10 years after 9/11, a push for better communication

Associated Press

NEW YORK

On Sept. 11, 2001, as firefighters rushed into the smoldering twin towers, their radios went dead. Police on the scene couldn’t hear orders from their superiors. And none of the agencies responding to the nation’s deadliest terrorist attack could communicate with one another.

“To this day, I have nightmares of police officers calling for help and not being able to answer them,” said Bruce Adler, who was a radio dispatcher that day.

In the years since, New York City emergency agencies have upgraded equipment to adapt to the unforeseen, built in redundancies and increased training.

Historically tense relationships among police and firefighters have eased some: The agencies train together and can now talk via radios in an emergency.

But first responders here say it’s not good enough and they hope legislation will be passed by the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11 authorizing creation of a national network where police and fire departments around the country can talk to each other and share photos, video and other critical data.

The recommendations from the 9/11 Commission, a panel assigned to diagnose the failures behind the 2001 attack, included the need for a national communication network.

“Federal funding of such units should be given high priority by Congress,” its report said.

Sept. 11 was a convergence of the worst possible problems in communication technology — a jammed commercial network made cellphone use impossible.

Police and firefighter radio networks were not compatible.

But the main problem, the FDNY says, was the damage done to infrastructure called repeaters, which made radio signals work at the twin towers.

That left many commanders and firefighters unable to talk to each other.

Firefighters in the stairwells couldn’t hear the evacuation order, and as a result, 343 died.

On the ground, 23 police were killed and 37 Port Authority of New York and New Jersey officers died.

City leaders pledged to fix many of the problems and have done so, starting at the most critical and working down the list — and they continue to hone skills and refine technology.

For the FDNY, the top priority was to build redundancy into its system so their radios would work no matter what was damaged.

Though tensions and turf wars still exist, the departments are working better together.