Reply #74: About helicopters landing on the Trade Center roof

[DeadBroke]

In January of 2002 I attended a 9-11 Q&A forum held at NYC's Robert Wagner High School on the upper eastside. Someone in the audience asked the NYPD representative why the city's helicopters didn't land on the roofs to evacuate people. He said that roofs had obstructions that made landings impossible.

BUT he also added that even if they could have landed the odds for successful rescues weren't good. Helicopters he said have weight limits, and under the best conditions they can only carry X number people; a landing would have created panic, a mad rush, which would have created scenes similar to those during the fall of Saigon where people rushed, overloaded helicopters, hung from landing gear, got caught in tail rotors and so on.

Not looking to be combative, but the remarks of the NYPD representative at that 9-11 Q&A forum I attended contradict the statement in the original message: "THEIR PASS OVER THE ROOF OF THE NORTH TOWER TO SEE IF THEY COULD LAND" so I'm curious, in which documentary did they say that they were looking to land on the north tower? I don't recall hearing that in any show I watched - I may have simply missed it.

I'm also very curious and 'thinking out loud' as to what Gromling means when he says "HE WENT RIGHT UNDER OUR HELICOPTER." "RIGHT UNDER" can mean a lot of things. Only he knows what he means by it, and only he knows what it was he was trying to describe. "RIGHT UNDER" can be open to a lot of interpretation. Example: Does he mean 100 feet under, 500 feet, 1000 feet; you get the idea.

On a personal note, I had two experiences with NYPD helicopters I'd like to tell about. As I have explained in other messages, I have been a volunteer firefighter in NJ for several years, and on two occasions; both commuter train derailments with multiple injuries, NYPD helicopters assisted NJ State Police medical helicopters (called NorthStar and SouthStar) with evacuation of critically injured. My task each time was to secure helicopter LZ (landing zone) in nearby baseball fields.

The derailment at night forced me to also provide lighting at the LZ for the helicopters and ambulance crews. I had to use my fire engine to tow my fire department's telescoping light tower trailer. Everything went well with the all the landings, loadings and departures; but a few nights later when all the agencies met to critique and discuss the operation we found out that one pilot, a Lieutenant from NYPD had complained to his superiors that I set my LZ lights up "RIGHT UNDER HIM." No one present at the meeting had any clues as to what he was complaining about.