Too Hot to Handle

In the wake of last September's terrorist attacks, journalists have filed thousands of stories covering virtually every angle of the historic event and its broad impact. Yet as the first anniversary approaches, one crucial story remains strangely under-reported. It involves the Fire Department of New York, universally praised for the extraordinary sacrifices its members made that day.

Vanity Fair immortalized them in a portrait. Last fall NBC turned its emergency-rescue drama "Third Watch" into a stirring tribute to the true-life heroics of New York rescue workers, and last month the network aired a prime-time FDNY special, "Firehouse." New York firefighters will soon be honored with a new U.S. postage stamp, and Bruce Springsteen sings their praises on his new CD.

In a prologue to a new book of Sept. 11-related FDNY photographs, called "Brotherhood," former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani insists "not a single firefighter died in vain that terrible day." Instead, Giuliani compares the firefighters to the soldiers who stormed the beaches of Normandy in one of the decisive battles of World War II. "They were responsible for orchestrating the most successful rescue operation in the history of our nation," Giuliani writes of the modern-day heroes.

Yet behind that brave face of selfless heroic deeds, now almost uniform agreement has emerged within the fire-service community that the FDNY's rescue effort on Sept. 11 was seriously flawed and that perhaps dozens, if not hundreds, of firefighters died unnecessarily when the twin towers collapsed.

It's an important story, and one that both Giuliani and the current mayor, Michael Bloomberg, have fought to suppress. But with one notable exception, news operations in New York and nationwide haven't aggressively pursued it. Eager to document the FDNY's bravery and sacrifice that day, and filling their pages and the broadcasts with stories heavy on heart-wrenching sentiment, most news teams have failed to examine soberly what went wrong or whether the staggering firefighter death toll could have been avoided.

Clues have been leaking out for months. FDNY Deputy Chief Charles Blaich last January conceded at a public fire-safety seminar that commanders had "lost control" of the rescue process at the World Trade Center. And in an interview with Salon, Blaich said the critical presentation has cost him a promotion. Yet only the New York Times has pursued the story aggressively, weaving together a bleak portrait of a fire department that, while battling a disaster few could have ever imagined, was crippled by mechanical breakdowns as well as errors in judgment.

Newsday and the New York Daily News have broken only isolated stories; the Daily News has been faulted more recently by critics for showing too much deference to the Fire Department and City Hall. National news organizations have largely failed to ask pointed, disquieting questions about the World Trade Center emergency response and what the breakdowns said about the leadership of former Mayor Giuliani.

"The press is not doing enough to ask tough questions," complains Sally Regenhard, whose son Christian, a rookie New York firefighter, died in the terror attack on the World Trade Center. "I'm very dissatisfied with the press -- I expected so much more. Where's '20/20,' or '48 Hours,' or 'Frontline' on this story? Even the New York Times, which is running all this stuff, seems to be trying not to step on toes. I wish they would step on toes. Toes are crying out to be stepped on. But there's this aura around the Fire Department and everybody's untouchable."

The Times' stories have been based in part on leaks from a study released Monday by the McKinsey & Co. consulting firm. The findings are stunning: FDNY chiefs were working with defective radios and often could not communicate their orders to evacuate. The same radio system had failed eight years earlier, during the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Caught up in the confusion and urgency of the moment, hundreds of on- and off-duty firefighters streamed into the towers without checking in with superiors, making it virtually impossible to keep track of their locations.