When the hit tower collapsed, would it have caused the other one to collapse?
Would that have resulted in more casualties? The thought at the time would have been it was just an accident and perhaps stayed in the other tower or out below. Once the second plane hit, everyone knew it was coordinated.
There are two many “what-ifs” to answer that question. Like–where the plane would hit, which direction it would collapse, size of the explosion, etc. I’m all for intelligent speculation, but I can’t see why this would be of any concern today. Maybe we should save the morbid speculation for a time after we’ve had a chance to to heal from all this.
Take it easy buddy. I’m asking a question. Since when is this morbid speculation?
Would the collapse of the first tower have caused the other one to eventually collapse if it hadn’t been hit?
I don’t think so. I heard on the news (unreliable, I know) that the NY port authority had only insured one tower, because they believed the odds of both of them being destroyed were so unlikely.
Guys, There’s at least a reasonable chance that war was excluded in the insurance policy so probably neither tower was covered. U.S. has already declared it a federal disaster, so the money will flow like water. Rich folks need never worry!
Having been there recently I can tell you that the two towers are not as close together as the video makes them appear. They are hundreds of feet apart from each other…
My guess is that if the first plane had just hit the North Tower, as it did, and the North Tower collapsed on itself, as it did, there’s at least a chance the South Tower would have been left standing.
The real question is whether the energy caused by the collapse of one tower would be sufficient enough to weaken the foundation of the second structure. I know that they share their foundations, but those presumably are still more or less intact at this point…
Another related question that my GF asked (she’s been there, I haven’t) is what happened to the subway station underneath the WTC? Would that have collapsed as well? She says it was the major transit station for NYC, but not having been there myself, I have no idea. We haven’t seen it mentioned on the news anywhere, either.
from what I saw Schumer say in Congress this morning when introducing the AID bill, the subway station below is gone.
I wondered about this, because the war exclusion clause has been on every commerical insurance policy I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen articles in the news and on TV talking about the amounts that insurance companies will have to pay out. I wonder if that isn’t just “spin” to make us feel sorry for the insurance companies, while the cost is coming out of tax-payers pockets.
Probably not, although there would probably have been significant damage to the other tower.
Could they insure a single tower? How do you know which one? Perhaps the insurance policy would be drawn up to cover the most dammaged of the 2 but find it unlikely. Otherwise I would think hte policy would cover a specfic tower.
Also the if the port authority came to the conclusion that it is unlikely that both towers would be dammages/destroyed so would the insurance co.s and the additinal charge for the 2nd sholdn’d be that much more.
But that’s just my humble O
I heard on the news (ABC broadcast, sometime Tuesday, sorry I do not have a cite) that the insurance companies have decided that they will consider this an act of terrorism, not an act of war, and so they will pay out to policyholders.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority webpage states that subway service in Manhattan below Canal Street will be bypassed.
http://www.mta.nyc.ny.us/emergency/emernyct.htm
That seems to be about a dozen stations. It doesn’t say specifically that the World Trade Center stop was destroyed.
From the map on the website, it only looked like the “E” line stopped there, but I thought there were more lines.
The answer to the OP is probably in another thread here, along the lines of “What caused the towers to collapse?”
Given the explanation (that the steel was weakened by the fire, which caused the upper stories to fall, resulting in an unbearable load), I would say that the collapse of south tower was not a factor in the collapse of the north one. Both suffered similar fire damage, and collapsed for the same reason.
The news tonight showed empty subway trains running through the tunnels under (or near?) WTC, testing their stability.
To put a twist on the tread, when I first saw the North tower get hit I thought…Gee I wonder if they could repair that or would have to tear it down?
Supposing it didn’t fall could it have been fixed? I doubt it huh?
After the first one fell I thought Gee it’ll be weird only seeing one of them there. I bet that one will stay up.
Isn’t it a complex rather than two single buildings?
I don’t really know since everytime I went there I went UP thru the subway station.
We took the 1 and the 9 subway to courtland street and were able to go right up into the tower.
For what it’s worth, the original 1993 attack was intended to knock one tower down asymmetrically so that it would fall into the other tower and take them both down.
I don’t know if that was likely or not, but I heard the architect say that the towers only survived 1993 through dumb luck - the terrorists placed the truck in the wrong spot. He said that if it was just a bit closer to one of the major supports, it would have brought the tower down.
In that attack, the death toll would have been higher because no one would have had time to evacuate. In hindsight, it’s amazing how little attention we all gave to that.
Yeah, I remember hearing that the plan for the '93 attack was to actually knock down one of the towers, even topple it over into the other one and send them both crashing down across Manhattan. I remember thinking it was a fantastic notion (in the sense of “a fantasy”, unreal, not “really great”, of course). It seemed ludicrous, even. It sounded like the deranged notion of a fanatic with no real grasp on reality. I mean, nothing that big and solid could just be knocked down by some lunatic with a bomb, right?
Yes, the World Trade Center complex comprised seven buildings: the two towers and five other auxiliary buildings. At least two of those (buildings #5 and #7) have also collapsed.
That is really hard to say. We have an amazing ability to repair structures, given enough money to do so. However, it is possible if it did not fall it might have been considered too unstable to work on even, and it might have been a serious problem then - a building like that ready to fall at no notice, and no safe way to fix. There are too many variables I think to answer the question definitively.