City to Release Thousands of Firefighter Oral Histories of 9/11 Today

[philb]

City to Release Thousands of Firefighter Oral Histories of 9/11 Today

A rich vein of city records from Sept. 11, including more than 12,000 pages of oral histories rendered in the voices of 503 firefighters, paramedics, and emergency medical technicians, will be made public today.
The city has announced that it will also release today a written log of calls to the 911 system, many from trapped office workers, as well as tapes of fire dispatchers. Other records, including tapes of 911 operators, are being assembled and are not yet ready for release, city officials said.

The New York Times sought the records under the freedom of information law in February 2002, but the Bloomberg administration refused to make them public and the newspaper sued the city. Earlier this year, the Court of Appeals, New York's highest court, ordered the city to release most, but not all, of the records.

Over the last three and half years, The Times has obtained some of these records through unofficial channels, and they can be found on the Web at www.nytimes.com/sept11. These include the dispatch tapes, nearly 100 of the Fire Department oral histories, and a log of calls to Emergency Medical Service dispatchers that were channeled through the 911 system.


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/12/nyregion/12records.html

Here are the unedited 9/11 tapes from the New York Fire Department, released today. ***

• Tape 1 - 22 (21 Missing)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8926416