New Book on 9-11 Describes Civilian Heroes

[JPZenger]

There is good new book on the events on 9-11 inside the World Trade Center, entitled 102 Minutes. The title comes from the time between when the first plane hit and both towers had collapsed.

At this point, you figure that nothing new could be written on the subject. However, there was plenty I had not read before. This is a factual account, and not an emotional tearjerker.

The book stresses the work of the everyday civilians inside the towers to save lives. The buildings were owned by the Port Authority of New York. A wide range of Port Authority workers strained to save trapped people as the fires spread. Even an $11 an hour security guard stayed at his post on the 76th floor throughout the entire crisis and helped people until he died. Most notably, a group of Port Authority construction/maintenance workers freed over 70 people from various elevators. Those 70 people made it to safety, but the construction workers didn't.

Not to denigrate the work of the firefighters, but the book says that many who died were completely exhausted from climbing the stairs in heavy gear, and were not actively rescueing people at the time of the collapse. Many also died in the adjacent hotel lobby when they were waiting to go into towers, when one of the towers collapsed on the hotel.

With hindsight, we can now see that it was unrealistic to think that the fires could have been put out. Instead, the firefighters should have dropped their firefighting equipment and concentrated on getting everyone out.

The book blames many of the casualities on bad communications. In particularly, the police and fire could not communicate with each other. Many improvements were made after the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center that saved lives on 9-11. However, the fire department's new radios were taken out of service right before the 9-11 attack because there were questions about their reliability. Therefore, the firefighters were using old radios that were supposed to be thrown away. There was a repeater station in the World Trade Center to strengthen the radio signals, but it didn't work.

As a result, many firefighters died needlessly. Police helicopters were circling the buildings and provided warnings that the second tower was about to collapse. The warnings were received on the police radios, and the police evacuated as fast as possible. The police told the firefighters when they saw them, but many firefighters didn't get the word. The firefighters couldn't hear the police warnings on their radio systems.

There were design flaws in the building. The City's building code had been rewritten before the World Trade Center was built to allow fewer stairwells than was required previously. The stairwells were also clustered too close together, which reduced the chance that one stairwell would remain open. Many people were stuck on elevators on 9-11. It was almost impossible to rescue many because there were no openings along large numbers of floors. For example, if an elevator was an express that did not stop for 30 stories, then there was no way to open the elevator door for 30 stories.

Most of the deaths were on the top of the first tower that was hit.

The book also addresses the issue of rooftop rescues. Many trapped people tried to get to the roof. The police were ready to lower themselves from helicopters onto the roof, but it was impossible. The roof doors were tightly locked. There was an emergency mechanism that the guards tried to release to open the doors, but it didn't work. In any case, a rooftop rescue probably would not have been successful. There were obstructions in the way, including a large antenna and window cleaning machinery. Also, the extreme heat of the fire would have made it physically impossible for the helicopters to stay airborne over the towers. In addition, the helicopter pilots were afraid that if they lowered a winch, many desperate people would have jumped on it, vs. the two that could be carried at a time. Then the helicopter pilot would have had to choose between dropping the winch or crashing.

It is a miracle that less than 3,000 people in the WTC. If a few facts had been slightly different, 30,000 people could have easily died that morning.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

1. Thanks for the review. Sounds like a tough, but important read nt