9/11 oral histories made public

City Releases Thousands of Oral Histories of 9/11 Attacks
A rich vein of city records from Sept. 11, including more than 12,000 pages of oral histories rendered in the voices of 503 firefighters, paramedics, and emergency medical technicians, was made public this morning.

The city began releasing the histories - a mosaic of vision and memory recalling the human struggle against surging fire, confusion, and horror - this morning. They were compiled by the New York City Fire Department beginning in October 2001, but to this date, no one from the department has read them all or used them for any official purpose.

Over the last three and half years, The Times has obtained some of these records through unofficial channels, and they can be found on the Web at www.nytimes.com/sept11. These include the dispatch tapes, nearly 100 of the Fire Department oral histories, and a log of calls to Emergency Medical Service dispatchers that were channeled through the 911 system.