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JIM DWYER, KEVIN FLYNN and FORD FESSENDEN
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
From The New York Times on the Web (c) The New York Times Company. Reprinted with Permission.
Almost an hour after the first plane struck, the wind shifted, and for a moment the blanket of smoke on the roofs of the towers lifted slightly. Perhaps there was a chance to save some people at the top of the buildings.
"As soon as it's feasible, we need to go on the roof," one police officer said on his radio.
From the air, a second police officer replied: "Aviation 12, we're taking a look; we're going to look at the northwest corner of north building." On the ground, a team of police emergency service officers gathered rappelling outfits for the helicopters.
For fire chiefs, the police helicopters could also be invaluable: the firefighters' climb to the 80th floor during the 1993 attack lasted four hours, and the blaze in the north tower was 15 floors above that. Even if roof rescues proved too risky, as police commanders later decided, the fire chiefs wanted to see what the fires were doing to the buildings.
"At one point, I was asked to get the operations with the helicopter into motion," Chief Pfeifer said in his oral history, but he could not reach the dispatcher.
He recited problems -- a missing radio, jammed phone lines, no one answering -- but the simplest solution of all was not available to Chief Pfeifer: a face-to-face conversation with a police supervisor. No police supervisors reported to the lobby command posts set up by the Fire Department to coordinate efforts. The police established their command post three blocks away at the corner of Church and Vesey Streets.
In the end, no firefighter boarded the helicopters. When police pilots reported "large pieces" falling from the south tower 10 minutes before it collapsed, only police officers had seen it from the sky, and only police officers on the ground could hear their warnings. When the pilots saw that the north building was near collapse 21 minutes before it fell, their warnings reached some police officers on the street and inside the tower, but not firefighters. Although the two departments had talked for years about establishing a common radio channel, they could not reach agreement.
Nearly every state, including New York, and the federal government have adopted a structure for managing crises known as the incident command system, in which agencies agree in advance who will be in charge. New York City has not. The Police and Fire Departments did not work together that day, and they rarely did before.
Allen H. Hoehl, a retired police commander, disputed the idea that officers routinely refuse to work with fire officials. He said he had often designated a ranking officer to serve as a liaison.
Other police officials maintain that sharing command with the Fire Department is difficult because firefighters lack paramilitary discipline.
Lt. John McArdle, a member of the police Emergency Service Unit, was blunt in his views of the firefighters. "If someone tells them to do something, they say, `I don't work for him,' " he said in an interview. "If a police sergeant tells a group of cops to hold up, they do."
Senior fire chiefs spelled out their resentment of the police during the Naval War College evaluation in December. Asked about interagency cooperation, some in the senior fire staff wrote: "There is none"; "You will never change the P.D."; "Let them put snowplows on the front end of their cars. They want to do everything else"; "There's a reason people hate cops"; "Most agencies try to be cooperative, helpful, but the police have a very limited ability to cooperate."
After years of bickering, the two agencies did not squabble on Sept. 11. They simply did not communicate. "There was not a link," Police Commissioner Kelly acknowledged.
Asked if the incident command system called for police, fire and other agencies to share a post, Commissioner Kelly said: "Well, it should. And we're getting there."
On paper, the Police and Fire Department have agreed since 1993 to share the police helicopters during high-rise fires, and to practice together. Neither agency has any records of joint drills, but Sgt. Mike Wysokowski, a police spokesman, said that members of the police Aviation Unit believed a "familiarization flight" was conducted for the Fire Department a year, or perhaps a year and half, before Sept. 11.
No familiarization flights were taken from Sept. 11 through mid-June, he said.
As important as helicopter access might have been on Sept. 11, the gulf between the two departments is formed around everyday, earthbound business.
On that morning, the Police Department's elite Emergency Service Unit sent teams into both towers. Trained in rescue tactics, the E.S.U. police officers often tackle the same kinds of work as firefighters.
In the stairwells, members of both services helped each other carry equipment, administer first aid and pass messages.
The police emergency officers did not, however, check in with the fire commanders who were in charge of the rescue.
"They report to nobody and they go and do whatever they want," said Chief Turi, who retired earlier this year as a senior safety officer for the Fire Department.
Inside: Part 1 -
Part 2 -
Part 3 -
Part 4 -
Part 5
