9/11 20 years on.Where were you when it happened?

[MickyD]

I was at work just coming towards the end of lunch hour. 

Gaffer had  tannoyed all personnel to Gerry ready for fire safety visits. Suddenly, news of the first plane came on the news. We tannoyed the gaffer and asked him to come upstairs back to the telly room. That's where we stayed all afternoon. 

Many years earlier i remember being on duty when we were suddenly interrupted by news of the Pan-Am flight came on. 

[Dimron]

A steel frame will not support its own weight once its core temperature exceeds 620 degrees centigrade. a cellolusic (wood based) fire reaches 600 degrees after 10 mins then steadily increases to 800 C within 30 mins. The World Trade Centre was subjected to major structural damage by the impact and what appeared to be the external window mullions were actually structural columns to enable the building to cantilever out of the ground like a tube and resist wind forces. Then it was subjected to a hydrocarbon fire loading from the aviation fuel where the temperature reaches 1,100C in 10 mins.

The firefighters would have known this from their exams but when you are racing to save lives you probably pray the theory would be proven incorrect.

Edited September 11, 2021 by Dimron

[Tonge moor green jacket]

Lockerbie was a shocker too; at uni and it struck home with so many American students dieing that day.

Visited the memorial last year. 

[MickyD]

48 minutes ago, Tonge moor green jacket said:

That's a very big call. Send in hundreds of men when they knew it would collapse?

Possibility maybe, knowing- can't see it.

I don't think they knew it'd collapse at all. The architect claimed the towers would withstand an impact from a 737 or similar sized jet plane.  That would make you confident the towers would still be standing when you came back out. 

I assure you,  a fireman knowing a building was definitely going to collapse but going in anyway would be tantamount to suicide.

Not going to happen! 

The officers would be holding their resources back awaiting the impending collapse and then pick up the pieces afterwards. 

[Tonge moor green jacket]

4 minutes ago, MickyD said:

I don't think they knew it'd collapse at all. The architect claimed the towers would withstand an impact from a 737 or similar sized jet plane.  That would make you confident the towers would still be standing when you came back out. 

I assure you,  a fireman knowing a building was definitely going to collapse but going in anyway would be tantamount to suicide.

Not going to happen! 

The officers would be holding their resources back awaiting the impending collapse and then pick up the pieces afterwards. 

That's exactly as I would have imagined it. No doubt guys would want to do their jobs but safety protocols etc.

Isn't this in part of the delay in going in to treat the injured in the arena attack? 

 

As for the towers- I would presume it would have been very difficult to assess the performance of the structure well below the impact area too. Might have expected part to remain stood up even if some of the above sections failed.

 

[Dimron]

An interesting summary

https://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/structural/wtc.htm

[MickyD]

6 minutes ago, Dimron said:

An interesting summary

https://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/structural/wtc.htm

I haven't read your link but assume it's your reference to why the towers came down. That's fine but i absolutely assure you, the FDNY guys wouldn't be familiar with these theories either otherwise they wouldn't have gone in. 

[royal white]

Stood on the parade ground at 42 commando having our passports checked before we were due to fly to America! We were due on a flight there that afternoon, obviously they all git cancelled and we flew out a week later. 

[Dimron]

It is a simple summary. I have been around steel frames and fire for quite a long time.

No one ever considered a 150 tonne fully fuelled 767 flying into the structure at 500 mph... it was a miracle the structures didn't topple immediately. As I watched the events unfold with my background knowledge (I studied high rise construction as a specialist subject) and managing a fire protection company (we did the Reebok) my brain pieced it together.

[e2e4]

watch this thing on more4 now

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/102-minutes-that-changed-america

the second planes just hit and the first set of adverts are on. 

references to the '94 (?) bombing within the first five minutes. 

seems edited with follow ups now though, instead of running the minutes through. 

 

Edited September 11, 2021 by e2e4
typo

[frank_spencer]

Sat waiting for neighbours to come on Sat at my mates house. BBC news bod comes on mates sis shouts to us 'ey up Queen Mum's dead!'

Sat watching in pretty much silence from then on.

[Dimron]

22 hours ago, MickyD said:

I haven't read your link but assume it's your reference to why the towers came down. That's fine but i absolutely assure you, the FDNY guys wouldn't be familiar with these theories either otherwise they wouldn't have gone in. 

I've been giving this some thought. If you have high rises on your patch how do you get the information to the army tasked with fighting fires when they need it? High rise buildings are so different in all aspects to conventional buildings.

 In the case of the WTC they had 90 minutes assuming a cellulosic fire with limited structural damage (design safety factors would have accommodated the higher temperature and structural loss). I assumed they would have known that.

Similarly did the London Fire Brigade know that a cavity had been introduced to the outside of Grenfell that would allow hot gases to travel as in a chimney. When the internal compartmentation had obviously broken down owing to shoddy renovation work the principle of staying put and waiting didn't apply anymore, but without basic information the fire fighters stuck to their standard operating procedure.

 

[Spider]

As of September the 10th 2001, I doubt any skyscraper on earth had a risk assessment plan for being hit at full speed by fully-laden passenger jets.

And certainly the training being done would have been unlikely to include it happening twice in 20 minutes.

Conspiracists are just bored attention seekers. They fell down because they got hit by planes at 500mph.

Edited September 12, 2021 by Spider

[MancWanderer]

Interesting listen. Dan Snow’s History Hit podcast. Talking to the bloke who was Fire Commisioner at the time. The decisions made on the day and why they were made

Another one also from this week where he talks to a bloke that was in a meeting above where one of the planes crashed

Plane hits first tower. Folk in second tower told to back to their desks as it’s safer. Hindsight is such a wonderful gift

[MickyD]

The way I understood things, a high-rise was the same as a row of terraces but on its end. This would mean each flat is fire-separated from the others, not just on the same floor but also on adjacent floors. This means, providing all the engineered separation is intact, a fire will remain within the single flat.

We used to regularly visit any high-rises in our own area of responsibility in order to make sure those engineered fire separations were working as they were designed; wired glazing, door closing devices, intumescent strips in door jambs, etc., as well as ensuring the control valves from the dry or wet riser system are still there.

The right of the Fire Authority to direct remedial measures to be carried out was lost when the Labour Govt, introduced the Regulatory Reform Order (Fire Safety) 2005. The order pretty much put responsibility on “a responsible person” to carry out a premises fire safety inspection. This was usually the company H&S rep who was often untrained in other than the common sense aspects of Health and Safety.

The whole of the UK Fire Service fought these changes but John Prescott, as Deputy Prime Minister, and the head of UK Fire Services, spun it so it looked as though we feared change. We did; but not because we feared for ourselves, but because we feared for the public.

Grenfell simply proved we were right but without the smugness of, “Told you so!”

 

[Dimron]

I haven't heard the terraces stood on end analogy but it is a good comparison for compartmenting a "traditional" high rise but the mega high rises are more complex, space frames engineered to be more fully stressed and lighter weight.

We now have "Fire Risk Assessors" who have been on a 5 day course (max) where they are taught to tick boxes, I see examples of their reports during my work on schools demonstrating varying degrees of quality and relevance. There doesn't appear to be any consistency in what they produce. So many miss the obvious and report on the irrelevant but the building owner has satisfied the statutory requirement, I am probably the only person to have sat down and read the document but that is the way I operate.

Before the 2005 Act we had also been enduring the steady privatisation of Building Control. Independence has been lost, on a number of projects I actually employ the Building Regulations Surveyor as the Main Contractor which is completely wrong. Developers will always employ the surveyors who impose on the process as little as possible.

In my opinion the Building Regulations regarding Fire Safety are pretty thorough but the problem is Enforcement. Grenfell was waiting to happen. 

[MickyD]

We still used to visit certain types of building where there was a particularly high life risk.  The Reebok was a prime example of such a building. What always amazed me was that the stadium is, in effect, a bloody big steel and concrete box. In itself, nothing to burn so we shove carpets and soft furniture in. Even then each room filled with such soft furnishings would/should be separated by fire doors…

and then we get the HVAC engineers in to drill walls to shove pipework through. Did anyone tell such contractors to ensure any such holes are plugged? 
 

Regarding those folk doing the inspections, we’ve seen so many, like you say, who miss the obvious so they can justify their positions by getting hung up with the irrelevant stuff and then forgetting to go back looking at the obvious.

 

[Underpants]

We had a meeting at work. I had just arrived. We had a wall with over a dozen TVs on. Like the ones you see behind the newsreaders or the folk on Sky Sports. No sound on but most had pictures coming from NY. I was under the impression it had been a light aircraft that had hit the tower. Then the other one got hit. it was a jaw dropping moment.

[Duck Egg]

Like many, i heard the reports and presumed it was a small Cessna type plane.  Carried on work and left the office for an appointment.  On the way out i saw a group of folk stood staring at the telly in reception and saw that both towers were on fire. 

I get to the appointment early so sat in the car listening to the radio and heard all those false reports of car bombs going off in Washington.  The presenter then said about both towers no longer being there and confirmed they'd collapsed.  I'd been up on the observation deck many months previously and just couldn't take it in that they'd gone.

[Dimron]

10 hours ago, MickyD said:

We still used to visit certain types of building where there was a particularly high life risk.  The Reebok was a prime example of such a building. What always amazed me was that the stadium is, in effect, a bloody big steel and concrete box. In itself, nothing to burn so we shove carpets and soft furniture in. Even then each room filled with such soft furnishings would/should be separated by fire doors…

and then we get the HVAC engineers in to drill walls to shove pipework through. Did anyone tell such contractors to ensure any such holes are plugged? 
 

Regarding those folk doing the inspections, we’ve seen so many, like you say, who miss the obvious so they can justify their positions by getting hung up with the irrelevant stuff and then forgetting to go back looking at the obvious.

 

The Reebok was an interesting one. Until then the steelwork in the concourses had to be coated with a fire protection coating to avoid collapse for 60 minutes, we had just finished the new stands at Burnley where this was the case. The engineers at the Reebok employed Warrington Fire Research to carry out an analysis that demonstrated, owing to the low combustible loads in the concourse, the temperature of the (big) raking beams supporting the terraces would stay below their failure temperature of 550 degrees for the statutory 60mins. 

As a result the areas requiring spray treatment were more than halved (floors in the occupied areas and burger bars etc were still required) giving  saving of over £200k, not bad for a £50k report. However, what they didn't account for was this made the fire compartmentation super-critical so any fire didn't break into the concourses. They soon spent the saving, I ended up with 40 odd guys working 7 days per week for 3 weeks installing fire seals to the HVAC and other services you mention.

The place was tight as a drum and passed all the licencing inspections when handed over (we were working right until the afternoon of the Everton match) but over the past 20 odd years I would imagine lots of breaches have been made and not picked up by the licencing authorities.

 

[Spider]

41 minutes ago, Dimron said:

The Reebok was an interesting one. Until then the steelwork in the concourses had to be coated with a fire protection coating to avoid collapse for 60 minutes, we had just finished the new stands at Burnley where this was the case. The engineers at the Reebok employed Warrington Fire Research to carry out an analysis that demonstrated, owing to the low combustible loads in the concourse, the temperature of the (big) raking beams supporting the terraces would stay below their failure temperature of 550 degrees for the statutory 60mins. 

As a result the areas requiring spray treatment were more than halved (floors in the occupied areas and burger bars etc were still required) giving  saving of over £200k, not bad for a £50k report. However, what they didn't account for was this made the fire compartmentation super-critical so any fire didn't break into the concourses. They soon spent the saving, I ended up with 40 odd guys working 7 days per week for 3 weeks installing fire seals to the HVAC and other services you mention.

The place was tight as a drum and passed all the licencing inspections when handed over (we were working right until the afternoon of the Everton match) but over the past 20 odd years I would imagine lots of breaches have been made and not picked up by the licencing authorities.

 

Mate of mine is a structural surveyor. Says the South West floodlight is sinking by a few inches every year.

The car park will look like the surface of a dried up lake in about 10 years too.

Building on a landfill wasn't the best idea.

[bolty58]

Just landed at Ringway after leaving Chicago O'Hare on a United Airlines partner flight with British Midland. Got to M-in-laws in Tun Fowt and thought she was watching some disaster movie or other. Gobsmacked when we realised what was going on. 

We (missus and daughter in tow) had ridden the Ducks up at Wisconsin Dells the day before and done pretty much everything we had wanted to do around Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay etc. in the preceding week. Weren't supposed to leave til the Thursday after 9/11 but the missus had some weird premonition and insisted that I got us some earlier flights. To add to the weirdness, when I called United Airlines they said "This is pretty amazing, we just had three cancellations for tomorrows flight to Manchester. Do you want to take the seats?"

We all know women are strange. They definitely have some weird shit ESP thing going on. Probably saved us a small fortune in costs if we had been locked down for a few weeks.

[Dimron]

16 minutes ago, Spider said:

Mate of mine is a structural surveyor. Says the South West floodlight is sinking by a few inches every year.

The car park will look like the surface of a dried up lake in about 10 years too.

Building on a landfill wasn't the best idea.

I can believe it, I recall all of the methane vents around the site.

Regarding the floodlights I got a right bollocking from the site safety officer when he found out that four of us had gone up the ladders one evening after work without safety harnesses 🙂

[Spider]

There's a multi-part new documentary on National Geographic

It's probably the best of the lot. Some of the interviews with survivors are beyond beleif.

In episode 2, a doctor is going round tagging bodies on the ground (before the towers fell) and tells a story about a woman who'd been on one of the planes but was still alive on the ground.

Most harrowing thing I've ever heard.

[DazBob]

8 minutes ago, Spider said:

In episode 2, a doctor is going round tagging bodies on the ground (before the towers fell) and tells a story about a woman who'd been on one of the planes but was still alive on the ground.

 

WTF??  Surely everyone on those planes was instantly atomised as soon as they hit the towers?