Final Reports of the Federal Building and Fire
Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster
NIST NCSTAR 1-8: The Emergency Response Operations
The September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center (WTC)
caused the deaths of 2,749 people. Included in the group were
approximately 421 emergency responders from The Fire Department of the City
of New York (FDNY), The New York City Police Department (NYPD), the Port
Authority Police Department (PAPD), The Port Authority of New York and New
Jersey (PANYNJ), from WTC security firms, and volunteer emergency responders
who were in the WTC area of the city when the attack occurred. This report
addresses the operations of these emergency responders, the technologies
used during WTC operations, and the guidelines and practices that governed
these operations. The objectives of this study were to 1) fully document
what happened during the response by the emergency services to the attacks
on the WTC, up to the time of collapse of WTC 7; (2) identify issues that
need to be addressed in changes to practice, standards, and codes; (3)
identify alternative practices and/or technologies that may address these
issues; and (4) identify R&D needs that advance the safety of the fire
service in responding to massive fires in tall buildings.
The approach taken was to conduct a comprehensive search for data related
to the emergency response on September 11, 2001, analyze the data, and
report on the findings. Data gathering included the collection of written
documents, electronic recordings, visual data (both photographs and video),
and first-person accounts of what happened during WTC operations. Results
from this investigation show that the emergency responders were faced with
the greatest disaster of the last 100 years in the United States. The
emergency responders had one common focus: to save as many victims of this
attack as possible. During the response, emergency responders had to
function under war-like conditions as they carried out their rescue and
evacuation efforts. Emergency responders operated with equipment, human
endurance, and emergency response practices that were stretched well beyond
normal limits. This report discusses how the emergency response activities
and equipment were challenged. The emergency responders paid a heavy price
in the loss of hundreds of their own lives when the WTC buildings collapsed.
This study focused on the following topics:
- emergency responder dispatch and response to the WTC
- emergency responder access to the WTC site and towers
- command and control associated with the emergency response
- communications during operations and the of communications in tall
buildings
- firefighting in high-rise buildings and the evacuation from the WTC
towers
- emergency responder situational awareness and the physiological
impact of conducting
- operations in tall buildings
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WINZIP (.zip) file. (19.4 MB)
