More 9/11 Tapes Are Set for Release

The city of New York plans to release 1,613 phone call recordings today containing the voices of emergency workers and a trapped civilian at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

This will be the third time in a year that the public will revisit the events and voices of that day.

Most of the 911 calls that will be released today are from Fire Department employees to fire dispatchers. There also are 10 calls from people trapped in the towers, but most of their voices won’t be heard.

The Fire Department is releasing these recordings now because of an oversight that occurred after a March decision by the New York State Court of Appeals to release all calls.

The department overlooked another tape of phone calls made between 8:45 and 10:45 a.m. on Sept. 11, the statement said.

One of the calls to be released is from Melissa Doi, who was trapped on the 83rd floor of the south tower. Part of her recording -- in which she screams, “We’re all going to die” -- was among those played at the terrorism trial of Zacarias Moussaoui earlier this year.

That excerpt will be the only time a civilian voice is heard on today’s tapes. The other nine voices have been redacted because the Court of Appeals verdict also held that words uttered by civilians be kept private.

Doi’s tape, along with two others, had not been released at that time because they were intended as evidence in Moussaoui’s trial.

Sally Regenhard of the Bronx, who lost her firefighter son Christian, said the tapes would help families construct a picture of what exactly happened to their relatives in their last moments.

The first release of tapes and transcripts was Aug. 12, 2005, when about 12,000 pages of oral histories from firefighters and 900 minutes of radio transmissions were made public. The second release came March 31 -- about 130 calls to 911 operators.

The city had at first sought to block release of the material, but lost a three-year court battle that went to the state Court of Appeals.

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Newsday staff writer T.W. Farnam contributed to this report.