The Attack Of Jim Dwyer And Kevin Flynn's '102 Minutes'

During the attack of 9/11 everyone involved had a lack of communication and technology, but today both of those have improved immensely. Authors Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn explain what happened on September 11th and shares multiple stories from people both inside and outside of the towers in their novel “102 Minutes.” One of the biggest problems addressed in the novel was the lack of communication between the police and fire departments, and also with communicating to the people in the building. The authors talk about the problems between the NYPD and the FDNY by stating, “...the city spent thousands of dollars for brand-new radios that would allow police and fire commanders to communicate with each other, but these… devices sat unused, on the
The following year after the 1993 bombing the city changed the policy so that firefighters would be lifted to the roofs by police helicopters if people were in danger in high rises. This sadly never happened on 9/11 because the fire chief couldn’t find the radio to contact his dispatchers that would then forward the message to the police. A new form of communication has been created since then that is used with wireless technology so that if a server is disrupted all of the devices will still work. In the article “United States Department of Homeland Security” the author Judson Knight explains another form of new technology to help awareness of terrorist attacks. “Americans are likely to be most familiar with the DHS advisory system, whereby colors are equated with levels of threat. Green indicates low threat, and blue a guarded condition…” (Knight). This is important because before the airplanes hit the building the machines would have spiked red which means that there is lots of danger
In the article “9-11 Commission, Homeland Security, and Intelligence Reform” written by the U.S. Senate Committee of Homeland Security, they explain multiple different acts. The first act talked about is The Homeland Security Act, “In 2001 and 2002, the Committee led the effort to consolidate the 22 disparate agencies... into one Department of Homeland Security with the unified purpose of protecting the homeland” (“9-11 Commision, Homeland Security, and Intelligence Reform”). This act was the first big leap of public safety throughout the United States. Some believe that the DHS was the most necessary structural government change since the National Security Act in 1947 (Knight). One of the first times that the DHS was tested was when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. The U.S. Senate explained the act by saying,“...the Committee drafted and Congress enacted the Post Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006, which strengthened the Department’s ability to protect the nation from “all hazards” – whether natural or man-made” (“9-11 Commision, Homeland Security, and Intelligence Reform”). This is significant because this was the first test of the DHS. After the hurricane hit, the government realized that they needed to be better prepared for disasters so that is why they went through with the post reform act to fix everything that did not go