Emergency Responders After 9/11
During and after 9/11, emergency personnel, including firefighters, paramedics, and police responded to the emergency. This was, and still is, the largest rescue operation in US history. Despite, or perhaps because of, the scale of the operation, there were communication issues that led to the death of many, especially firefighters. Their radio system failed several times on the morning of 9/11, and it was not directly connected to the police communications system. This led to many deaths when the North Tower collapsed and resulted in 343 firefighters dying during the collapse of both towers.
As well as this, protocols for fires in the World Trade Center towers dictated that only the floors nearest the fire be evacuated, leading to many more civilian deaths when the towers collapsed. Despite these protocols, however; many people decided to evacuate the building even after receiving messages telling them not to. This most likely saved many lives.
Many firefighters who survived and were later interviewed would describe the lack of communication on 9/11 as an absolute catastrophe. The lives of many civilians and emergency personnel could have been saved had communication been better organized and not failed. In general, emergency responders were not aware of how dangerous the towers were and how likely they were to fall. It is impossible to know exactly how many lives could have been saved with better communication, but it is certain that communication systems and emergency protocols were not up to the task of handling such a disaster.
2 comments:
It is very clear that US was not ready for any terrorist attacks both through the lack of communication and lack of security in airports. Was this the largest rescue operation in US history because it had the biggest need of rescue, or have there been other US operations where they failed to rescue people?
While 9/11 may not be the largest terrorist attack by far in this world, it did bring a lot of awareness into the American people's lives about the issue of terrorism. In some ways. 9/11 was a wake-up call, telling people that such an awful thing that they usually only hear about in the news can also happen in their own first-world country.
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