Posted on 05/20/2004 6:12:02 AM PDT by OESY
The value of the national commission now investigating the terrorism of Sept. 11, 2001, is that it forces the nation to look beyond its feelings of grief and awe, and grimly assess the things that could have been done better. This is a service to the future, but it is never a dismissal of the heroism of the past. We needed these respectful but hardheaded men and women to ask tough questions about the Bush administration's vigilance before 9/11, and this week we needed to hear their stern questions about New York City's emergency response to the attack on the World Trade Center.
It is tragically clear that the firefighters, the city and Port Authority police, and the emergency medical service workers performed with far more bravery than coordination. Firefighters' lives might have been saved, for instance, if they had received a warning from police aircraft when each tower seemed ready to collapse. But the information never went out on the Fire Department's separate communications system; no fire official was in the loop to make sure the alarm was spread.
The rivalry between the two great institutions, the Fire Department and the Police Department, is an old story. But it is one the city can no longer afford to tolerate. It may have taken the arrival of outsiders, in the form of the investigating committee and some of its witnesses, to force New Yorkers to see how irrational all this looks to the outside world. The fire chief from Arlington, Va., who directed the rescue after the attack on the Pentagon testified that first-responder professionals from other parts of the nation found it "unconscionable" that New York struggled with questions of unified command control at major disasters.
The continuing power of the police and firehouse cultures to head off any reform that seems threatening was still clear in Mayor Michael Bloomberg's insistence before the commission that there was no "battle of the badges," only isolated episodes in the lower ranks. If that was all there was to the problem, Mr. Bloomberg would certainly have solved it by now. He would also have undoubtedly produced a plan for future coordination that looked more specific than the vague statement of good intentions he unveiled this month. And even that minimal reform would not have waited until the 9/11 commission was virtually on the city's doorstep.
Everyone who had any connection to emergency preparedness before 9/11 must — and certainly should — continue to ask himself or herself whether everything possible had been done to avert the disaster and save lives once it had occurred. That painful probing is the nation's best protection for the future. To point out, as former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani did yesterday, that the terrorists were responsible is both accurate and unhelpful. Mr. Giuliani was a hero on Sept. 11. But in the years before, for all his vaunted toughness, he was never able to turn the city's emergency response effort into one united and effective operation. Despite the lessons of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the city went into its next terrorist crisis with an inadequate 911 system — after the attack, operators were not given the information they needed to advise people inside the towers or the rescuers trying to save them. The perennial problems with communication equipment had not been resolved. The workers inside the towers had continued to get inadequate training for a crisis.
Under Mr. Giuliani, as under Mr. Bloomberg, the city's Office of Emergency Management was theoretically charged with settling control disputes at major disasters. But, apart from the embarrassment of having to flee its own specially designed new offices in the smoke of Sept. 11, the agency did not have the clout or executive support to confront the deep interagency rivalries. By ignoring this, and by arguing in his testimony that there had been no serious problems, Mr. Giuliani did no favor to the men and women who continue to serve the city as firefighters and police officers.
The emphasis must now be on the future. It is clear that the city needs to appoint an emergency response czar with serious power, and very possibly with direct control over the teams within the Police and Fire Departments that are expected to be first responders in the event of a major disaster. It is hard to imagine how these teams can be made to work together as efficiently as necessary unless they are divorced from their current work cultures.
It is also hard to imagine, given the performance of Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Giuliani at the hearing, that city leaders will find either the political capital or the spine to make this happen. If they don't, the federal government should insist that the funds for expanding the city's emergency response services be tied to major, demonstrable reforms.
Mr. Bloomberg was absolutely right when he complained to the commission that Congress had turned homeland security into a pork-barrel outlet by ballooning the roster of cities provided with emergency security aid. It has grown from the 7 cities most obviously threatened to 80, and the city's net share has shrunk even as terrorist threats have intensified. Mr. Bloomberg said New York State had tumbled to 49th place in aid per person, receiving $5.47 per capita, compared with $38.31 for Wyoming.
Tom Ridge, the secretary of homeland security, openly sympathized, saying the administration was already trying to change Congress's formula to rechannel the money "where we know the threat exists." New York City, which has done so much with its own strained resources, will have to have substantially more help from the federal government to provide the security its residents deserve. Washington can provide double protection if it ties those increased dollars to the reforms in emergency-response coordination that no mayor seems to have the capacity to make on his own.
Oh, yes. Let's not forget how "embarrassing" it was that Guliani had to flee those offices.
Not exactly how I would have stated it. No bias here.
"We needed these respectful but hardheaded men and women to ask tough questions about the Bush administration's vigilance before 9/11, and this week we needed to hear their stern questions about New York City's emergency response to the attack on the World Trade Center."
Oh please. How stupid do you think everyone is that by inserting emotionally laden words such as "respectful," and "stern," we will suddenly quiet down as though in the Court.
The Commission members are partisan hacks spewing the most insulting, rhetoric-laden, snide remarks disguised as interrogation.
NYT, be ashamed..not possible, I know...
"Firefighters' lives might have been saved, for instance, if they had received a warning from police aircraft when each tower seemed ready to collapse."
Has the Times forgotten that earlier yesterday morning that testimony has revealed that no one expected the towers to fall? When Giuliani felt his building shake and heard "the tower collapsed," he thought initially it was the radio antenna they were referring to. How could enough advance warning been given to those inside to save lives? The building tumbled as fast as Newton's apple. There were no advance warning signs that could have saved lives if disseminated. The Times is delusional, or worse.
"But in the years before, for all his vaunted toughness, he was never able to turn the city's emergency response effort into one united and effective operation."
Perhaps the Times doesn't remember that it had led the opposition, nay ridicule, of Giuliani's effort to establish an emergency command center.
"...found it "unconscionable" that New York struggled with questions of unified command control at major disasters."
The Times fails again to support its position with any evidence of the type of police-fireman conflicts that may have existed in the ranks that in any way contributed to a greater loss of life. Meanwhile, the Times conveniently fails to note for the sake of its argument and to the detriment of the truth that 99+% of the occupants below the fireline -- i.e., those with a reasonable chance of being rescued, were indeed evacuated safely. The police and firemen and their leadership right up through Giuliani deserve our plaudits, not the Times' pitchforks. The Times has become, despite its claims, an impediment to learning lessons from 9/11.
JUST ANOTHER BIG WASTE OF TAXE PAYERS MONEY.
What a pitiful little newspaper is the NYT.
The Left has officially declared war on Rudy Giuliani. She Who Must Be Obeyed (Hillary) has decreed it.
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