Archives of interviews, dispatches tapes, phone logs . . . of 9/11

From The New York Times and the city of New York:

“Faced with a court order and unyielding demands from the families of victims, the city of New York yesterday opened part of its archive of records from Sept. 11, releasing a digital avalanche of oral histories, dispatchers’ tapes and phone logs so vast that they took up 23 compact discs.

For the first time, about 200 accounts of emergency medical technicians, paramedics and their supervisors were made public, revealing new dimensions of a day and an emergency response that had already seemed familiar.

In details large and small, the accounts of the medical personnel – uniformed workers who were often overlooked in many of the day’s chronicles, but were as vital to the response and rescue efforts as any others – provide vivid and alarming recollections.

They spoke of being unable to find anyone in authority to tell them where to go or what to do. Nearly from the moment the first plane struck the World Trade Center, they had little radio communication. As their leaders struggled to set up ordinary procedures for a “mass casualty incident,” the crisis gathered speed by the minute.”

You can find the archives here.