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The talk was by Ronald O Hamburger, SE (Simpson, Gumpertz & Heger, Inc.) working as director of the Building Performance Assessment Team assembled by ASCE/SEI (Structural Engineers Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers) and FEMA. A full report of quite some size is available from FEMA published as FEMA 403.

The abstract given out with the talk states in its Conclusions: " Despite tragic loss...the World Trade Center and surrounding buildings performed very well, considering the severity of events to which they were subjected. It was the overwhelming conclusion of the BPAT that rather than changing our building design and construction practice to better resist events like those of September 11, buildings can best be protected from aircraft attacks by providing improved aircraft security."

Additionally: "The twin towers incorportated extensive continuity, redundancy and overstrength in their structural design, which enabled them to survive the aircraft impact without immediate collapse. Most other buildings do not possess this combination and extent of redundancy, continuity and overstrenght and would not have performed as well. Most other building would have collapsed immediately upon aircraft impact."

Prior to the failure of the nearby WTC-7 there was no record of fire-induced collapse of any fire protected steel frame structure of this size. Fire Protection of certain connections on WTC-7 and WTC-5 would have greatly reduced the possibility of collapse from the fire. But we must remember, that those buildings were permitted to burn without the fire being fought due to loss of life, the circumstances, their state of evacuationand damage, and risk. This was a very non-typical condition.

Since you seem to be industry related, I'd like to make a suggestion. It seems to me that any building with more than twenty floors, should have in-house fire stations, along the lines of off-site police kiosks, only more extensive. Perhaps there should be one of these for every twenty floors. Strategically located, fire personnel could be on site at the problem in just a few minutes after an event was spotted.

They would know the building. They would have generated superior emergency preparedness conditions. They could be on site observing all sorts of equipment and infrastructure repairs to make sure proper fire procedures were adhered to. They would drive home the importance of adhering to fire procedures when alarms go off.

In a large building, it might not be a bad idea to require this around the clock on site fire personnel as part of the business licensing process.

These large buildings are essentially mini-cities. It doesn't seem all that unreasonable to provide on site fire services.