Locked doors stopped rooftop rescue in WTC towers

Sydney Morning Herald ^ | 10/24/01

[Dixie Mom]

All NYC Skyscrapers have unlocked roof doors.

Not according to this article that appeared in the WSJ yesterday: Could Helicopters Have Saved People From the Top of the Trade Center?

From the article:

New York City's fire code requires roof doors to be unlocked or to have devices that allow someone to open a locked door from the inside. Officials at several companies that manage large numbers of tall buildings in Manhattan say their buildings provide roof access in an emergency.

But the Port Authority's Twin Towers had the status of state government property and therefore were legally exempt from the fire code, according to both the Port Authority and the city's building department, which oversees enforcement of the fire code.

This is an excellent article with much more information about the feasibility of a roof rescue, for anyone who is interested.

[ganesha]

The primary problem here is not the exiting of the building once people have reached ground level but the amount of time it takes to descend. Once the planes had hit it was just a matter of how much time it would take you to walk down 100 flights of steps versus how long it would take the building to collapse. Wasting time was therefore inexcusable. It seems to me that the best solution might be neither stairs nor helicopters but some type of rappelling device.

[hellinahandcart]

Tower 1 had a smoke free area on the roof.

Sure, and everyone knows that smoke is a static thing that never moves into an area that was previously smoke-free. Smoke always stays right where it is. < /sarcasm >

[alisasny]

Sadly I see that plan failing miserably. Everything just happened too quick.

[hellinahandcart]

Seeing that a military bomber once crashed into the Empire State Building, just down the street, I don't see why this was so unimaginable.

That was an accident that happened in the fog. That's why a plane impact was accounted for in the design of the WTC, because it had already happened once. They were anticipating an accident. Not a kamikaze attack of both towers in one day.

The architect of the WTC used to boast that he designed the towers to take the impact of a 707.

He didn't "boast", it was the truth, nd it was talked about before the towers were ever built because they would be so much higher than everything around them. The 707 was the biggest plane around at the time the building was designed. They weren't anticipating a much bigger plane with a much larger fuel capacity. So no, they didn't account for that. Should they have gone back and rebuilt the building to new specs?

They also designed it to withstand hurricane winds much higher than have ever been recorded here, but that doesn't mean it would be IMPOSSIBLE for a storm of unprecedented power to take them down. Would that be the fault of the designers? Can we build anything, if we have to plan for everything--not just the likely but the extremely unlikely?

If you couldn't imagine it, then maybe it's a good thing we don't hire you to develop building emergency evacuation procedures. The sad thing, of course, is that the people we did hire for the WTC proved to be equally unimaginative.

Screw yourself, pompous ass. You didn't imagine it either. And I don't believe for one minute that if YOU were in that situation, knowing that a plane had just slammed into the other tower, you would have thought it was anything other than a horrible accident until the other plane hit the building you were in.

It's very easy to "imagine" that particular scenario now, after it was so thoroughly demonstrated. But if you're claiming you thought of it before, you are lying.

[Jordo]

This is very disturbing. I also find it disturbing that the people in tower 2 were told by the port authority to go back up to their offices, that their building was secure. There has been very little press coverage of that, and I think it should be investigated.

The advice not to evacuate the South Tower was not so unreasonable at first, when it was widely assumed that the first plane crash was an accident. There was no expectation that another plane was coming.

People outside were being killed from the first moments, by falling debris and burning jet fuel. In that situation, people were probably safer inside the South Tower than they would have been running around outside. And the police and fire fighters likely had their hands full dealing with the North Tower. Another horde of people evacuating would not have helped the situation.

Of course, hindsight is wonderful, and after the second plane, it became clear that early evacuation of the South Tower would have been better in this case. But I don't fault people who couldn't accurately predict the future, during 10 or 15 minutes of utter chaos.

[Sloth]

A.) Obviously, you are unimaginative.

B.) The point about the doors being locked would apply just as well if it HAD been an accidental crash into only ONE of the buildings. Having those doors locked was inexcusable. Negligent homicide, in fact.

[Jordo]

I thought the same thing, so imagine my surprise the next day when I learned that Tower 2 fell after 40 minutes but Tower 1, the first tower hit, stayed up for about an hour and a half total.

A timeline I saw had the South Tower staying up for almost exactly 1 hour after it was hit, and the North Tower up for about 1 hour and 45 minutes after it was hit, or about an hour and a half after the second plane hit the South Tower.

I've seen other accounts that disagreed with these times.

[Jordo]

If you look at other pictures, it seems that the roof of the North Tower was partly cleared of smoke by the breeze from the west.

I can't find a view from the north at the moment (which I seem to recall showed this best), but look at page 36 of the October issue of America's 1st Freedom (the NRA magazine) if you have access to it. This picture is from the east-northeast, fairly near the towers. The north face of the North Tower is partly clear of smoke all the way to the roof. The top of the antenna tower is also clear. This photo was taken just moments after the plane hit the South Tower; probably the fire in the North Tower was still spreading, and the smoke got worse later.

The smoke from the North Tower seems to have completely covered the roof of the South Tower, pretty much the whole time.

I wonder if the antenna on the North Tower also interfered with possible helicopter landings?

[Uncle Sham]

Knowing that a fire was raging on the upper floors of the north tower should have raised the question of whether or not structural failure was a possibility. If this was a possibility, however slight, BOTH towers and any building threatened by this potential failure should have been evacuated. When dealing with an unknown amount of danger, we always err on the side of caution. A simple telephoned bomb threat is enough to order any building evacuated. This was an ACTUAL fire.

[itsinthebag]

"This is very disturbing. I also find it disturbing that the people in tower 2 were told by the port authority to go back up to their offices, that their building was secure. There has been very little press coverage of that, and I think it should be investigated.

Just like most thought that the Titanic wouldn't sink, most thought that the Towers could not collapse.

[aruanan]

Nope, no, nadda. Heard this angle right after the bombing. It was stated that choppers could not have got onto the roof because of the intense heat rising up and the smoke and fire.

So I thought.

[JenOPCer]

I find it disturbing that they did as they were told instead of taking responsibility for their own safety. It's the same mindset that now has postal workers crying that the government won't test them for anthrax instead of making an appointment to get themselves tested. Scary..

I live here in the DC area and this is what has been happening:

1) It is futile to go in to your doctor and demand to be tested. We have been told over and over again that your doctor/hospital cannot test you for anthrax. You have have a special dispensation to go someplace special (I think the health department), where they can turn you away if they think you are being hysterical. We have been assured many times not even to bother trying to get tested unless we've been showered by white powder from an envelope...or, it seems, if two of our co-workers die from inhalation anthrax because they were told to take two aspirins and call the doctor in the morning.

2) People are being accused of hysteria. Congress was lambasted right and left for closing down over an anthrax scare. We are bombarded on the nightly news for calls not to be silly and ridiculous enough to think we might be vulnerable.

3) We have been assured over and over again that it takes a "large amount" of inhaled spores to make you sick, its not contagious, its been contained, blah blah blah.

I personally feel very helpless. You can't just go ahead and pay for being tested for anthrax out of pocket even if its just to quell your own panic. Its very likely that some HMO doctor is going to roll her eyes and tell me to go home and not be a hypochondriac if I do get sick. And finally, how many postal patrons are going to have to die before they realize that anthrax can get onto untargeted household mail?

[hellinahandcart]

A.) Obviously, you are unimaginative.

Screw yourself too, then. :P

If you can claim with a straight face that, at 8:50 a.m. on 9/11, your first, second or even third thought upon seeing that smoking tower was that SURELY another plane would come along and do the exact same thing very shortly--well, you're the world's biggest liar.

I just wish all you armchair know-it-alls would write down your insights at the time they occur to you, date and notarize them, and put them in a safe deposit box. Then you'd actually have the proof that "you saw it coming all along", and you'd have some credibility when you say that others should have anticipated it beforehand as well.

B.) The point about the doors being locked would apply just as well if it HAD been an accidental crash into only ONE of the buildings. Having those doors locked was inexcusable. Negligent homicide, in fact.

While that is a very good point, it was not the topic of my post. 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?"

So even though you have a good point (and you do), it's beside the point in terms of the subject of my post.

[hellinahandcart]

A timeline I saw had the South Tower staying up for almost exactly 1 hour after it was hit, and the North Tower up for about 1 hour and 45 minutes after it was hit, or about an hour and a half after the second plane hit the South Tower.

You're correct; I just rechecked the Time Magazine chart about this. Tower 1, hit at 8:45, collapsed at 10:29. Tower 2, hit at 9:06, down at 10:00.

If you'd asked me that afternoon, I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that both towers were down in way less than an hour (but then, I did have that memory glitch I mentioned).

[Andrew Byler]

Not according to this article that appeared in the WSJ yesterday

Since the Twin Towers no longer exist, we can confidently say all NYC skyscrapers have emergency egress to the roof, and not locked doors. I stand by my statement.