I’ve spent my career designing steel structures and told my son before the SECOND plane hit the second tower that the FIRST building was “toast.” There was NO WAY those heat weakened columns would hold. And when the second plane hit the second tower, taking out the columns on one side, I knew IT was history. I cried as the second tower struck crumpled in the direction of the sliced columns (as I predicted it would) and, shortly after, the upper 20 floors of the first tower pan-caked into the lower 90 after THOSE columns buckled.
I’m not some anti-techno Luddite: Even BEFORE the events of 9/11, I was growing weary of watching bodies fall from burning high-rise buildings as rescue workers stood helplessly in the street below, poised to clean up the carnage. Ask ANY thoughtful professional firefighter where HE AND HIS FAMILY STAY ON VACATION: YOU WON’T FIND MANY WHO TAKE ROOMS HIGHER THAN THE 7th FLOOR. WHY? BECAUSE 70 FEET IS ABOUT AS HIGH AS MOST BIG CITY DEPARTMENTS CAN REACH TO GET YOU FROM OUTSIDE THE STRUCTRURE. And it’s worse in small towns. I wonder how many high-rise dwellers are today looking for farms in Kansas?
The evidence is growing that we need to seriously rethink our compulsion to concentrate populations in taller and taller, easy-to-hit targets which are also built to function as chimneys.
Another element to consider is the matter of INSURANCE: Until the world is free of people who hate us and are jealous to the point of insanity of what our system has allowed us to achieve here (and we will not be without those people any time soon), would YOU insure some new US skyscraper? And if you did, what would you calculate as the premium for doing so? Would it be HUGE? Probably!
While those tall structures are often awe-inspiring and beautiful to look at, they are NOT terribly efficient or practical. I, like many of you, have been up in them and have been impressed. From the upper reaches one can almost see heaven – almost, in the words of that beautiful poem about flight, touch the face of God. Tragically, 2,800 fellow humans -- who perhaps might still be with US had they worked or lived in a safer structure -- are now WITH God.
The loss of life in the WTC is staggering.
Compare that number to the final body count at the Pentagon. Then think about the differences in those two buildings.
I rest my case!