Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Man Sought by 9/11 Panel Emerges to Tell of Chaos

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 22 May 2004 10:51:17 -0400

May 22, 2004

Man Sought by 9/11 Panel Emerges to Tell of Chaos
By IAN URBINA and KEVIN FLYNN

or several months, the national commission investigating the Sept. 11
attacks has been searching in vain for a man it believes could help
answer some of the most critical questions of what happened inside the
World Trade Center that day. His name is Lloyd Thompson, and for much of
that morning two and a half years ago he was posted at the epicenter of
chaos.

As the deputy fire safety director in the complex's north tower, Mr.
Thompson stood in the lobby, fielding panicked calls from those trapped
on the upper floors. He struggled to make evacuation announcements over
a public address system that was damaged by the plane crash. And, most
significant, he had a role in overseeing a powerful piece of radio
equipment that the commission believes is central to one of the core
mysteries of what went wrong that day: Why did fire chiefs have such a
hard time communicating with firefighters upstairs in the building?

Yesterday, weeks after the commission began sending him letters,
interviewing former colleagues and checking with employers, Mr. Thompson
emerged to tell his story. Contrary to what some investigators have
speculated, Mr. Thompson said that he did not believe he ever touched
the radio equipment known as a repeater, a device that amplifies the
hand-held radios firefighters use.
The panel found that the repeater was working that day but fire chiefs
mistakenly thought it was broken and stopped using it. The problem, the
panel said in a report earlier this week, is that someone forgot to push
a button, a mistake that created confusion about whether the repeater
was working.

But the button was indeed pushed, although not by him, Mr. Thompson said
yesterday as he gave an account that is at odds with the commission's
leading theory on what went wrong.

"There was total chaos, and the situation at the console was not
simple," he said in a telephone interview, referring to the security
desk in the lobby at which he was stationed. "I think the commission
will need to take a closer look at this."

Mr. Thompson's testimony is critical because communications difficulties
have emerged as one of the leading problems that hindered emergency
rescuers after the terrorist attack. The commission has concluded that
the repeater could have provided an effective communication link among
fire officials. Indeed, a fire chief in the south tower somehow later
discovered that the repeater channel was working and used it to
communicate as he climbed to the 78th floor.

These transmissions were captured in a tape recovered from the rubble
and proved that, for at least a part of the morning, the repeater was
working. But fire officials have consistently said the repeater did not
work reliably enough to have been used.
At least a third of the 343 firefighters who died on Sept. 11 were in
the north tower, where evacuation orders, issued before and after the
collapse of the south tower, were not heard by many firefighters. On
Wednesday, the families of some of those who died heckled former Mayor
Rudolph Giuliani as he testified before the commission because they said
they did not believe he was honestly discussing the communication and
other coordination problems.

Mr. Thompson said that he, too, continued to suffer the memories of that
day. "The most painful thing is that they died, but I'm still alive," he
said in an hour-long interview.

Mr. Thompson, who lives in Yonkers, said he wanted to rebut depictions
of him as a mystery man who had made himself unavailable to the
investigation. He said he never received the commission's letters or
knew they were looking for him. "I was definitely not hiding. I've
actually been seeking them out, not the other way around," he said.
"I've been getting up every day and going to work just like a normal
citizen.''

Al Felzenberg, the commission's spokesman, said Mr. Thompson had left a
phone message at the panel's New York office yesterday but no one from
the commission had spoken to him yet. "The commission staff has tried to
locate him, and I know they are looking forward to speaking with him,"
Mr. Felzenberg said.

Mr. Thompson, who still works as a fire safety director in a building,
said the calls from the upper floors and the images from the lobby had
been impossible to forget. After a year of psychological counseling, he
said he still struggled with nightmares, and colleagues at work knew not
to ask about what happened.

Visits to the families of the victims help in healing, he said. But he
said he still could not watch video taken in the lobby that morning.

"It's too painful," he said, his voice breaking.

Mr. Thompson, a fire safety director for 17 years, said he grew up in
New York, dreaming of becoming a firefighter, but a spinal condition
prevented him from passing the physical test. Instead, he worked as a
fire safety director for private companies that help manage emergencies
in buildings. He had been working in the trade center for eight years at
the time of the terrorist attack and was employed by O.C.S. Security,
which held the security contract.

From a command desk in the lobby, he was responsible for watching the
building's various security and fire safety computer systems. A normal
emergency might mean that one alarm button on the console would light,
Mr. Thompson said. On Sept. 11, 2001, however, the panel was red with
panic calls. "The problem was that no one had any idea what had
happened," he said.
Mr. Thompson also sat near the console that operated the repeater, which
was installed after the 1993 trade center bombing, when firefighters
also had difficulty communicating with each other. Their radios have
historically had problems sending signals in high-rise buildings because
of the many layers of concrete and steel that must be pierced. The
repeater was designed to boost the signal.

The repeater was in 5 World Trade Center, an adjoining building, but it
could be operated from consoles in the lobbies of the north and south
towers. The consoles, which looked like phones, had several buttons, one
of which was pressed to turn on the system and a second that activated
the handset to talk through.

The commission concluded that the second button was not pressed down,
creating the perception that the repeater itself was not working when
fire chiefs tested it. Consequently, the chiefs decided to switch to
alternative radio channels that did not have the benefit of the booster.

Video from that morning shows Deputy Assistant Chief Joseph W. Pfeifer,
one of the first fire officials on the scene, asking Mr.  Thompson to
turn the repeater on. But Mr. Thompson said yesterday that when he
looked over to check the repeater, which was about five feet from his
post, it was already on. A red light that only came on when both buttons
were pressed was lighted, he said, and several supervisors confirmed
that the unit was operating.

But when Chief Pfeifer tested the system minutes later, he could not
communicate with another chief standing nearby in the lobby.  "I don't
think we have the repeater," the video shows Chief Pfeifer saying to the
other chief. "I pick you up on my radio, but not on the hard wire," he
said, referring to the repeater's handset.

Chief Pfeifer has said he believed that he could not rely on the
repeater at that point and switched to another radio channel. A
spokesman for the Fire Department, Francis X. Gribbon, said yesterday:
"There is overwhelming evidence that the repeater could not possibly
have worked correctly and completely throughout the morning. Chief
Pfeifer did not have the luxury of time to figure out what was wrong
with it."

Without the boosted channel, a fire chief who tried to call units down
to the north tower lobby at 9:32 a.m., about half an hour before the
south tower collapsed, found that no one acknowledged his message. A
second evacuation order given by Chief Pfeifer, after the south tower
had collapsed, was heard by some firefighters.

Chief Pfeifer has said it was a good thing that he was not using the
repeater channel when he made that announcement because the repeater
antenna was damaged as the south tower collapsed, and thus no
firefighters would have heard his order. Mr.  Thompson agreed. "They
would have been in trouble once the repeater system went down with the
collapse of the first building," he said. "They would have had no other
method for communicating."

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owned the trade
center and installed the repeater at the Fire Department's request, has
said it worked that morning. Mr. Thompson said he was not sure who was
responsible for turning the repeater on.

On Monday, Mr. Thompson will release a statement of his account to the
commission, said Ronald L. Kuby, his lawyer. Mr.  Thompson said he hoped
to move forward with plans to be married once the attention subsided.
For now, he said, the anguish of Sept. 11 has returned, not just for him
but for his family and fiancée.

"It's my duty to help in whatever way I can to get answers about the
events that day," he said, "and I'm eager to do that. But in the end, I
just want to get back to the healing process, which has taken a long
time to start."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/22/nyregion/22warden.html?ex=1085803200&en=6ed6bf496c5d6c6f&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

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From: "Mike Edwards" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 22 May 2004 12:33:57 -0400

Good Day,
With the upcoming release of the i315 and i325 can anyone here tell me if
the the Nextel network is ISO enabled in the southeast? or anywhere for that
matter?
I am considering upgrading to one of these phones and would like to know if
this feature is usable in the event of another fiber fiasco like the one
last weekend in N.C./S.C.
If not is there any plan in the forseeable future to enable this feature?
It seems to me that as hard as Nextel pushes their service at public safety
this would be an EXCELLANT feature to have enabled. Just to clarify I am not
talking about Mototalk but independent site operation which as I understand
allows for DC calls to function within the coverage area of that 1 cell site
to another handset in that cell site coverage area.
Thanks
Mike
Oxford GA

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