Posted on 10/24/2001 8:35:42 AM PDT by dead
Dozens of people trapped at the top of the burning World Trade Centre in New York could have been airlifted to safety if doors had not been locked, it emerged today.
More than 1,000 people were trapped on the floors above where the two hijacked planes smashed into the towers. In one of the buildings, police helicopters could have landed on the roof to take people to safety.
But the doors to the roof were kept locked because a similar rescue in 1993, when a bomber tried to destroy the towers, was slammed as a "publicity stunt" by fire bosses and the Port Authority, which owned the centre, the Wall Street Journal reported.
In 1993, 28 people had been taken to safety by a helicopter which landed on the roof of one of the towers.
But afterwards the Port Authority used its exemption from local fire rules to insist that the towers' roofs were kept locked to prevent people committing suicide or launching stunts from the top.
And a turf war between the police and fire departments meant fire chiefs rejected the idea of helicopter rescues, which only one city - Los Angeles - has equipped its firefighters to carry out, with a six-strong helicopter wing.
Instead, the fire department went ahead with its policy of evacuating people down from skyscrapers and sending firefighters up to rescue them, and said the 1993 rescues could have cost lives if the helicopter had crashed.
Today the first helicopter pilot on the scene said he believed people could have been saved by a daring landing on the roof of the north tower, where the wind kept smoke from engulfing the roof, making a rescue possible.
"There was nobody on the roof," Greg Semendinger told the Wall Street Journal.
By using a hoist, he estimated dozens of people could have been taken to safety by the helicopters in the air, which included a police aircraft which came within 200 metres of the second hijacked plane to hurtle into the towers.
There were at least 700 people on the floors of the north tower above where the plane ripped into the building, and some were making calls to emergency services until the moment the tower fell.
One widow has told how her husband left a final message on her answering machine in which people could be heard shouting: "Try the roof! Try the roof!"
Richard Wright, a helicopter expert who rescued men from the North Sea around burning oil rig Piper Alpha in 1988, said a rescue would have been possible.
Wright, of the Helicopter Association International, said a helicopter rescue from fires had been carried out in much worse conditions, including at night and in storms, than was the case at the World Trade Centre.
Today New York's fire department, which lost more than 300 firefighters in the collapse of the towers, said the policy not to use helicopters may be reviewed.
"The people who were trapped above this fire were trapped," spokesman Frank Gribbon said.
"Perhaps their only recourse might have been to get to the roof, but it might not have been likely that they would make it, either.
"Up until now, we've never really had more than one floor burning in a fully-occupied high-rise building.
"Did we ever plan for something of this magnitude? No."
PA
Virtually every story I've read about survivors has mentioned that fact, yet there hasn't been one big story to pull all those recollections of that information together. You're right; there should be an investigation of this.
Stay calm folks... nothing to see here. Go back to your cubicles.
The hell with that!! I would have pushed that guy aside and ran like hell!
I can't fault anyone for not using helicopters to rescue people -- can you imagine the panic that would have ensued if helicopters *had* come up by the roof, after two jumbo jets had crashed into the towers? People would have thought they were part of the plot as well!
But not evacuating the building properly is something the Port Authority and Larry Silverstein can be criticized on. Nobody expected planes to crash into the towers, but there should have been better evacuation plans other than telling people to stay in their offices when the buildings were on fire.
We were just conversing the other day about the elementary school in Cleveland that burned down at the turn of the last century, trapping hundreds of teachers and children inside because the doors opened inward.
Shortly after that the law was passed requiring all public buildings to have doors that open outward.
I feel sick. When are we going to learn?
I don't know if a helicopter rescue would have been feasible or not. I do know that if I were one of the people trapped at the top of the tower, I would have certainly wanted somebody to TRY. A slim chance of rescue sure looks better than the zero chance these people ended up having. Yes, I know that it would have been risky for the chopper pilots, but they wouldn't have been the only rescuers taking risks that day.
Between this and the report that Port Authority rent-a-cops told people in Tower 2 to head back to their offices, I smell a mega-class-action lawsuit brewing. I'm not saying this is good or bad, just inevitable.
C'mon -- I'm not saying that at all. You don't think there was anything wrong in the guards in the buildings telling people to stay in their offices? Or the public address announcers saying that? Obviously, the people who recounted this incidents didn't listen to them, or they wouldn't be able to tell about these incidents! But it's morally irresponsible, to say the least, for the people in those buildings to have been told to stay put.
In such emergencies it is common for officials or officious persons to not think clearly. There are five grades of response to a situation, as in combat. The responses range from total catatonia to poor judgement to total comprehension and appropriate cold action. In the heat of the moment it would be appropriate to deal with cases of poor judgement the same as the enemy. Go around them or through them.
there should have been better evacuation plans other than telling people to stay in their offices when the buildings were on fire.
That did not happen. Security guards told people in Tower 2 to remain in their building, which was not on fire and did not appear to be in any danger. At the time they gave that advice (it certainly wasn’t legally binding) there was glass, metal, and bodies raining down outside from Tower 1.
The security guards had no way of knowing that another plane was headed their way. They probably died themselves for not having that knowledge.
According to the 911 dispatch transcripts the helocoptor pilots said that a rooftop landing was not possible due to the high heat and the massive amounts of rising smoke. They tried but couldn't do it - they circled the towers in an attempt to land but the horrible conditions prevented it. In the transcripts I read no pilot said anything about beign able to land. I read the transcripts in the NY Daily News in September after the attacks.
Today's Daily News has an article about this as well: WTC Roof Doors Locked
O'Reilly had one of these individuals on, about a week or two later. He asked how could you instruct people to stay?
The response was that it was Standard Procedure.
IMO: What kind of idiot would write a policy that states:
In case of fire, remain calm at your desk.
He is forgeting the tourist guy and his photographer.
Same as always. Women, children, and the infirm first. After that, generally comes everybody else as time permits. I hadn't realized that concept was not well understood. It's been the same for centuries.
/john
How hard would it be to design a locked door that automatically becomes unlocked in a case of a fire ?
From what I've read, it was standard operating procedure (a very bad one, of course) to tell people to stay in their offices. And there were several exits out of Tower 2, so people could have been evacuated from the building without being directly in the line of fire from Tower 1. I've read about guards yelling at people to stay in their offices -- legally binding or not, the fact is that some people listened to them, and are dead because of it.
The helicopter rescue portion of this argument has nothing to do at all with how or why the fire starts. It is either a feasable option under allowable conditions or it isn't. What is so complicated about this? If there are two 110 story buildings standing close enough to one another that if one collapses due to structural failure, the other might be at risk from the collapse of the first, it seems prudent to evacuate BOTH buildings. What is so complicated about this? Are you trying to imply that structural failure and the potential collapse it might cause was not a reasonable factor to consider, especially AFTER 1993? The terrorist caused the deaths of thousands of innocent people. Sadly, our very own lack of planning contributed to the toll. We should not allow this to happen again.
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