It's taken me this long to be able to read anything in depth about 9/11, including the whole investigation that went on last year. What happened was just so traumatic and in such a year of devastating events I couldn't deal with it. I thought we must surely be at war and perhaps this was the end of everything when I saw news of the two towers' collapse. How could the World Trade Center not be there anymore? Revisiting how I felt that day and the days following would take a book not so interesting as this one, 102 Minutes by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn.
My opinion is you can't go wrong telling the story of what happens to a group of people in a crisis. The authors follow survivors (and not) of the twin towers during the 102 minutes before they collapsed. I read about people who went to work just as they always did every day, following their daily routines. I read about some of the rescue responders who tried to help -- police and fire department personnel as well as other volunteers. Much of it was chilling and very very sad.
There are some awful reasons why people died. Yes, many were killed when the terrorists plowed the hijacked planes through the buildings. Many more survived that impact, though, and couldn't escape because of design flaws in the buildings. When the twin towers went up, the building code in NYC had just changed. There were only 3 staircases in both those gigantic buildings and they were pretty close together. All the staircases were knocked out by the impact of the planes. There weren't any firewall staircases anymore either. The elevator doors were designed to lock if it didn't line up perfectly with the floor (a good idea to prevent accidents but a disaster here). The doors to the roof of the building were locked.
People who survived above the impact but couldn't use the stairs to go down also couldn't get onto the roof. People in wheelchairs were screwed because they couldn't take the elevators down. Some were rescued because other co-workers helped carry them down. I read about one man, though, Ed Beyea, who waited and waited on the 27th floor. A quadriplegic, he'd be especially difficult to carry down the stairs. His good friend waited with him. People passed them by figuring the fire department volunteers would get them out. What must those guys have been thinking as they waited?
Many were trapped in elevators that stopped between floors. Some of the elevators, the express ones, didn't even have normal stops at every floor and so how could anyone get them out? Others were in cars that stopped just a couple of inches above or below a floor and they had to fight to pry the doors open. It took a half hour to open one of these elevators and that was with help from the outside.
The changes in the building code allowed developers more choices in the material they used and the number of stair cases etc. To me, it allowed short cuts and cut backs and all of that was designed to make the building more profitable. Cut back on the number of staircases and you could rent more floor space. It's always about money, isn't it?
As if that wasn't enough, apparently there is a rivalry and lack of cooperation between the police and fire departments. I had no idea that they didn't work together; that they didn't have a joint communication system of some sort. It seemed like people watching TV knew more about what was going on than the rescuers inside the buildings! The rescue workers in the north building didn't know the other tower collapsed!
I was really annoyed when a commission was appointed to determine what happened on 9/11. I didn't see any use in finger pointing but the families of those who died wanted it and so I just tried to ignore all the findings. I was upset but didn't really absorb the information that we'd had some warnings this was going to happen. As the investigation got closer and closer to what happened inside the towers I just tuned out.
I think that all the rescue workers did the very best that they could. Many of them died needlessly and so did all the others -- the people not killed by the impact of the planes. It's not the fault of the firefighters. It's the fault of those who wanted to cut corners and save money and forgot about people who would have to work in these buildings.
No wonder I have a fear of heights.
It's a very good book and I would recommend it to anyone interested in what happened after the planes hit.
Posted by Cassie at March 5, 2005 05:46 PMThanks for the article about this book Cassie.
Don't know if you'd remember or not, but I was in Manhattan that day -- due to a complete and utter fluke, I was SUPPOSED to be down by the Towers themselves, but was instead next door to the Empire State Building. That wasn;t a particularly comfortable place to be either, since that was at teh stage when we didn't know what else was going to be attacked.
Anyway, the book sounds very interesting. I haven't read any of the books yet, but right after it happened, being I was jobhunting, I was reading the NY Times every day. I remember just sitting there, reading the articles they did on each individual who had been inside, just crying and crying. I remember the instances you mention on the people in wheelchairs - that hit me very hard because of my own disability and difficulty with stairs.
My reaction, for whatever reason, was sort of the opposite of yours. I still have trouble seeing old pics of the NY skyline, but watched all the specials analyzing the pre and post attack, and the History channel special on the making of the buildings. They covered many of the design flaws you made up, but also had some engineers on who actually said that some of those factors actually helped more people escape, because they kept the Towers from falling sooner.
The NYPD/FD thing is a horror. And they are STILL having problems getting it together on a single system usable for both departments.
Oops -- this is way LOOONG -- sorry.
Jeannie
Posted by: Jeannie at March 19, 2005 04:56 PM