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
The 707 and 767 are almost identical in size and fuel capacity. Try doing a google search on 707's and 767's and look at the what the wbesites tell you about size, weight, payload, fuel capacity, etc. I think you are getting confused over the 747, which is much larger. But back when the buildings we're being designed, 747's (and C5-a's) didn't exist.
The smoke was blown in a southeasterly direction for the entire duration of the incident. This took it off much of the roof of Tower 1, but kept it all over Tower 2. At 1350 ft., the winds don't shift nearly as much as closer to the ground.
Straw man alert! There is a massive difference between thinking "SURELY" another plane will crash versus simply acknowledging the possibility.
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?"
And it's just as applicable. That kind of damage to Tower 1 endangered Tower 2 (as evidenced by its eventual collapse), even if no other plane had been involved. It was absurd of the Port Authority (or anyone) to say, "Nothing to see here, return to your desks."
Just a fire raging out of control 90 floors up is enough to imagine potential structural failure of the affected areas doncha think? We all can imagine what uncontrolled structural failure might do to a skyscraper and the danger this represents to it's neighboring buildings. In this particular case, we HAD an uncontrolled fire that we KNEW was being fed by jet fuel resulting in excessive temperatures. Knowing this alone, and we did, should have been cause for an immediate and full evacuation of all potentially dangerous areas, including the south tower.
Okay, be honest. Did you even think you MIGHT see another plane hit the second tower that day? Even if your first thought was "terrorism" instead of "accident" (some people right here caught on to that a lot quicker than others that morning), DID IT occur to you that you might--MIGHT, mind you--see the same thing happen less than twenty minutes later? Did it cross your mind for even a nanosecond, before you actually saw it?
Well?
I mean, sure, after witnessing THAT, all sorts of possibilities occurred to me very quickly. I thought they were going to hit the Empire State building, the Chrysler Building, and Citicorp for sure (that building would tumble like a bowling pin, BTW), and then take out all the bridges and blow up the subways. And that was before the Pentagon was hit, so I don't think I'm lacking in the imagination department.
And it's just as applicable. That kind of damage to Tower 1 endangered Tower 2 (as evidenced by its eventual collapse), even if no other plane had been involved. It was absurd of the Port Authority (or anyone) to say, "Nothing to see here, return to your desks."
So now *you're* changing the subject from "roof door shouldn't have been locked/ criminally negligent homicide" to "building should have been evacuated". And you point to the collapse of the building LATER as evidence of how they should have behaved in Tower 2 BEFORE that happened. As has been discussed, the buildings were designed to take a considerable impact from a large airplane and still stand. Everyone who worked in the complex had probably heard that (everyone in the city has probably heard it at some point since 1974). Tons of explosives in the basement didn't bring them down in 1993 either. Security people are not engineers!--why would they suddenly assume the buildings might collapse?
The same situation was occurring at the Marriot hotel, right at the foot of the towers. Management advised the guests to stay inside. They didn't begin evacuating until the first tower collapsed right on top of them (partially collapsing the hotel itself; the next tower finished the job). I believe about 20 lives were lost, two of them hotel employees.
It's easy to say what someone should have done after the fact, but you can only go by what is occurring at the moment, and rely on your common sense, your instincts, and training, . Hotel managers usually aren't structural engineers either. At the moment it was happening, it might have seemed safest to keep everybody inside away from falling debris and bodies, and wait for the fire to go out and the coast to be clear. The greatest danger might have seemed, in the beginning, to be outside. Naturally that was proved wrong, but I don't know that I would have behaved any differently under the same circumstances.
Well, let's see. Apparently no one in authority on the scene DID imagine it; or IF they did, they might have thought that the people in Tower 2 might be at greater risk outdoors in the event of Tower 1 collapsing. If there had been just one plane in question (and remember that's all there was at the point in time we're discussing), the collapse of the first tower would not necessarily have meant the collapse of the second--thought it probably would have sustained heavy damage. I believe if only one plane had hit, only one tower would have collapsed. But we'd have to get an engineer in here to determine that.
We all can imagine what uncontrolled structural failure might do to a skyscraper and the danger this represents to it's neighboring buildings.
Again, I don't know that anyone there was imagining "uncontrolled structural failure". They were probably only anticipating a horrible fire, massive loss of life on the upper floors, and the probable eventual demolition of Tower 1, if they were thinking that far down the road.
These people have heard, since the buildings first went up, that they could withstand an impact from a 707 and STILL STAND. Why wouldn't they have believed that? And why wouldn't they also have believed that the fire would go out when there was nothing left of wood, paper, or sheet rock to burn on the upper floors, leaving the basic structure irreparably damaged but intact? That's what might have happened, if it had been a 707 heading to LaGuardia mostly empty.
Also, these guys were inside when it happened (the 22nd floor, according to the WSJ article linked above; try LOOKING UP to the 90th floor of the building next door from there). How were they to even know or assess the real danger of the situation in an area they couldn't see or access? They had no idea what type of plane had hit either tower unless they were watching television when the second plane showed up.
Easy to say what should have been done after the fact (except for the doors to the roof, which should have been unlocked, whether it would have done any good or not on 9/11--roof access is needed for other emergencies than an act of war). I still say it was a tricky call whether to evacuate Tower 2 in the minutes right after Tower 1 was struck. Events later proved it would have been the right thing to do, but I don't think anyone could reasonably have known for sure that it was the BEST thing to do at the time it was happening.
Whatever. I was replying to your post, in context. @@
I find it implausible to believe that anyone in charge of the evacuation planning for the WTC complex would EVER consider either of the twin towers a safe place to be in the event that one of the two collapsed in a controlled fashion, much less the way it did in fact collapse. Remember that we are dealing with potentialities in this scenario and one of those potentialities is an uncontrolled collapse of one tower knocking down the other.
None of this hinges at all on whether or not a second plane enters the picture.
Sure it does. Before that, there was only a big big fire in the other building, and debris and bodies hurtling down at high speeds. The building was still standing, as advertised. They weren't anticipating a collapse. If they HAD, they would have ordered an evacuation.
After the second plane, both buildings were on fire and Tower 2 was in much more trouble than Tower 1, havng been hit much lower down. That's the reason it would have been the right thing to evacuate immediately. But that would require foreknowledge they didn't have. I'm sure SOME people in the city (architects and engineers) realized at once what was going to happen to the buildings after the planes hit, but I don't think it's reasonable to assume that the guys in the WTC command center did. That's all.
But, I'm sure we'll hear much more about it during the court cases.
Let's pray this doen't get to far out of hand. I've enjoyed the debate. BTW, your watercolors are excellent on your profile page!
Exactly why the point Uncle Sham made earlier in post #15 was valid. After '93, responsible people SHOULD have developed contingency plans so that such decisions would NOT be left in the hands of ignorant security guys and hotel employees once something happened.
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