"If a lift shaft is protected, a lift can be useful. We tried an evacuation in London, where we used lifts with an override device that allows the lift to skip floors. Everyone in the building was evacuated in 15 minutes out of a 44-story building."
At 10:29 a.m., one hour and 44 minutes after a jetliner hit One World Trade Center, it folded into the ground, according to Arup's "World Trade Center Briefing," a document the company's engineers drafted after the attack. Enough time, in other words, to evacuate seven buildings with proper preparation.
Brandon Fernandez
Tony Fitzpatrick, chairman of Arup Americas.
AP Wideworld Photo
London's Millennium Bridge, which was closed soon
after it opened in June 2000, when crowds' footsteps
caused it to wobble side to side.
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Last month, the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology announced plans for a $16 million, two-year investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center. At the press conference journalists were encouraged to mill around a couple of pieces of three-story-high, twisted, rusted steel that would, presumably, be analyzed by experts.
"Many people, including technical experts, industry leaders, and families of victims, have pressed for a broad-based federal investigation of the building collapses at the World Trade Center," said NIST Director Arden Bement Jr. "The lessons to be learned from this investigation and the companion research and development program are critical to understanding what core reforms are needed to make tall buildings safer nationwide, enhancing the safety of fire and emergency responders, better protecting occupants and property, and providing better emergency-response capabilities and procedures for future disasters."
Dunn, the retired assistant FDNY chief, has a more jaded view.
"It will be a year before they come out with any meetings," he told me, adding that by then, public sentiment backing the kind of stiff, national, high-rise-specific fire codes that might have saved the World Trade Center victims will have faded enough to be easily beaten back by real estate lobbyists. In the end, Dunn said, "nobody's going to do anything."
Nobody, that is, except a few private clients of Ove Arup & Partners. San Francisco's planned new federal building is being erected with the help of Arup engineers. Neither Arup, nor the General Services Administration, which is overseeing the project, would comment on specific plans.
The week after I listened to Fitzpatrick describe his sojourn from fixing a famously wobbly bridge to divining the proper engineering response to terrorist threats, I, like the rest of America, suffered through the media orgy commemorating the anniversary of Sept. 11. I listened to George Bush rattle sabers toward Iraq and speciously characterize his latest round of aggression as some sort of response to terrorism. I recalled the massive roundup of people of Middle Eastern descent a year ago, and I thought of news reports that hate crimes against Arab-looking people have increased fivefold. I remembered these things, then I imagined how the world might look if we all thought like the best engineers.
Perhaps before embarking on another year of political schizophrenia, we'd go on a bike ride and boil a plate of pasta. We'd think sideways, spend some time with a full belly getting our minds straight.
We'd ask ourselves what, really, it is we're afraid of. And we'd understand that, if we don't get the question right, we'll never find the right answer.
