from confusion over which personnel were assigned to which frequency. Fur-
thermore, when the South Tower collapsed the overall FDNY command post
ceased to operate, which compromised the FDNY's ability to understand the
situation; an FDNY marine unit's immediate radio communication to FDNY
dispatch that the South Tower had fully collapsed was not conveyed to chiefs
at the scene.The FDNY's inability to coordinate and account for the different
radio channels that would be used in an emergency of this scale contributed
to the early lack of units in the South Tower, whose lobby chief initially could
not communicate with anyone outside that tower.
were contemplating the possibility of imminent additional terrorist attacks
throughout New York City. Had any such attacks occurred, the FDNY's
response would have been severely compromised by the concentration of so
many of its off-duty personnel, particularly its elite personnel, at the WTC.
in unified fashion to an incident at the WTC. Many officers reporting from the
tunnel and airport commands could not hear instructions being issued over the
WTC Command frequency. In addition, command and control was complicated
by senior Port Authority Police officials becoming directly involved in frontline
rescue operations.
lizing thousands of officers for major events requiring crowd control, its
technical radio capability and major incident protocols were more easily
adapted to an incident of the magnitude of 9/11. In addition, its mission that
day lay largely outside the towers themselves. Although there were ESU teams
and a few individual police officers climbing in the towers, the vast majority of
NYPD personnel were staged outside, assisting with crowd control and evacu-
ation and securing other sites in the city. The NYPD ESU division had firm
command and control over its units, in part because there were so few of them
(in comparison to the number of FDNY companies) and all reported to the
same ESU command post. It is unclear, however, whether non-ESU NYPD
officers operating on the ground floors, and in a few cases on upper floors, of
the WTC were as well coordinated.
department has made a substantial effort in the past three years to address
these.While significant problems in the command and control of the PAPD
also were exposed on September 11, it is less clear that the Port Authority
has adopted new training exercises or major incident protocols to address
these shortcomings.