An Editorial By the OAKLAND PRESS
Reprinted with Permission, The Oakland Press
To Be Published Friday July 26, 2002
We recently received several letters from area firefighters critical of the editorial in this space on July 11. And in just the last couple days we have gotten e-mails from others around the country.
The editorial dealt with a report on the performance of the New York City Police and Fire Departments and of the Port Authority police on Sept. 11.
Its conclusions were critical overall, citing a failure of cooperation between the police and fire agencies, a failure of fire department communications equipment and, partly as a result of the latter, a partial loss of control by departmental commanders.
The letters take issue, basically, with the characterization of the firefighters as "cowboys" who "acted like a mob" and who, in too many cases, "died in vain."
Those conclusions were drawn from the report, commissioned in part, by the city.
The aggrieved firefighters complained that those characterizations were untrue.
The words also were perceived as harsh and unfair, especially under the inevitably confused circumstances. To that extent, they were in fact harsh and unfair.
An apology is due and offered.
The firefighters and other public servants who went to the scene surely did their best and should be honored for it. Civilians in danger were helped, thus none of those who were sent in as rescuers died in vain.
That said, the departments cited above clearly need to make better plans for another "Sept. 11." There still are a lot of tall buildings in New York City and the odds are good that terrorists will test us again.
Firefighters and others who found themselves in a virtually impossible situation don't need to find themselves in that predicament again.
In fact, one of the chiefs of the NYFD has just published a book about the Trade Center tragedy. It reportedly makes many of the same criticisms as the initial Naval report cited in The New York Times and relied upon as a source by this newspaper and no doubt many others.
The danger in the aftermath of such a disaster is that, in the unavoidable and necessary emotional reaction, tears will get in the way of the need to ask tough questions and make tough decisions for the future.
To the degree that didn't happen in the past - before 9/11 - the city government didn't fulfill its responsibility to its own employees.
Firefighters are, by definition, willing to put their lives on the line for others. They shouldn't be expected to be faced with unnecessarily great risk because of a failure of equipment or command, a failure they could do nothing about.
Those in New York certainly wanted to save many more people in the World Trade Center disaster.
That they couldn't - as the report indicates - was not the fault of the men who rode the trucks, more than 350 of whom died.
Fire departments are not used to criticism of their performance, for a reason. It's rarely appropriate. But in this case, hopefully, it will save firefighters' lives in the future.
The fault was in us going too far.
