BY SARA KUGLER, The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) -- The 110-story north tower of the World Trade Center had just collapsed around Officer David Lim, trapping him in a dark and dusty stairwell saturated with jet fuel fumes, but his calls for help were calm.
“We are stuck in the stairway and have been here for a little while ... let’s see if we can step it up, a little bit,” he says in a call to a police command post, according to the final set of transcripts from emergency communications during the Sept. 11, 2001, attack.
The exchange took place at 10:56 a.m., nearly half an hour after the north tower collapsed.
Lim, a police dog handler for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the trade center and operates its own police force, was pulled alive from the 10-story debris pile five hours later with a couple of firefighters and an office worker.
The final set of Port Authority transcripts was made available Monday, four months after the agency released 2,000 pages of documents detailing what was said in thousands of other Sept. 11 emergency calls.
The first set of transcripts, released Aug. 28, included conversations between the trade center police desk and workers in the towers, some of whom perished.
The documents include communications between Port Authority police officers and department employees, along with calls among command centers at the trade center, the airports and several sites in New Jersey.
The Port Authority said the transcripts released Monday were delayed because the tapes were discovered later. The documents mostly cover calls with employees at LaGuardia International Airport and some labeled “portable device transmissions,” like Lim’s calls.
Lim had been evacuating workers from the building’s upper floors, and he was on the fourth floor when the tower fell.
But his beloved canine partner, Sirius, was not with him. Right after American Airlines Flight 11 struck the tower, Lim took Sirius down to the trade center basement, where he thought the dog would be safer.
“Sirius is in my office downstairs. Copy? Make sure he’s OK if something happens,” Lim says in one call, according to the transcripts. “If something happens, make sure he’s OK.”
The 5-year-old yellow Labrador retriever did not survive. His remains were found at the site a few months later and were ceremonially covered by an American flag as rescue workers removed them.