NYC Releases 9/11 WTC Emergency Calls

People run from the collapse of World Trade Center Tower in this file photo of Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, in New York. New York City is scheduled to release phone calls Friday, March 31, 2006, made during the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, from 28 people trapped in the burning towers to the emergency 911 phone number. (AP Photo/Suzanne Plunkett, File) (Suzanne Plunkett - AP)

The transcripts have long blank spaces where the callers' words would have appeared, while detailing how word of the terrorist attack spread quickly through the operators.

"Another plane," says a 911 operator. "This is a whole new thing going on. ... They're saying it was a terrorist attack."

The operators, responding to the callers, offer various advice _ open a window, stay where you are, use soaking wet towels to keep out the smoke. In some cases, they are simply stymied by what they hear.

"I've got a guy on the 106th floor and he wants to know how to deal with a hundred people," a fire operator says. "He wants some directions. I don't know."

An order to release the names of 28 callers who identified themselves is under appeal, however one of those tapes, involving trade center victim Christopher Hanley, was made public Thursday after his parents released their audiotape to the Times.

Hanley's call came in at 8:50 a.m. _ four minutes after the first plane struck the World Trade Center.

"Yeah. Hi. I'm on the 106th floor of the World Trade Center. We just had an explosion on the, on the like 105th floor," the 35-year-old tells a dispatcher.

"We have about 100 people here. We can't get down the stairs," he says.

Later, he says, "We have smoke and _ it's pretty bad."

A dispatcher tells him: "Just sit tight. Just sit tight. We're on the way."

"All right," Hanley says. "Please hurry."

Sally Regenhard, who lost her firefighter son and is one of the plaintiffs, said the public should be allowed to hear both sides of the conversation, and that family members should be able to listen to all the voices, in case they recognize their loved ones.

"Only a mother could listen to recordings and maybe hear some glimmer of your child's voice," she said, "even though his name may have been garbled."

Kate Ahlers O'Brien, a spokeswoman for the city Law Department, cited the Court of Appeals ruling that said families' privacy interests outweighed the public's right to know.

"We felt that the calls obviously involved very gut-wrenching, emotional conversations by people, many of whom tragically were killed," she said.

The first transcripts released as part of the lawsuit came last August, when thousands of pages of oral histories of firefighters and emergency workers, as well as radio transmissions, were released. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owned the trade center and has its own police force, released all of its emergency recordings in 2003.