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
Not according to this article that appeared in the WSJ yesterday: Could Helicopters Have Saved People From the Top of the Trade Center?
From the article:
New York City's fire code requires roof doors to be unlocked or to have devices that allow someone to open a locked door from the inside. Officials at several companies that manage large numbers of tall buildings in Manhattan say their buildings provide roof access in an emergency.
But the Port Authority's Twin Towers had the status of state government property and therefore were legally exempt from the fire code, according to both the Port Authority and the city's building department, which oversees enforcement of the fire code.
This is an excellent article with much more information about the feasibility of a roof rescue, for anyone who is interested.
Sure, and everyone knows that smoke is a static thing that never moves into an area that was previously smoke-free. Smoke always stays right where it is. < /sarcasm >
That was an accident that happened in the fog. That's why a plane impact was accounted for in the design of the WTC, because it had already happened once. They were anticipating an accident. Not a kamikaze attack of both towers in one day.
The architect of the WTC used to boast that he designed the towers to take the impact of a 707.
He didn't "boast", it was the truth, nd it was talked about before the towers were ever built because they would be so much higher than everything around them. The 707 was the biggest plane around at the time the building was designed. They weren't anticipating a much bigger plane with a much larger fuel capacity. So no, they didn't account for that. Should they have gone back and rebuilt the building to new specs?
They also designed it to withstand hurricane winds much higher than have ever been recorded here, but that doesn't mean it would be IMPOSSIBLE for a storm of unprecedented power to take them down. Would that be the fault of the designers? Can we build anything, if we have to plan for everything--not just the likely but the extremely unlikely?
If you couldn't imagine it, then maybe it's a good thing we don't hire you to develop building emergency evacuation procedures. The sad thing, of course, is that the people we did hire for the WTC proved to be equally unimaginative.
Screw yourself, pompous ass. You didn't imagine it either. And I don't believe for one minute that if YOU were in that situation, knowing that a plane had just slammed into the other tower, you would have thought it was anything other than a horrible accident until the other plane hit the building you were in.
It's very easy to "imagine" that particular scenario now, after it was so thoroughly demonstrated. But if you're claiming you thought of it before, you are lying.
The advice not to evacuate the South Tower was not so unreasonable at first, when it was widely assumed that the first plane crash was an accident. There was no expectation that another plane was coming.
People outside were being killed from the first moments, by falling debris and burning jet fuel. In that situation, people were probably safer inside the South Tower than they would have been running around outside. And the police and fire fighters likely had their hands full dealing with the North Tower. Another horde of people evacuating would not have helped the situation.
Of course, hindsight is wonderful, and after the second plane, it became clear that early evacuation of the South Tower would have been better in this case. But I don't fault people who couldn't accurately predict the future, during 10 or 15 minutes of utter chaos.
B.) The point about the doors being locked would apply just as well if it HAD been an accidental crash into only ONE of the buildings. Having those doors locked was inexcusable. Negligent homicide, in fact.
A timeline I saw had the South Tower staying up for almost exactly 1 hour after it was hit, and the North Tower up for about 1 hour and 45 minutes after it was hit, or about an hour and a half after the second plane hit the South Tower.
I've seen other accounts that disagreed with these times.
I can't find a view from the north at the moment (which I seem to recall showed this best), but look at page 36 of the October issue of America's 1st Freedom (the NRA magazine) if you have access to it. This picture is from the east-northeast, fairly near the towers. The north face of the North Tower is partly clear of smoke all the way to the roof. The top of the antenna tower is also clear. This photo was taken just moments after the plane hit the South Tower; probably the fire in the North Tower was still spreading, and the smoke got worse later.
The smoke from the North Tower seems to have completely covered the roof of the South Tower, pretty much the whole time.
I wonder if the antenna on the North Tower also interfered with possible helicopter landings?
Just like most thought that the Titanic wouldn't sink, most thought that the Towers could not collapse.
I live here in the DC area and this is what has been happening:
1) It is futile to go in to your doctor and demand to be tested. We have been told over and over again that your doctor/hospital cannot test you for anthrax. You have have a special dispensation to go someplace special (I think the health department), where they can turn you away if they think you are being hysterical. We have been assured many times not even to bother trying to get tested unless we've been showered by white powder from an envelope...or, it seems, if two of our co-workers die from inhalation anthrax because they were told to take two aspirins and call the doctor in the morning.
2) People are being accused of hysteria. Congress was lambasted right and left for closing down over an anthrax scare. We are bombarded on the nightly news for calls not to be silly and ridiculous enough to think we might be vulnerable.
3) We have been assured over and over again that it takes a "large amount" of inhaled spores to make you sick, its not contagious, its been contained, blah blah blah.
I personally feel very helpless. You can't just go ahead and pay for being tested for anthrax out of pocket even if its just to quell your own panic. Its very likely that some HMO doctor is going to roll her eyes and tell me to go home and not be a hypochondriac if I do get sick. And finally, how many postal patrons are going to have to die before they realize that anthrax can get onto untargeted household mail?
Screw yourself too, then. :P
If you can claim with a straight face that, at 8:50 a.m. on 9/11, your first, second or even third thought upon seeing that smoking tower was that SURELY another plane would come along and do the exact same thing very shortly--well, you're the world's biggest liar.
I just wish all you armchair know-it-alls would write down your insights at the time they occur to you, date and notarize them, and put them in a safe deposit box. Then you'd actually have the proof that "you saw it coming all along", and you'd have some credibility when you say that others should have anticipated it beforehand as well.
B.) The point about the doors being locked would apply just as well if it HAD been an accidental crash into only ONE of the buildings. Having those doors locked was inexcusable. Negligent homicide, in fact.
While that is a very good point, it was not the topic of my post. I was responding to remarks made by Uncle Sham and 537 votes after the topic shifted from locked roof doors to "why was everyone in Tower 2 told to stay in their offices?"
So even though you have a good point (and you do), it's beside the point in terms of the subject of my post.
You're correct; I just rechecked the Time Magazine chart about this. Tower 1, hit at 8:45, collapsed at 10:29. Tower 2, hit at 9:06, down at 10:00.
If you'd asked me that afternoon, I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that both towers were down in way less than an hour (but then, I did have that memory glitch I mentioned).
Since the Twin Towers no longer exist, we can confidently say all NYC skyscrapers have emergency egress to the roof, and not locked doors. I stand by my statement.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.