Don't Look Back by Joe Calderone

Author:Joe Calderone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: N/A
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Published: 2022-04-26T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

December 16, 2001

The next day when Juan got to the office, his first call was to the professor at John Jay. If anyone would know what a “repeater” was, it would be him.

“Need your help on a technical question,” Juan said, skipping the usual pleasantries and chitchat. “What’s a ‘repeater?’”

“That’s an easy one,” replied Prof. Costello. “The radios the FDNY uses are more than fifteen years old, and the technology they operate on is even older. They basically are great if you are in a house fire and need to talk to the guy in the next room, but they suck in high-rise fires. The signal they use isn’t strong enough. To get around this, in some buildings the FDNY put in ‘repeaters.’ They basically are devices that boost the radio signal so that it can go farther. The cops have them installed all over the city for their radios because they are always communicating with central dispatch. The FDNY, though, hasn’t caught up with the NYPD. I think they put them in a couple of places, and I’m pretty sure the Trade Center is one place they installed one after the 1993 WTC bombing. Why are you asking about the repeater?”

“I’m not sure yet. There may have been a problem with it,” Juan said. “That’s what I’m hearing from a source. Does that make any sense to you?”

“If the repeater wasn’t working that would explain a lot,” the professor replied. “That would mean the handy-talkie radios the guys carried as they went up the stairs probably weren’t working, at least not in terms of being able to communicate with the brass manning the command center in the lobby or nearby. That would mean they were being sent up blind with no way of being updated on the overall situation from the command post.”

“But you said the cops had repeaters all over the place? Wouldn’t their radios still be working, even if the FDNY repeater at the WTC wasn’t?”

“Yeah, but you are forgetting a critical issue,” the professor explained. “The FDNY radios and the NYPD radios are not what they call ‘interoperable.’ They are not on the same frequency. Essentially, they can’t talk to each other, especially if they have separate command posts, which is what happened on 9/11. I’m hearing the cops were not present at the FDNY command post in either the North Tower or, later on, when they moved it to West Street.”

“Wait a minute, run that by me again,” Juan said, wanting to make sure he got it correct. “The cops and the FDNY radios can’t talk to each other?”

“That’s right, not directly,” the professor repeated. “And if the FDNY repeater at the Trade Center wasn’t working, the FDNY brass had no way of talking to those units they were sending up into the Towers.

“You have to get that confirmed. If you can nail down that the repeater wasn’t working, you’ve got a hell of a story,” the professor said.

This would explain what Mary had overheard at City Hall.

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