Argumentative Essay On 102 Minutes

Argumentative Essay In this new modern age of technology that connects billions of people from around the world, communication has reached a point where it can almost not be improved upon because so many people from opposite sides of the earth can talk to each other at the push of a button. But in 102 Minutes by Dwyer and Flynn, an in depth story by the New York Times, and a story by CBS News the quality of communication during the attacks is given new light and is explained in great detail. The sources point out crucial details about the failure of communication during the tragedies that occurred on September 11, 2001. The sources show how feuds between emergency services, outdated sources of communication, and differing instructions given

But as they were doing that, the emergency workers and other people in the buildings were not being warned about the impending collapse that had a possibility of happening, and this is because many of the firefighters were not receiving any messages due to the incredibly poor communications that were in place mainly in the fire department. During the moments leading up to the collapse of the south tower, the fire chief was being told that the towers were under the impending threat of collapse “Chief, these buildings are in imminent danger of collapse”(Dwyer and Flynn 208). But sadly the fire chief did not get the message to the firefighters in the south tower in time because he had never heard of a skyscraper collapsing after being on fire for only thirty minutes. But even before the fire chief was told at this time of the structural damage to the towers, Frank De Martini who was in the north tower told about the damage to the elevator shafts not long after the first plane hit “The elevator...the express elevators could be in jeopardy of falling”(Dwyer and Flynn 146). This means that the people on the ground were warned about the structural damage to at least the first tower before the second tower had even collapsed, but due to poor communications this vital information was

People in the south tower were confused in the first few minutes of the attack because the emergency alarms were going of in the tower which made the workers go down and evacuate. But this was stopped when a guard on the bottom floor told the people that everything was safe and that people could go back up to their offices (Dwyer and Flynn 32). This circumstance shows how on one hand the evacuation alarms are going off and people are being told to evacuate according to the tower safety guidelines, but when people reach the bottom floor to leave they are told that everything is safe and that they should go back to their desks by a Port Authority official. Also a woman in the South Tower was told on one hand to stay in place and wait for firefighters to reach her on the 84th floor while some of her other coworkers were told to start to find the stairs and evacuate the buildings by the 9-11 operators on the line (Roberts 1). This shows how even at the same time, different departments were not giving out the same commands to people in the towers. Some of the people were confused on whether to stay or to go because they had heard both commands and some of those people chose to stay which put their lives at risk especially if