The call lasted less than three minutes. Christopher Hanley had to repeat his story to two different dispatchers from the Windows on the World restaurant on September 11, 2001.

“Yeah. Hi. I’m on the 106th floor of the World Trade Center. We just had an explosion on the, on the like 105th floor,” Hanley, 35, told an operator. Later, his voice catching, he says, ‘We have smoke, and – it’s pretty bad.” An operator tells him to “sit tight. Do not leave, okay?”

Hanley, who died in the trade center, was one of 28 people identified among about 130 emergency calls the city planned to release on Friday. Hanley’s parents released the audiotape to the New York Times, which had sued the city for access to all the calls.

An appeals court ruled last year that the public could only hear the voices of 911 operators and other government employees on the tapes, saying the frantic calls of victims in the burning twin towers were too intense and emotional to be released without families’ consent.

A state judge ordered the city Wednesday to provide the names of the 28 people, along with other excerpts that could help identify more callers. But the city served the newspaper with an appeal yesterday, effectively staying the order. The Times would need to seek an appellate hearing to lift the stay.

The Times, joined in its suit by relatives of several September 11 victims, is hoping the tapes will offer clues to the experiences of the 2,749 victims killed after hijacked jetliners crashed into the towers. Attorney Norman Siegel, who represents the victims’ families, said he wants to learn whether operators’ instructions affected evacuations.

“We will potentially hear Operator A say, ‘Go to the roof,'” Mr. Siegel said. “We might hear Operator B say, ‘Stay in place. We’re coming to get you.'”