New York City Will Release Tapes of Calls Made to 911 on 9/11

By Linda Orlando

Last year the New York Times sued New York City for access to all of the emergency calls placed to 911 during the horrific events that unfolded on September 11, 2001. An appeals court ruled that the public would only be allowed to hear the voices of the 911 operators who answered the calls, and other government employees, but not the voices of the callers. The court said that the frantic calls of victims from the burning towers were too packed with emotion for them to be released without the consent of their families. The issue has been wrangled in court since that time.

On Wednesday a state judge ruled that the city must provide the public with the names of the 28 people who have been identified so far among the tapes of nearly 130 emergency calls made that day. But on Thursday, the city filed an appeal, which effectively puts a halt to the release of those tapes for the moment. The Times will now have to seek an appellate hearing to lift the stay. The newspaper, along with relatives of several Sept. 11 victims, hopes that the tapes may offer a glimpse into the experiences of the 2,749 people who were killed when the twin towers came down.

Sally Regenhard, whose son was one of the firefighters killed that day, is one of the plaintiffs joining the Times in its lawsuit. Regenhard said that allowing only half of the conversations to be heard isn’t enough, and that the public should be allowed to hear both sides of the conversations to get a true picture of what was happening inside the towers. "What we’re getting is only half the truth, half of the story," Regenhard said, adding that if families were able to listen to tapes of the callers who have not yet been identified, they may be able to hear their loved ones’ voices. "Only a mother could listen to recordings and maybe hear some glimmer of your child’s voice, even though his name may have been garbled," she said.

The victims’ families are represented by attorney Normal Siegel, who told reporters that he wants to learn whether operators’ instructions may have affected the evacuations of the buildings. "We will potentially hear Operator A say, 'Go to the roof,'" Siegel said. "We might hear Operator B say, 'Stay in place. We're coming to get you.'" The appeals court ruling will allow the release of the 28 tapes to the public only if the families of those callers consent to the release. So far, at least three families have asked to listen to the voices of their loved ones during their final hours.

One of those victims was Christopher Hanley, 35, an employee of Radianz, a division of Reuters. Hanley’s parents shared the tape of their son’s emergency call with The New York Times. Hanley made a call to 911 from the Windows on the World restaurant just four minutes after a hijacked airplane struck the north tower. He had been attending a conference there, and he had to repeat his story to two different dispatchers. "Yeah. Hi. I'm on the 106th floor of the World Trade Center. We just had an explosion on the, on the like 105th floor," Hanley told a dispatcher. Later, he says, 'We have smoke and…it's pretty bad." The dispatcher tells him to "sit tight. Do not leave, okay?" The police dispatcher then transferred the call to the fire department dispatcher, who told Hanley to stay put and promised that firefighters were on the way. "All right," Hanley replied. "Please hurry."