was it really real?

I got this link from a good friend of mine. This is the newly released audio recordings of the radio traffic of the FDNY on September 11th 2001. Here also is a copy of his posting.
black day
at the end of a long and bloody legal fight, the new york times has "won" the right to have the radio transmissions and transcripts released of the FDNY's efforts on september 11, 2001. i feel rotten and dirty listening. like a macabre voyeur. this is too soon. this is too overwhelmingly heavy to hear. but i cannot stop listening. it is 1 a.m. i've been listening for almost two hours. chained. now almost imprisoned by it. if there is any salvation it comes as this: these are professionals responding heroically, methodically--despite the hysterical and terrific absurdity of their reality--to the worst blackness they will ever know. they ran toward when all else ran away. i am undone.