New York officials release more emergency calls made on Sept. 11

A fire safety officer spelled his name, gave directions to the burning World Trade Center south tower and told an emergency services dispatcher he had to get off the phone to help injured people in the lobby moments before the tower collapsed and killed him.

Larry Boisseau's call to the 911 emergency services hot line was one of 19 the city released Friday following a lawsuit filed by The New York Times and some victims' families.

Fifteen of the latest calls had already been partially released; the new portions were police operators speaking to callers before transferring the calls to Fire Department dispatchers.

Most of the calls, including 130 released last spring, included only the operator's side of the conversations, to protect callers' privacy. Boisseau's side of the 911 call was released because he was working as a fire safety director for OCS Security. Colleagues said he spent part of the morning helping rescue dozens of children who evacuated from a nearby day care center.

He later called 911, and the police operator tried to reach emergency services for Boisseau, but the operator's call to a paramedic went unanswered for nearly three minutes while she spoke to Boisseau, 36.

"EMS is not picking up," she told Boisseau.

"OK, maybe you can keep trying," he said. "I gave you my information. I kind of gotta get going. This is my job. Fire safety."

The rest of the new calls released Friday played only the operator's side of the conversations, recalling eerie tableaus presented in earlier tapes: operators trying to calm down callers trapped on the 84th floor, the 89th floor, the 93rd floor, the 105th floor. Some operators became exasperated, and others weren't sure how to advise trapped callers.

"He wants to know what to do," one police operator asked a colleague after taking a call from someone on the 105th floor of the south tower. "Should he break the windows?"

Boisseau called the 911 operator at 9:52 a.m.

"Two World Trade Center. We have injured people in the lobby of the building. They need medical attention," he said.

Boisseau later offers directions to the burning south tower _ "It's between Liberty Street and Church Street" _ and spelled his name before signing off. The operator wishes him "good luck" four minutes before the building collapses.

The city released transcripts of 130 calls from people trapped in the towers in March. In August, more than 1,600 previously undisclosed calls were released. And a year earlier, thousands of pages of emergency workers' oral histories and radio transmissions were made public.

The New York Times and families of Sept. 11 victims sued the city for access to the emergency calls and firefighters' oral histories. Attorneys said they wanted to find out why victims had trouble evacuating the towers after two hijacked jetliners crashed into them, and what information dispatchers gave to rescuers and workers in the buildings before they collapsed.