After the first tower was hit, had the other tower been evacuated before it too was hit? If this has been fully addressed in the media, I’ve missed it.
No, at lesat not completely. One witness said she had been on the 96th floor of the south tower when the north tower was hit, and they were only told to move down to the 75th floor (or thereabouts) until after the second plane hit. My guess is that the first crash was probably viewed as just a horrible accident, and they didn’t want people to swarm the streets, blocking emergency services, under those circumstances.
My sister was working in 101 Barclay Street, a couple block’s distance from the towers and across from #7 WTC. They were not allowed to evacuate the building until after the first collapse, presumably for the same reason.
Thanks, Fillet.
I neglected to add my new sig in my OP.
My mom heard a radio story about a guy who worked on the 35th floor of the second building. He said they didn’t start evacuating immediately after the first building was hit, but started some time after and were in the stairwells when the second building was hit. He said the impact shook the building so hard people were knocked down.
My local paper had an article about a local man who worked in the second tower to get hit.
full story here: http://www.thesunlink.com/news/2001/september/09123witness.html
What amazes me is that, according to the timeline, it took him a little over an hour to get from his office to a few blocks away. It makes me despair for those who couldn’t move as quickly.
This is one of the things that most bothers me (as if it’s possible to single one out): When the plane hit the second building, and hit it about half-way down, I would imagine the people above it would just sit tight, knowing the fire was below them and that it probably wasn’t safe to try to get down past it. That’s what I’d do, anyway.
How could you possibly imagine the entire building would collapse? It just wouldn’t even have crossed my mind.
I think many people below the fire in Tower 2 did get out. It’s the people who were above it I would suspect did not.
The very general rule of thumb for high-rise evacuation is about 2 minutes per floor. The number of stairwells doesn’t really matter, as each floor should have sufficient stairway access. The theory is that everyone will leave at the same time, but you have to wait for the first floor to leave before the second can get out, then the second for the third, etc, etc. Two minutes per floor for a 110 story building is 3 hours 40 minutes. Think back to when WTC was bombed in 1993, and those numbers start to become a bit more believable (disorganized evacuation in poor conditions).
Normal high-rise evacuation procedures is simply that you don’t. Whatever floor the incident is on, you evacuate at least 2 floors above and 2 below, pressurize the floors around the one the incident is on, and lower the pressure in the fire floor. Of course, when its 15 floors, the structure has been compromised, and fire protection features are disabled, all bets are off.
As for the buildings collapsing, no one saw it coming. FDNY is known around the world for their ability to predict structural collapse. One of their past chiefs, Vincent Dunn, literally wrote the book on the collapse of burning buildings. FDNY didn’t see the collapse coming (and how should they have? No highrises have come down before), and horribly lost 265 of the fire service’s bravest members.
I was there. For about 30 seconds, we got an announcement to sit tight, then we got the word to get out. It was orderly and calm, huge numbers got out OK. Many thousands of lives were saved.
Ummmmm. Well if they really weren’t evacuated then bldg security was asleep at the “wheel” again and thousands of people died because of it.
After being bombed by terrorists the first time, there is no such thing as, “just a horrible accident”. :rolleyes:
My sister-in-law was at work on the 34th floor of the 2nd tower to be hit. They heard the first crash, and head that a plane had crashed into the other tower. They figured it was just a little tourist plane or something. They were told to evacuate, but it didn’t seem like they were in any imminent danger. So, my sister-in-law, went back to her desk, got her bag, and went down the stairs. She said it took her about 15 minutes to get out. She was already out of the building when it was hit. She ran away, and was 5 blocks away when it collapsed.
So, as others have said, the tower was in the process of being evacuated when the plane hit it.
Did you suspect that a second plane would come crashing into the other tower in the minutes after the first impact? The possible reasons that Fillet mentioned for keeping people in place might have been reasonable, given the information at hand. As scientologist tells us, that’s not what they did, so the question is moot. I think you’re being overly harsh, though, and basing your judgement on information not available at the time.
Hindsight is 20/20. :rolleyes:, indeed.
What the poster meant was that it wasn’t known at the time that this was a cooridnated terrorist attack and that the second tower would also be hit.
Another one of our posters, Vix, works on the 64th floor of the second tower. According to her, she was in the lobby when the first plane hit.
Thanks, brad_d and Oblong, for clarifying my comments for Mr. Carpenter. I based my post on what I’d heard on the radio; obviously, since scientologist and Green Bean’s SIL were actually in the building, they are best able to explain what went on in the WTC itself.
In my sister’s case, she told me that they were specifically instructed not to leave the building, even after the second plane hit. Everyone was simply supposed to move to the north side, because it was thought that a) they’d be safer indoors and b) emergency crews needed access. (Initially they didn’t even know there had been a second plane - she told me that everyone thought it was an explosion related to the first crash.) Once the south tower collapsed, though, security finally started letting people out of the building, because the concern over structural damage and fires caused by falling debris outweighed the benefit of trying to keep people out of the street.
It’s possible that the management in other nearby buildings opted for other courses of action. I do remember the high rise fire drills we had annually when I worked across the street from Madison Square Garden, and the emphasis was on what KCB615 said - limited evacuation of floors above and below the problem areas, not evacuation of the entire building.
BTW, Mr. Carpenter, I heard reports that fighter jets were scrambled once they realized that one of the Boston airliners had been hijacked, but it was a matter of just minutes’ worth of warning. How could anyone have completely evacuated both buildings on such short notice? I am glad to hear scientologist’s report that many people got out, but I’m afraid that many more were still inside when the towers collapsed, especially in the south tower - I can’t imagine anyone being able to get past the floors where the jet hit, given the intense heat and flames.
My cousin was on approximately the 80th (?) floor of the 2nd tower hit. When the first tower was hit, they started to evacuate. She got down to the 40th floor, and was told to go back up, since the “problem is in the other tower.” She thought about it, but decided to continue on down to the street. She said many people headed back up. Other than having to walk to Queens, she is ok.
I heard on the local radio something similar, about someone on the 84th floor. When she saw what happened to the first tower, she began going down the stairs, with the multitude. However, around the 40th floor, the PA announced that it was OK to go back to your office. She hesitated, but continued down. That must’ve been your cousin. I don’t know who that PA announcer was, but she probably caused many needless deaths.
They just interviewed a woman on ABC who was on the 100th floor of B#2. She said she was on her way down when the PA system said that “the building is not in imminent danger.” She said everyone paused for a second, then kept on moving. Given what floor she was on, her family assumed she was dead. Gut instinct saved her life.
Saw an interview of a fellow who was above the second plane hit, but still made it through the fire. Above the fire, his coworkers turned around and went back up when they met people who were climbing up away from the fire. He went to help a trapped person while his coworkers were debating whether to go up or down, and by the time he had freed the fellow, they had turned around to go up. He and the fellow went down. He said that there were few people along the way.
Yesterday one of my clients told me that his brother evacuated from the 82nd floor of the 2nd building immediately after the 1st building was hit, and that he was out of the building by the time his building was hit. Unless this is misinformation, he must have used an elevator. Although the “accident” had occurred in the other building, were the elevators stopped in the second building immediately?
Is it possible that she the announcer on the announcement system could have been charged with manslaughter or something as a result of all of that? 