Fallen firefighters' voices help fill some gaps

BY JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER | Newsday Staff Writer

August 17, 2006

When the second round of 9/11 recordings were released in March, fire Battalion Chief Dennis Devlin's words were like a cliff-hanger.

His recording, which ended with him being transferred to another dispatcher, led to a search for more tapes, which were released Wednesday.

Devlin is one of 21 dead firefighters whose voices came alive in the tapes.

"We had heard half of that phone conversation back in March," Glenn Corbett, an assistant professor of fire science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, said Wednesday. "The Devlin tape is a bigger jigsaw puzzle piece."

Devlin's recordings reveal a chaotic communications headache among emergency responders. Yet, Devlin's voice is calm, Corbett noted.

"This is a man who is calling from the south tower. He's very clear, very understandable," Corbett said.

At one point, he asks a dispatcher to get firefighters more "handy talkies" meaning hand-held radios, saying, "Uh, listen, I need you to do me something because we have no cell phone service anywhere because of the disaster."

City officials had failed to redact Devlin's name from the March release of recordings. His widow criticized the city because his family learned the words were public while watching television news. She could not be reached Wednesday.

The search for Devlin's missing conversation has led to more details that will help clarify what happened that day, said Corbett, who teaches a class about Sept. 11.

Devlin discusses the deployment of fire companies into the south tower. With an overloaded radio and telephone network, Devlin was forced to call the dispatcher. At one point, he asks to keep that line open.

"He knows that it might be difficult to get back to that dispatcher," Corbett said. "This was a critical link that he had to establish."

This is vital information that Corbett said he can use to compare against oral histories of what happened.

"It fills in the gaps and a lot of information," he said.