Quality of Communication and 9/11
Imagine hearing sudden honking when driving home from work. Three tons of metal races towards the side of the car as hands fly up in protection and screeching pierces the ear. After collision, dispatch is called, but the only sound that is heard are murmurs. This is how lots of the victims of 9/11 felt when they tried to call the police. 9/11 was a terrorist attack coordinated by the terrorist group “Al-Qaeda”. They hit the twin towers of the world trade center and left the United States without 3,000 people. Communication was a large factor in the number of lives lost during 9/11. The quality of communication was more vital in lost lives than the quantity of communication during 9/11 because the first responders got different views from different people which led to a lack of perception of the situation.
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Understanding one another in communication is vital, especially in this case. When one person says something, another might not hear it correctly and understand the wrong message which can indirectly cause many people to die. In an article from CBS it says, “One worker called 911 to report that, "90-something floor was collapsing". But the 911 operator misreported that warning to the police, and the NYPD dispatcher also erred in reporting it to police at the scene. The message police eventually received was "106th floor is crumbling"” (Joel). This shows that the communication was so bad that the police got an incorrect message from its own operator. Lots of firefighters also could not hear each other very well. In The Atlantic it says, “firefighters and police not hear each other”. This shows that they communicated with each other, but they could not understand each other. Overall, this shows that there is no point in communication if one cannot understand the