MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN
Associated Press Writer
In-Depth: Read the NYC Press Release
View McKinsey Report - Increasing FDNY's Preparedness
NEW YORK (AP) -- Police and fire officials promised better planning, tighter control in major emergencies and improved communications as they released reports Monday examining their responses to the World Trade Center attack.
The reports, prepared by high-ranking department officials and management consultant McKinsey & Co., found that inadequate organization, communication and cooperation hurt the rescue effort.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta promised to work together more closely as they improved their individual departments' operations.
``There is no doubt in my mind that we are doing today what the heroes of 9-11 would have wanted us to do,'' Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. ``It is in that spirit that we present these reports.''
The Fire Department of New York, which lost 343 firefighters in the attack, and the New York Police Department, which lost 23 officers, have been widely lauded for their bravery Sept. 11. An estimated 25,000 people were evacuated from the twin towers that day in what Bloomberg called ``the most successful urban emergency evacuation in modern history.''
But both departments had some problems with staffing _ caused, ironically, by individual firefighters' and officers' zeal to save lives.
Kelly said too many officers responded directly to the scene Sept. 11. And the fire department report said some units failed to follow dispatchers' orders to report to staging points dispersed around the trade center area, instead heading directly into the twin towers.
The fire department also suffered serious radio problems that left many commanders and firefighters in the towers unable to communicate with each other, the report found. To make matters worse, the fire department's radios were incompatible with the police radio system.
Police and firefighters did not adequately cooperate on Sept. 11, according to the fire department report, which says, ``The FDNY and NYPD rarely coordinated command and control functions. ... There were no senior NYPD chiefs at the Incident Command Post established by the Fire Department.''
The NYPD report found that the department lacked sufficient counterterrorism training and a strong onsite command structure where top brass coordinated specific roles and duties.
Department officials and the consulting firm conducted dozens of interviews and reviewed hundreds of pages of computer records and hours of radio transmissions to create the reports.
Police, who have had historically tense relations with the fire department, are considering opening their citywide system of radio signal-boosting repeaters to the FDNY to help solve the communication problems.
The 105-page fire department document recommends that the department bolster its single hazardous materials unit with new firefighters and equipment, allowing the FDNY to better respond to potential chemical, biological or radiological attack.
It says the FDNY and neighboring fire departments should develop procedures to assist each other during massive emergencies.
Similarly, procedures should be developed under which the fire and police departments and agencies as diverse as the CIA and Coast Guard could better coordinate the dissemination of information.
Among those who died Sept. 11 were some of the fire department's senior commanders, including Chief of Department Peter Ganci. In the future, the report said, senior officers should oversee large-scale emergencies from the department's operations center instead of the disaster scene.
