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At 9:27 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, New York Assistant Fire Chief Joseph Callan felt the north tower of the World Trade Center tremble. He later said he knew right then that the 110-story building was going to come down.
At 9:32 Callan announced over his radio, "All units in Building 1, come out, everybody down to the lobby."
Callan got a few confirmations, but there were hundreds of firefighters in the north tower. He repeated the call again, but it become increasingly clear that, once again, New York City firefighters' radios weren't working.
The fire department's radios didn't work inside the twin towers during the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, and they rarely worked in any of New York's thousands of high-rise buildings. According to a recent review of New York City emergency communication systems during the August blackout, fire and police department radios still don't perform reliably during emergency situations or in tall buildings.
Similar communication problems – radios that cannot find a clear channel amid the noise of other signals, radio systems that are not compatible with others in use – have also plagued the military during the Iraq conflict. New all-digital radio-receiver technology being developed by the Office of Naval Research is intended to eliminate these problems.
The new digital receivers being developed by the ONR will enable one radio to communicate across all of the military's systems, and will also boost transmission capability, according to Deborah Van Vechten, program officer in the Office of Naval Research's electronics division.
According to Van Vechten, Marines deployed in Iraq have been overwhelmed with the amount of communication equipment they are expected to use.
"Marines recounted numerous instances where units would call via one radio to verify that a message was received on another radio, while the receiving unit had just put that radio aside to monitor another system, since a previous unit had called asking about the receipt of a digital photo."
The digital receivers will be part of the Department of Defense's joint tactical radio system program (or JTRS), intended to develop a common radio system to be used throughout the U.S. military.
Current radio systems are not compatible with each other and require expensive hardware changes to communicate with other radios.
The JTRS system will use software-controlled radios that can be easily customized for multiple missions. Software can be modified or upgraded by inserting card modules, similar to the smart media cards used in digital cameras. The new radios can also be integrated with older systems, Van Vechten said.
The new radios will be part of the military's overall effort to make antennas that can perform many tasks. For example, there is an effort to push radar and communication transmissions through fewer antennas, eliminating the need to have an antenna for each system. These multitasking antennas also will integrate electronic warfare systems, which detect, jam or deceive enemy radars and weapons.
Currently, naval ships need to carry so many separate antennas for various functions that the vessels are becoming "antenna farms," said Joe Lawrence, director of ONR's surveillance, communications and electronic combat division.
The constant need for more antennas also requires extensive modifications in ship design to manage the added weight, Lawrence said.
David DeRieux of the Naval Center for Space Technology said the digital communication technology developed by the military has a definite place in civilian emergency rescue services, particularly to eliminate problems caused by incompatible communication systems.
Lack of compatibility and capability was the cause of much of the communication failures on Sept. 11. The police department's radio system was fully operational. But the police had no way of communicating information to the firefighters using radio, since one department's system wasn't capable of picking up transmissions from the other.
Right after the south tower collapsed, police helicopters moved above the north tower to check its status. In tapes of those transmissions, released in 2002, the pilot of one helicopter said of the north tower: "About 15 floors down from the top, it looks like it's glowing red ... it's coming down.... It's inevitable."
At 10:09 another pilot said: "Not too long to go now, evacuate everyone in the area of the second tower."
This information was relayed to the police inside the north tower 21 minutes before the building collapsed. Official reports indicate the police received these warnings and many managed to escape.
But according to two analyses performed by consulting firm McKinsey & Company and The New York Times, 121 firefighters whose lives could have been saved had they evacuated in time died when the north tower crumbled.
"The police and the firefighters could not work together on 9/11, they simply couldn't communicate," said Edward Hayes, a Manhattan attorney who has handled many of the victim-compensation lawsuits.
"I hate to say this, because 9/11 was an outstanding example of absolute, unwavering bravery. But it was also a technological and organizational disaster."
According to reports presented at city council meetings, the current fire department radios still do not reliably transmit messages in high-rise buildings. Chiefs often set up command stations at high-rise lobby desks and give the phone number to firefighters, who then use their cell phones to communicate.
During the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center, firefighters were forced to designate some colleagues as messengers, running commands from the captains outside to those inside who were trying to snuff out the smoldering bomb crater deep underneath the towers.
A new communications system for New York City's emergency workers is expected to be in place in early 2004, according to the mayor's office. The results of pilot programs and tests of various technology, including those developed for military use, are still being evaluated.
"It's unbelievable to me that a workable communications system still isn't in place," said attorney Hayes. "We need to give the police and firefighters what they need ... now."
