true. State governments and the Feds don’t hold themselves to the same standards they set for others.
I the late ‘70’s I worked for a ceiling contractor who was doing drop ceilings in a VA hospital in the Bronx. Some how or another the VA was not required to have sprinkler systems in it’s VA hospitals.
Can you imagine that?
My boss however was made to fireproof light fixtures in the patient rooms and what he had me do was cut ceiling tiles into strips about four long by six inches wide and I’d box them around each light fixture and push four penny steel nails to secure all the pieces around each light.
What a bitch that was but I was young, made good money at it.
[I the late ‘70’s I worked for a ceiling contractor who was doing drop ceilings in a VA hospital in the Bronx. Some how or another the VA was not required to have sprinkler systems in it’s VA hospitals.
Can you imagine that?
My boss however was made to fireproof light fixtures in the patient rooms and what he had me do was cut ceiling tiles into strips about four long by six inches wide and I’d box them around each light fixture and push four penny steel nails to secure all the pieces around each light.
What a bitch that was but I was young, made good money at it.]
This being NYC, I expect there’s a ton of redundancy re fire department coverage, given that many firehouses are less than a mile apart. And maybe that’s what they were counting on for the VA building.
But given the specific technical characteristics of the WTC building from a fire safety standpoint, it’s astonishing that they did not overdesign it the way they did the Brooklyn bridge. They are said to have estimated the biggest stresses possible on the bridge, then multiplied by 6x to get the specs for the structure they wanted built.