The 9/11 Commission Report, as we recall arising from a mandate the President and his misguided nomination for CIA head originally opposed, brought forth enough thoughts to warrant multiple entries. I already introduced the report along with some thoughts on the first chapter. For the sake of convenience, I will split my remaining discussion into three parts: "Heroism and Horror," "Foresight ... Hindsight," and "Solutions?."
The most emotional chapters in the 9/11 Commission Report are surely the ones summarizing the events of that morning. I already mentioned the attacks themselves; the other chapter concerned "Heroism and Horror." -- the response on the ground. This is none too surprising. It is after all the demands of the survivors who truly brought the commission itself to fruition.
[ I also wish to recommend The Guys, originally a play (performed none too far from GZ), and now a movie. It concerns a NYPD fire department captain who lost eight men getting help from a writer (Sigourney Weaver) to prepare for the eulogies. (The fire department lost twenty two people on the job in the 1990s, over three hundred on 9/11.) I saw the play in early 2002, as the shock was just wearing off. It was an excellent eulogy in itself, the writer as our representative, listening, not sure what we can do in answer to what was lost that day.]
The events that morning highlighted the problems we had in preparing for and dealing with the that day. As the Report notes, this can be summarized into four failure categories: imagination, policy, capability, and management. For instance, a major problem that morning on the ground was coordination and communication, especially between agencies.
Only at the very last minute was anyone apparently aware the South Tower would fall and even then, most did not think the North Tower would. This was partly a result of failure of coordination, imagination (e.g. having a structural expert on site giving updates), and so forth. The disorder of the moment surely factored in as well. Many inside did not even realize the first one was hit and informing them was quite difficult (especially with poor radio communication):
"This chief also had a bullhorn and traveled to each of the stairwells and shouted the evacuation order: "ALL FDNY get the fuck out!" As a result of his efforts, many firefighters who had not been in the process of evacuating began to do so. ... At least one firefighter who was in the North Tower has supported that assessment [refusal to accept NYPD ESU officers "advice" to evacuate], stating that he was not going to take an evacuation order from a cop that morning.
The situation for the civilians was troubling as well. It bears noting that it is remarkable that "only" around twenty five hundred died in the Towers, considering the capacity was fifty thousand (many less were there). The ability of thousands to escape relatively smoothly in the midst of smoke, fire, and terror, is a case of courage under fire. Emergency personnel and reforms after the first bombing in 1993 (glow strips in stairwells were godsends to many) helped. Still, we have statements like these to suggest the system was just not set up to handle such a situation:
"The [911] callers were transferred back and forth several times and advised to stay put. Evidence suggests that these callers died."
I think it is justified to suggest that there were a few things that could have been done (including having better radios) to better prepare for such a tragedy. One must recall that the World Trade Center was already bombed once, talk of bombing local tunnels was in the air, and some future terrorist attack on New York City in particular was far from a pie in the sky notion. The final judgment would mostly be kind, perhaps, but it is foolhardy not to look back and consider what we could have done better -- this is the path to reform and did help after the 1993 attack.