Post 9-11 a fire chief wrote an article (or was quoted in an article) in NYT that people should not look at jumpers as suicides. He said that the body will do anything to get away from fire, even though the conscious thought is to cling to the ledge. As I understood it, the instinct to get away from fire overrules the instinct not to fall. He was trying to reassure relatives that their loved ones had not voluntarily committed suicide.
Definitely and I rather doubt any church or religious organization would consider them suicides. Those were people escaping…escaping to 99.99% certain death, but escaping.
If I were above the point of impact I have to say that I probably would not realize right away that I was doomed. I might spend the first ten or twenty minutes waiting for rescue to arrive before it would suddenly hit me that, holy fuck, if I can’t get down that means that they can’t get up.
However, how many people knew that the buildings were going to collapse? Who knows, many of the people above the impact may have been quite calm because they figured that the fires would eventually be put out, they would be airlifted to safety, and they’d spend the next weeks out of work while the buildings were repaired.
If I did figure that they were doing to collapse, though, I can’t say with absolute certainty what I would do. I would probably call my parents and sob over the phone how much I love them and how badly I want them. I’m actually tearing up as I’m writing this, because I’m so close to my parents. Then I’d probably try to figure out a way to get down.
Stairway A in the South Tower (one of three) was clear from top to bottom, though filled with smoke through the impact zone. A few survivors made it down to safety in this stairwell from floors at and above the impact zone. The situation was apparently just too smoky and confusing for any others to realize that there was actually a way out. Damn shame.
I guess it really would depend on what I knew. If I knew I was doomed, knew there was no way out and I was certainly going to die, I would try to make a phone call or two. There was a very sad documentary of people who managed to get calls out and leave messages for their loved ones. A couple of them knew there was a good chance they might not make it out alive even though they had no idea what had happened.
That being said, I probably wouldn’t know I was doomed, and I would try to get to an exit and get out. Finding the stairways impassable I would probably try to make my way to the top of the tower for helicopter evacuation. And then seeing that it would be way too smokey for any of that, if there was no where else for me to go, I might try to make those phone calls if I could.
I would probably have no idea that the towers could actually collapse so I’d probably just try to find a smoke-free area and wait. And then I’d die in the collapse.
There were people working in the World Trade Center right until the very end - the technicians running the transmitters of the television stations. I remember reading a memorial to them in Broadcast Engineering magazine.
I would get my parachute, run as high as I can and then jump off. I might smash to other buildings sure but I guess that’s better than jumping straight on.
I would go down to the lowest floor I could get to, unroll a fire hose, tie the end around my waist, break out a window, and try to Die Hard my way past the flaming hole to a lower floor where I could get down from. Chances of success? Pretty much zero. But haven’t you always wanted to try it?
