already had spoken by phone afterthe attacks started. At 12:18 p.m., more than three hours after thefirst plane struck the World Trade Center, she sat at a computerand wrote the e-mail that would be relayed to worried friends andrelatives.
After telling them she was all right, she detailed the chaos:
"Had I made the train I was trying to this AM, I would havebeen in the WTC when the plane hit. Pays to be late sometimes,"she wrote.
"Was standing next to some people that were in the buildingacross from the Tower — they saw the plane (1st plane) hit and thensaw people jumping out the windows. It was absolutely the mosthorrible thing I have ever witnessed in my life."
Kirk Beaty said he submitted the e-mail to the archive becauseit "represented an unaltered view of events of that day frompeople who were personally involved, instead of a professionallyedited form of the same news."
Keith Riggle was working at the Pentagon when American AirlinesFlight 77 slammed into the building. The subject line of hise-mail, sent three days later, reads "We're fine."
"I think we all know that these attacks will have a profoundimpact on life in the US and how we see ourselves and the world.… I know I'll never feel comfortable flying again," he wrote.
Projects like the archive represent a new way to take snapshotsof historical events and record how America reacts to them, saidLee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
Dozens of other sites have similar functions, though few storee-mails or text messages, as the digital archive does, Rainie said.
For instance, a separate site, The September 11 Web Archive,tracked and stored government, media and other Web pages related tothe attacks as they were viewed on Sept. 11 and in the monthsafter.
"One of the learning experiences from Sept. 11 is that theInternet is a great way to catalogue and pull together thesecommunications shortly after they occur," Rainie said. "Almostany major news event that occurs in the future, you will seesimilar sites develop."
George Mason is working with the American Social History Projectat the City University of New York Graduate Center. The archive wasfunded by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
The group is also working with organizers of the SmithsonianInstitution's exhibition of the attacks, which will open this Sept.11 in Washington.
"The hardest part is convincing ordinary people that they arepart of history," Sparrow said.
— The Associated Press
Appellate Court Rules for UNC in Koran Case
R I C H M O N D, Va., Aug. 19 — A federal appeals court ruled today that theUniversity of North Carolina can go ahead with plans to have itsincoming freshmen discuss a book about the Koran.
A conservative Christian group has been trying to stop UNCfrom holding two-hour discussion sessions on the book for itsstudents today.
About 4,200 students were assigned to read parts of a bookcalled Approaching the Qur'an: The Early Revelations.University lawyers said a committee made the selection after theterrorist attacks, so that students could learn a little bit about the world ofIslam.
Those who opt out of the assignment won't face any disciplinaryaction.
But attorneys for the Virginia-based Family Policy Network claimed thatthe assignment was unconstitutional because it promotes Islam.
The state-supported university counters that barring the bookwould deprive incoming students of their free-speech rights.
— The Associated Press