Published : Sept. 9, 2011 - 10:49
NEW YORK (AFP) -- They called on God and they called for human help, but in the end the victims who phoned from 9/11's inferno knew there was no one to hear their screams.
Most of the nearly 3,000 people blown apart on September 11, 2001, when hijackers turned four planes into missiles against the Pentagon and New York's World Trade Center, died in their own, very private hell.
But thanks to the radios of first responders, mobile phones, the office phones in the Twin Towers and even onboard payphones in the hijacked airliners, some of the doomed were able to place a final message to the outside world.
The south tower of the World Trade Center begins to collapse after a terrorist attack on the New York landmark. (AP-Yonhap News)
Melissa Doi, a 32-year-old manager at IQ Financial Systems on the 83rd floor of the World Trade Center's South Tower, spoke to the emergency services for at least four minutes.
Doi, her terror-stricken voice contrasting starkly with the purposefully emotionless tone of the operator, described how the heat is making it hard to breathe.
"I"m going to die aren't I?" she cried.
"No, no, no, no, no." the operator responded.
"I'm going to die."
"Ma'am, ma'am, say your prayers," the operator said, trying to console her.
"Please God," Doi said.
The conversation apparently ended shortly after, Doi crying in a ragged
voice: "help!"
Among the other futile calls to the emergency services was a desperate last cell phone contact from insurance broker Kevin Cosgrove, just as his 99th-floor office disintegrated in the South Tower.
"Oh my God.... Aaaaarrggggghhhh!" Cosgrove, vice president of brokerage firm Aon Corp, is heard shouting at 09:58 am, his voice fading, amid crashing sounds of the collapsing tower, before the line cuts.
Passengers and crew on the four airliners also made heart-breaking last attempts to reach out to the living.
Brave flight attendant Betty Ong, on American Flight 11 from Boston, called ground control, calmly describing how two colleagues had been stabbed and "the cockpit's not answering the phone."
"I think we're getting hijacked," she said at 08:19 am. Less than half an hour later Ong and the rest of those on the plane disappeared in a fireball in the North Tower.
Alice Hoagland, mother of United Flight 93 passenger Mark Bingham, tried to call her son after seeing the shocking news. He didn't answer, so she told him, her voice remarkably calm and mother-like: "Try to take over the aircraft....
Group some people and do the best you can to get control."
Bingham, whom she calls "sweetie" in the message, is believed to have helped lead an insurrection against the hijackers that sent the plane crashing into a Pennsylvania field, rather than its likely target of Washington, DC.
Seated on United Flight 175 just minutes before it smashed into the South Tower, Brian Sweeney also left a message, in this case to his wife Julie.
Following a chirpy, automatic "message one!" heard on the answering machine, his words are simple and moving.
"Listen, I'm on an airplane that's been hijacked," he says. "I just want you to know I absolutely love you. I want you to do good, go have a good time.
Same to my parents and everybody. I totally love you."
The majority of victims' families never had a chance to say goodbye, or, in many cases of those killed at the World Trade Center, even to identify their vaporized remains.
But a different sort of anguish afflicted those who were able to exchange final words.
Beverly Eckert remembered how happy she was to receive a call from her husband Sean Rooney at about 09:30 am: she assumed he'd been able to escape from his office in the Twin Towers.
But "he told me he was on the 105th floor, and I knew right away that Sean was never coming home."
After long minutes of talking, he whispered "'I love you' over and over.
Then I suddenly heard this loud explosion," Eckert, who died in 2009, wrote in comments published this week in New York magazine.
Her husband was still alive but they both knew what the sound was: the tower starting to collapse.
"I called his name in the phone over and over. Then I just sat there huddled on the floor holding the phone to my heart."
급박했던 그날, 9/11테러 상황 속 음성 공개
'9•11 테러' 당시 당국자들 사이의 급박했던 대화 내용이 담긴 음성파일이 새롭게 공개됐다고 8일(현지시각) 미국 방송 ABC와 뉴스통신 AP 등이 보도했다.
이날 공개된 음성파일에는 납치된 여객기가 뉴욕 세계무역센터(WTC) 및 국방부 청사로 향하는 동안 조종사와 지상 관제사, 군 당국자 사이에 주고받았던 대화가 그 대로 저장돼 당시 상황이 얼마나 혼란스러웠는지를 짐작게 한다.
특히 관제사를 비롯한 당국자들은 테러가 발생하기 직전까지도 정확한 상황을 파악하지 못하고 우왕좌왕했던 것으로 보인다.
일례로 보스턴 관제센터 요원이 "문제가 생겼다. 납치된 비행기가 뉴욕으로 향하고 있다. F-16 전투기를 동원하든지, 지금 당장 조치가 필요하다"며 도움을 호소하자 "실제 상황이냐, 아니면 훈련이냐?"라며 당황한 말투의 답변이 이어진다.
심지어 9•11 테러범인 모하메드 아타가 항공교통관제 당국에 비행기 납치 사실 을 직접 알린 뒤에도 당시 북동 영공의 방공을 책임지고 있던 실무자 제임스 폭스 소령은 "훈련이 이렇게 실제 상황 같아 보이기는 처음"이라고 말한다.
이런 가운데 피랍 여객기가 WTC를 들이받자 뉴욕 관제사들은 일제히 "맙소사", "신이시여" 등의 외마디 탄성을 질렀다.
음성파일에는 비행기 납치범인 아타가 "아무도 움직이지 마라. 조금이라도 움직이면 당신도 다치고 비행기도 위험해진다. 조용히 있어"라고 탑승자들을 위협하는 육성도 녹음돼 있다.
그밖에 파일에는 비행기 탑승객들이 자신의 동료 2명이 칼에 찔렸으며, 납치범 들이 종석에 앉아 있다고 상황을 전하는 절박한 대화도 포함돼 있다.
이날 음성파일과 녹취록을 함께 공개한 미 학술잡지 '러트거스로 리뷰(Rutgers Law Review)'측은 "중요한 내용이 담긴 (9•11 테러 당일) 오전 대화들이 역사 속으로 사라질 수도 있었다"며 파일 공개 배경을 밝혔다. (연합뉴스)