New Inquiry Sought on Towers' Fall

International Herald Tribune ^ | Wednesday, December 26, 2001 | James Glanz and Eric Lipton

[spald]

Engineers and Safety Experts Want Evidence to Guide Future Builders

 

NEW YORK Saying that the current investigation into how and why the twin towers fell on Sept. 11 is inadequate, some of the country's leading structural engineers and fire-safety experts are calling for a new, independent and better-financed inquiry that could produce the kinds of conclusions vital for skyscrapers and future buildings nationwide.

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Senator Charles Schumer and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, both of New York, have joined the call for a wider look into the collapses. In an interview, Mr. Schumer said he supported a new investigation "not so much to find blame" for the collapse of the buildings under extraordinary circumstances, "but rather so that we can prepare better for the future."

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"It could affect building practices," he said. "It could affect evacuation practices. We live in a new world, and everything has to be recalibrated."

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Experts critical of the current effort, including some of the people who are actually conducting it, cite the lack of meaningful financial support and poor coordination with the agencies cleaning up the disaster site. They point out that the current team of 20 or so investigators has no subpoena power and little staff support and has even been unable to obtain basic information like detailed blueprints of the buildings that collapsed.

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While agreeing that any building hit by a jetliner would suffer potentially devastating damage, experts want to examine whether the twin towers may have had hidden vulnerabilities that contributed to their collapse.

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The lightweight steel trusses that supported the tower's individual floors, the connections between the trusses and the buildings' vertical structural columns, as well as possible flaws in the fireproofing have been drawing scrutiny from fire safety consultants and engineers in recent weeks.

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"Two buildings came down," said Joseph Russo, director of the Center for Fire Safety Engineering at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, referring to the twin towers. "That suggests some degree of predictability."

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"And if it was predictable," Mr. Russo said, "was it preventable?"

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Family members of some victims have added their voices to the calls for a wider investigation.

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The exact scope of an expanded inquiry has not been defined. But the central desire is to learn any lessons that might be hidden in the rubble and to pinpoint the exact sequence and cause of the collapse, regardless of whether it was inevitable from the moment the planes struck, members of the investigative team and others said.

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In calling for a new investigation, some structural engineers have said that one serious mistake had already been made in the chaotic aftermath of the collapses: the decision to rapidly recycle the steel columns, beams and trusses that held up the buildings. That may have cost investigators some of their most direct physical evidence with which to try and piece together an answer.

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Officials in the mayor's office declined to reply to written and oral requests for comment over a three-day period about who decided to recycle the steel and the concern that the decision might be handicapping the investigation.

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"The city considered it reasonable to have recovered structural steel recycled," said Matthew Monahan, a spokesman for the city's Department of Design and Construction, which is in charge of debris removal at the site.

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"Hindsight is always 20-20, but this was a calamity like no other," said Mr. Monahan, who was designated by the mayor's office to respond to questions about the investigation. "And I'm not trying to backpedal from the decision."

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Interviews with a handful of members of the team, which includes some of the most respected engineers in the United States, also uncovered complaints that they had at various times been shackled with bureaucratic restrictions that prevented them from interviewing witnesses, examining the disaster site and requesting crucial information like recorded distress calls to the police and fire departments.

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The investigation, organized immediately after Sept. 11 by the American Society of Civil Engineers, the field's leading professional organization, has been financed and administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. A mismatch between the federal agency and senior engineers accustomed to bypassing protocol in favor of quick answers has been identified as a clear point of friction.

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"This is almost the dream team of engineers in the country working on this, and our hands are tied," said one team member who asked not to be identified. Members have been threatened with dismissal for speaking to the press.

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"FEMA is controlling everything," the team member said. "It sounds funny, but just give us the money and let us do it, and get the politics out of it."

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A spokesman for the emergency agency, John Czwartacki, said its primary mission was to help victims, emergency workers and to speed the city's recovery, and added, "We are not an investigative agency."

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But given the assignment to examine the structural failures at the World Trade Center, the agency has so far spent roughly $100,000, and Mr. Czwartacki said that more financing could be expected after the group produced what he called an "interim document" in the spring.

[Shermy]

LOL! But I thought it was Hillary who said that. Maybe it was Chelsea.

Anyway, we need to examine the "root causes"--let's go all the way back to the 1920's and the Bauhaus architects who foisted the flimsy skyscraper ethos upon us and gave us wimpy buildings, etc., etc.

Hey, it's better than blaming asbestos! ;)

[Wright is right!]

"A large airplane flying at high speed crashed into the empire state building and it did not fall down."

Construction practices as used on the Empire State Bldg.(ESB) that were economically feasible back in The Depression are no longer economically realistic today. All of the steel girders in the ESB were SURROUNDED by poured concrete, which not only added an element of strength but which worked as insulation as well. Such construction for high-rises today is, as they say, "COMICALLY EXPENSIVE." Such construction would result in rents SO astronomical that no one could afford them, and the place would sit empty while everyone flocked to the more economically-feasible high-rise construction nearby - on the chance that a passing encounter with multiple jet airlines would be infinitesimally rare.

In other words, YES, it could be done. And, YES, the pricetag would be cost-prohibitive in today's times.

Not only that, but the "heavy" jet liner that hit the ESB was not - NOT - a "heavy" in today's aviation terms, was not loaded to the gills with Jet A, and had very little else in common with the two birds that hit the WTC. Not a good analogy.

Michael

[Cool_V]

That was a WWII era bomber flying relatively slow and much lighter fuel load. I don't think that is a fair comparison. Though without a doubt the Empire State Building is very stout.

[jpsb]

I will agree with you that the esb is a much more strongly built building and perhaps we can't afford to build them that way any more. My only point was that it is possible to build tall building strong enough to survive the impact of a large plane. Building like the esb appeal to me, they are solidly built, lots of mansonary, built to last 100's if not 1,000's of years. I like that, these glass and steel building on the other hand, will be lucky to last a 100's years or so.

[Fulbright]

I've seen a report which indicates that the spray-on fireproofing in the WTC may not have been applied completely on the structural members as required to create a Type I-FR building.

This is required when you are building a very large structure. It appears as if this was discovered after the 1993 attack and photos exist of the condition.

Whether documentation exists of the as-built conditions on the floors most affected by the September attacks is doubtful.