Half-blind and a little sad...
Mar. 12th, 2005 08:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shipperxWhatever happened to the days when I could spend hours upon hours reading and it not bother my eyes in the least? Sigh. Those days seem to be gone. Spend a full day reading and I begin to have trouble focusing on things at a distance for a while. Not at all pleasant.
Anyway, I read 102 Minutes, a non-fiction novel covering the 102 minutes between when Flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center and when the last tower collapsed. . .as experienced by those inside the building. They've incorporated survivor accounts, radio transmissions, 911 calls, and calls to family to create the account.
There are many parts of the book which are really heartbreaking, and some are rather horrifying. It shares some common ground with the non-fiction Into Thin Air in that there are so many accounts of the strong remaining behind to help the incapacitated and that leading to their deaths. You're torn wanting those who stayed behind to realize that in doing so they are sacrificing their own lives. Why didn't they go? And horrified by those who, on the other hand, passed by those in need of help, leaving them to die.
There's a sense of irritation with the woman with flat feet who goes so slowly down the stairs, sitting down and crying and telling the firemen to leave her and just go because she won't walk any further (And yet there is the total serendipity that those are the people who actually survived the crash despite the fact that she died. I had seen that account once on TV --though they didn't mention her on TV-- about the small group of firefighters in one stairwell who miraculously survived. It was just luck). And there was the woman from the 88th floor with asthma who had walked all the way down to the 20th floor with a co-worker, but she had stopped on the 20th saying she was unable to go on. Her co-worker encouraging that she could. Police were running hell for leather out of the building and he stopped them saying that his co-worker needed to be helped. The police said they'd help her but that the man should go. He said, no, he'd walk down with them. The policeman repeated that they'd carry her and that the man should go. Again he said he'd stay with her, and the policeman grabbed him and whispered that the building was about to collapse. GO, as fast as he could. They'd try to get her out. The man escaped... the woman with asthma and the three policeman trying to help her did not.
On the other hand (again in incidents that echo those in the Everest disaster Into Thin Air ) There was an office full of people who on the (well-meaning but wrong) advice had stayed put in the office, believing they were trapped (when, in fact, there was one stairwell open). Accepting the word of authority, and staying until it was too late. And there's the quadrapalegic who was told to wait for the firefighters to carry him down, only for the firefighters to pass him going up and no one ever taking him down. And his able-bodied friend who refused to leave him. They both died.
The people I had never heard of prior to the book, and whose histories made me cry, were two employees of the building -- in charge of construction in the tower -- they weren't civil servants. It wasn't their jobs to facilitate evacuations. But they knew the structure of the building, and they had some tools. Their offices were below where the building was breached, but they grabbed crow bars and went up floor by floor opening the stairwells for people. In the book, they are credited with personally saving 77 people by doing this. However, they also both died.
There were also survivor accounts, one of the more astonishing being of a guy who had been in the express elevator going down when the first tower was hit. It locked his elevator. No intercom communicated with him. He was alone. For a while he could hear people in the elevator next to him, also trapped. They communicated and said whoever got out first would tell the authorities. Eventually the people who had been trapped together in the elevator had managed to tear their elevator open... only to discover they had been in the lobby, mere yards from the firemen's command station. No one had heard them screaming. They told the firemen about the other guy. And left.
No one came for the other guy.
After the other building fell, destroying most of the Mariott hotel, it knocked out the power. All alone, with no idea -- AT ALL --of what had been going on for the last hour and a half (He'd been trapped alone with no communication without any knowledge of any of the days events). The power outtage turned off the resistors which prevent people from opening elevators between floors, and finally he was able to pry open the doors himself... and walked into hell. The lobby was empty, having been blown-out by the fall of the first tower. No one was left, just wreckage. That was minute 90 of the 102.
I do question the New York Times' authors in some of their forensic dissection of the fire codes. Particularly, I seriously question whether the author -- in his efforts to make his point regarding the codes-- left out some pertinent information.
One of the things he rails against are the stairwells. Legitimate things to rail against (since apparently there really was a massive violation in two of the elevators not exiting directly to the exterior of the building. They're really supposed to do that. You can get around that if the lobby is fire rated --which I have to assume this lobby was-- but it is highly questionable how the building was approved with two of its three stairwells not exiting to the exterior.) But I find the analogy of too few lifeboats on the Titanic in comparison to the stairwells somewhat questionable. I'm not personally familiar with the 1968 NFPA codes, but the current ones insist that you have to calculate the number of people using a stair to determine the size of the stair. So while the author has legitimate points about the stairs, I'm suspicious of his overlooking that piece of information because it (to some small degree) undermines his point. As does his continued insistence on referring to bar joist construction as unique. Um... not so much. The building's outter shell was unique. The use of fire rated bar joists, is not.
In all the dissection of the building that I've read in architecture journals, the general consensus of architects and engineers is that the building performed in a way that actually exceeded expectations. Truth the 102 minutes isn't the 2hr fire rating between floors that the author maintains should happen. However, with the fire being as extensive as it was, and breaching floors the way they did, they aren't GOING to survive. Also there's the fundamental misuderstanding by the author about what that 2hr fire rating actually means. Again, I'm not familiar with the 1968 UL and NFPA (1968 being the code they followed at their construction) but in current codes when looking at a fire rated floor separation you are NOT looking at 2HR fire rating of the bar joists. It isn't a fire rating of the bar joists. It's a fire rating of the floor/ceiling ASSEMBLY-- meaning it's the rating of the concrete floor, the metal decking and the bar joists all calculated as one entity. Not simply the bar joists alone. In fact, the bar joists really aren't considered to be the thing providing the 2hr separation... the 3" of concrete on the metal decking is.
Again, the book author had a good point, but he left out some pertinent information that would undermine his own position regarding the building's compliance with fire code issues.
However, there do seem to be some odd instances of the building having gained approval while not actually complying on all issues.
I've had some experience with that as I worked on a hospital, once, that was built in the 50s and 60s which had many of the same fire code issue problems (there weren't 3" of concrete on the floors which then meant that there wasn't adequate fire separation between floors which then did mean that there had to be an extra layer of protection. If that was the case in the two towers, the author didn't clarify that it was the case. ) Having worked on that building (and it took 3 years for that fire proofing retrofit to be accomplished) I could understand and empathize with the people maintaining construction on the Twin Towers by trying to retrofit its fire rated assembly by adding more fireproofing.
However, while I think the fire rating issues (especially the stair questions) have validity. The truth is any building designed to current codes would have the same problems because quite simply buildings are not designed for 767s to fly into full of jet fuel. And they never will be. It's prohibitive to any but the most bunker-like of construction. So while I agree that there need to be lessons learned from the core stairwell issues, I don't think that the author of the book quite understands that some of the things he argues are ever going to happen.
I don't think you could design anything short of NORAD that would survive these kinds of attacks. Not and have it be a commercially viable -- or even appealing space for humans to regularly inhabit -- space. No one would have imagined 9/11. And no one can design against such acts of malevolence. There are things to be learned and code changes that should be made. But no building can ever be 100% terror proof. Just can't.
Anyway, I read 102 Minutes, a non-fiction novel covering the 102 minutes between when Flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center and when the last tower collapsed. . .as experienced by those inside the building. They've incorporated survivor accounts, radio transmissions, 911 calls, and calls to family to create the account.
There are many parts of the book which are really heartbreaking, and some are rather horrifying. It shares some common ground with the non-fiction Into Thin Air in that there are so many accounts of the strong remaining behind to help the incapacitated and that leading to their deaths. You're torn wanting those who stayed behind to realize that in doing so they are sacrificing their own lives. Why didn't they go? And horrified by those who, on the other hand, passed by those in need of help, leaving them to die.
There's a sense of irritation with the woman with flat feet who goes so slowly down the stairs, sitting down and crying and telling the firemen to leave her and just go because she won't walk any further (And yet there is the total serendipity that those are the people who actually survived the crash despite the fact that she died. I had seen that account once on TV --though they didn't mention her on TV-- about the small group of firefighters in one stairwell who miraculously survived. It was just luck). And there was the woman from the 88th floor with asthma who had walked all the way down to the 20th floor with a co-worker, but she had stopped on the 20th saying she was unable to go on. Her co-worker encouraging that she could. Police were running hell for leather out of the building and he stopped them saying that his co-worker needed to be helped. The police said they'd help her but that the man should go. He said, no, he'd walk down with them. The policeman repeated that they'd carry her and that the man should go. Again he said he'd stay with her, and the policeman grabbed him and whispered that the building was about to collapse. GO, as fast as he could. They'd try to get her out. The man escaped... the woman with asthma and the three policeman trying to help her did not.
On the other hand (again in incidents that echo those in the Everest disaster Into Thin Air ) There was an office full of people who on the (well-meaning but wrong) advice had stayed put in the office, believing they were trapped (when, in fact, there was one stairwell open). Accepting the word of authority, and staying until it was too late. And there's the quadrapalegic who was told to wait for the firefighters to carry him down, only for the firefighters to pass him going up and no one ever taking him down. And his able-bodied friend who refused to leave him. They both died.
The people I had never heard of prior to the book, and whose histories made me cry, were two employees of the building -- in charge of construction in the tower -- they weren't civil servants. It wasn't their jobs to facilitate evacuations. But they knew the structure of the building, and they had some tools. Their offices were below where the building was breached, but they grabbed crow bars and went up floor by floor opening the stairwells for people. In the book, they are credited with personally saving 77 people by doing this. However, they also both died.
There were also survivor accounts, one of the more astonishing being of a guy who had been in the express elevator going down when the first tower was hit. It locked his elevator. No intercom communicated with him. He was alone. For a while he could hear people in the elevator next to him, also trapped. They communicated and said whoever got out first would tell the authorities. Eventually the people who had been trapped together in the elevator had managed to tear their elevator open... only to discover they had been in the lobby, mere yards from the firemen's command station. No one had heard them screaming. They told the firemen about the other guy. And left.
No one came for the other guy.
After the other building fell, destroying most of the Mariott hotel, it knocked out the power. All alone, with no idea -- AT ALL --of what had been going on for the last hour and a half (He'd been trapped alone with no communication without any knowledge of any of the days events). The power outtage turned off the resistors which prevent people from opening elevators between floors, and finally he was able to pry open the doors himself... and walked into hell. The lobby was empty, having been blown-out by the fall of the first tower. No one was left, just wreckage. That was minute 90 of the 102.
I do question the New York Times' authors in some of their forensic dissection of the fire codes. Particularly, I seriously question whether the author -- in his efforts to make his point regarding the codes-- left out some pertinent information.
One of the things he rails against are the stairwells. Legitimate things to rail against (since apparently there really was a massive violation in two of the elevators not exiting directly to the exterior of the building. They're really supposed to do that. You can get around that if the lobby is fire rated --which I have to assume this lobby was-- but it is highly questionable how the building was approved with two of its three stairwells not exiting to the exterior.) But I find the analogy of too few lifeboats on the Titanic in comparison to the stairwells somewhat questionable. I'm not personally familiar with the 1968 NFPA codes, but the current ones insist that you have to calculate the number of people using a stair to determine the size of the stair. So while the author has legitimate points about the stairs, I'm suspicious of his overlooking that piece of information because it (to some small degree) undermines his point. As does his continued insistence on referring to bar joist construction as unique. Um... not so much. The building's outter shell was unique. The use of fire rated bar joists, is not.
In all the dissection of the building that I've read in architecture journals, the general consensus of architects and engineers is that the building performed in a way that actually exceeded expectations. Truth the 102 minutes isn't the 2hr fire rating between floors that the author maintains should happen. However, with the fire being as extensive as it was, and breaching floors the way they did, they aren't GOING to survive. Also there's the fundamental misuderstanding by the author about what that 2hr fire rating actually means. Again, I'm not familiar with the 1968 UL and NFPA (1968 being the code they followed at their construction) but in current codes when looking at a fire rated floor separation you are NOT looking at 2HR fire rating of the bar joists. It isn't a fire rating of the bar joists. It's a fire rating of the floor/ceiling ASSEMBLY-- meaning it's the rating of the concrete floor, the metal decking and the bar joists all calculated as one entity. Not simply the bar joists alone. In fact, the bar joists really aren't considered to be the thing providing the 2hr separation... the 3" of concrete on the metal decking is.
Again, the book author had a good point, but he left out some pertinent information that would undermine his own position regarding the building's compliance with fire code issues.
However, there do seem to be some odd instances of the building having gained approval while not actually complying on all issues.
I've had some experience with that as I worked on a hospital, once, that was built in the 50s and 60s which had many of the same fire code issue problems (there weren't 3" of concrete on the floors which then meant that there wasn't adequate fire separation between floors which then did mean that there had to be an extra layer of protection. If that was the case in the two towers, the author didn't clarify that it was the case. ) Having worked on that building (and it took 3 years for that fire proofing retrofit to be accomplished) I could understand and empathize with the people maintaining construction on the Twin Towers by trying to retrofit its fire rated assembly by adding more fireproofing.
However, while I think the fire rating issues (especially the stair questions) have validity. The truth is any building designed to current codes would have the same problems because quite simply buildings are not designed for 767s to fly into full of jet fuel. And they never will be. It's prohibitive to any but the most bunker-like of construction. So while I agree that there need to be lessons learned from the core stairwell issues, I don't think that the author of the book quite understands that some of the things he argues are ever going to happen.
I don't think you could design anything short of NORAD that would survive these kinds of attacks. Not and have it be a commercially viable -- or even appealing space for humans to regularly inhabit -- space. No one would have imagined 9/11. And no one can design against such acts of malevolence. There are things to be learned and code changes that should be made. But no building can ever be 100% terror proof. Just can't.
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no subject
Date: 2005-03-13 03:45 am (UTC)Although I don't know the details, I would agree with your point that no reasonable building code could deal with a jetliner full of fuel flying into it.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-13 03:57 am (UTC)The one that probably will haunt the most are the very brave pair of men who worked in the construction department who broke down doors so that others could escape. I had never heard of them, and I glad that I have now. They were truly heroic. (Although clearly doomed when you realized after they had broken down the doors two flights above the floor they had started on and they continued going up.) Very brave men that we've really never heard of.
It's a shame that so many innocent and good people died because of blind fanatacism.