Conference Facilitator: If we could all return to our seats, we're going to begin the second session in one minute.  If anyone in the audience needs an ASL interpreter, or if anyone in the audience is aware of someone who needs an ASL interpreter, please ask them to come forward and approach me.  We have a special seating arrangement for anyone who needs the interpreter.  Thank you.

Good morning.  We're ready for our second set of speakers.  Our first speaker in the second session will be Jake Pauls, represents Jake Pauls Consulting Services.  The original first speaker is not here, and if she in fact shows up, she will be moved to the last slot in this session.  Mr. Pauls.

Jake Pauls, Jake Pauls Consulting Services:  Thank you very much.  I will not have prepared remarks.  I have some prepared slides, but I'll go through those very quickly, and then I'll get a little more informal.  If I could have the next slide please.  Just for quick background, I'm one of the people in the room who's intensely involved with codes and standards.  My whole life revolves around them, and that's one reason I'm suffering from a bad cold right now, because we're in the midst of many ballots.

I serve on several NSPA international committees, as well as the Industry Advisory Committee for the International Code Council.  In these cases I represent the American Public Health Association, so one of the things I'm trying to do today, and generally, is to bridge between the public health community, the regulatory community, and human factors, which is my area.  Last month I celebrated my 35th anniversary dealing with human factors in buildings, in particular, the issues of evacuation and human behavior in emergencies.

Thirty-three years ago I did a graduation project called Responses to Emergencies in Buildings, which was one of the first attempts to look at behavioral and social aspects of building safety, and it predated a lot of work at organizations such as NIST predecessor, the National Bureau of Standards.  I have been involved with publishing, as well as research on means of egress, or facilities for evacuation, for many years, and I'm well published in the literature in that area.

For the last nine months, along with a couple of colleagues, I've been spearheading an effort called the World Trade Center Evacuation Study Initiative, which is a group of about 100 people from several countries.  And our goal is essentially to improve knowledge of evacuation as a critical mitigation measure in case of emergency, and to encourage the dissemination and broad application of that knowledge. 

Now, one thing that troubled me, I had been out of research organizations for many years, was that there was no one organization anywhere that was responsible for what happened to the occupants, in terms of their evacuation.  Evacuation has not been very high on the research agenda for NIST for example, and hopefully we'll see a change to that.  So one thing that happened was, the private sector, and in particular totally unpaid individuals like myself, stepped in, and we've been holding a series of meetings in New York for the last nine months now, trying to get research done.  And this has been a tremendous investment for a number of us.  It hasn't been entirely fruitful by the way. 

Now, if I could go to the next slide please.  I'd like to move directly to Guiding Principle Number I in NIST's plan of action.  And specifically, the principle aggressive comprehensive thorough independent and objective technical investigation that is fully informed of the concerns and issues of all interested parties and within the limits of available resources.

Well, first of all, this is really commendable.  It's very commendable.  Is it achievable?  I doubt it.

One of the problems is I've received information, which I'm not sure whether is public or not, but only about $1.3 million of NIST's investigation budget is geared to any of the human factors issues, the human behavior evacuation issues.  This is woefully inadequate, woefully inadequate.

When I first got into this several months ago, my first estimate of the amount of money that was required simply to survey or to interview the survivors adequately was on the order of $10 million - $10 million for that.  So we can see that we have currently, in terms of the budget as I understand it, we're underestimating by about a factor of 10 in terms of what's available at the federal level to fund research on evacuation and other human factors issues.

Now I've been observing NIST and its predecessors and National Bureau Standards for a few decades.  I used to wander up and down the corridors when I was a researcher with the National Research Council of Canada.  Some people at NBS actually thought that I worked there.

And I went - this is during the 1970s, and I call it kind of a golden age for that organization, which was lost.  At that time, there were staffs there who had a human factors background who could understand behavior of people.  That has been lost in recent years, partly due to government cutbacks around 1980.

And, for example, as far as I can determine, there is only one person in all of NIST, all of NIST, who is a member of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.  Now this is rather shocking when compared, for example, to the National Transportation Safety Board, which has at least a dozen staff persons who are members of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, which is the main international society for human factors in ergonomics.  So there is a lot of catch-up to be done.

Now what this means, that NIST's staff capability has to be expanded considerably.  Now one reason for that is you can't draw up a plan if you don't have the staff resources.  In going though the plan I've seen repeated examples of where NIST has its strength.  For example, you see a lot of detail and you heard a lot of detail this morning in the first presentations about the structural issues.  Well NIST is very strong there.

Look at the detail on the human behavior issues; almost nothing there.  You won't see, for example, detail on what really constitutes an evacuation.  There's very little discussion on, for example, what was the actual number of evacuees in that incident on September 11th.  And it's shocking that even today, nine months after the incident, we still do not know very accurately how many people were even in the building and how many people evacuated successfully.

That's a shocking state of affairs.  We should have known that within hours.  And in any event - I'm going to the next slide - one of the weakness areas I see within the scope is there is some reference to coordination with other data collection efforts.  But I don't think NIST has really worked out what that really means.

I've worked with a number of government agencies over the last several months, including the Centers for Disease Control in terms of getting potential funding.  And this is a huge area of coordination that has to be done.  It should have been done a long time ago.

Now hopefully at the end of this we will get coordination among federal agencies and other organizations in the private sector that can hopefully deal with these events when they occur in the future.  My personal fear in being involved with this and devoting hundreds of hours to this over recent months is that we are going to miss the boat in terms of studying the evacuation of people at the World Trade Center.  We're going to miss it.

For one thing, even if we got the money to do research on - which entailed interviews of evacuees, which is extremely important, how soon can that happen?  At the earliest, more than a year after the incident.  And again, I don't see the money there for adequate interviews.  We should be interviewing several hundred people at a minimum.  And these interviews are very expensive.  They run a few hours each.

I don't see the funds for that within the NIST, and I don't see the funds in other government agencies.  And I don't see the means for coordinating all this effort.

I want to stress, as the following speaker may as well, that the interviews of survivors must be a top priority.  And in this respect, I disagree strongly, although I have some sympathy for Professor Quintiere's remarks about leaving  this out of the NIST study, because it will tend to dilute the efforts elsewhere. 

Yeah, I think that's what's happened.  The human behavior stuff has been added on as an afterthought, to some extent.  And now some people are saying let's get rid of it.  That's fine, as long as there is another government agency with the money and the resources to handle that.

It would be really unfortunate that, you know, despite the excellent work that journalists have done, and I should mention also Philip Runsworth (ph), (inaudible) production in December 2001, in addition to the others mentioned on this slide.  It would be really unfortunate if at the end of the game, two or three years down the road, it would be the newspaper and other journalistic accounts which have been proven the most valuable as opposed to the research.

Thank you.

Conference Facilitator: Thank you.

Our next speaker is Ken Camarro of Camarro Research.

Ken Camarro, Camarro Research: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.  And thank you, Dr. Sunder, for inviting me to the session today.

I'm on the same side as Jake, and I'm going to be talking to you about the occupant the emergency responder and survivorship. 

I believe that the concept of the building performance and structure is very well at hand and I'm very impressed.  My impression of the report that I saw online was that it is exquisite.

Now there's going to be things that are missing in it, but I consider the FEMA report exquisite just in looking through it.  And I have read a lot of reports. 

On a relative basis, in terms of what we’re going to learn about the structures, we probably have learned 95 percent, relatively speaking.  And you can make a lot of business decisions based on what’s in that (FEMA) report relative to the building performance.  Now if you talk about the performance of the emergency systems and behavior of the occupants, we’re probably at about a two percent level.  This is just to give you an idea of how much more work there is to be done.

And, as you can see, there is a major undercurrent, a kind of chauvinism or a basis against really dealing with what happened with the occupant and what happened to the emergency holder  And I don’t quite know the reason.  I think there may be a lot of embarrassment.  But this work has to be done, and it has to be done on an equal basis (with the structure performance projects).  And I’m going to be talking about evacuation system performance and survivability.

I have a lot of slides.  I'm going to kind of move through them quickly. 

These are the five or six sites that NIST has been involved with (the list of disaster and attack sites where NIST has been involved.  You can even add in here all of the embassies that were bombed overseas and you’ll see that most of the investigations (by NIST, FEMA and others) were structural investigations in nature.  If you take a look at the new FEMA report, there’s about seven lines in there about the evacuation in a report that is about 1 ½ inches thick and about 400 pages.

When you take a look at the current NIST study, you'll see that six out of the eight projects are structural in nature, and that projects seven and eight deal with the occupants and the evacuation systems and fire service technologies and so forth.  And when looking at them, I don't even see the right language when they're talking about these activities.  So that is a concern.

But what I want to tell you is that I am focused on these areas, (NIST projects 7 and 8) as is Jake.  And together we’re kind of representing the two to three percent of work that’s been done regarding evacuation investigation. 

So I’m talking about those guys (NIST projects 7 and 8).  As a part of this, I’m going to present a concept to obtain WTC occupants and emergency responder data, and I am evangelizing the project as a new technique.

Camarro Research is a consulting firm with product development and a marketing development background, with more than 20 years in office automation, with the last three years involved with Internet system development, and that’s a whole story in itself.  But I did spend 12 weeks promulgating the 9/11 Disaster Study Project during October, November and December 2001 (among many government and professional associations) that I’m going to talk about, so I think I’m qualified.

The 9/11 Disaster Study Project began when I realized, when after I saw day after day the pile of debris that only record we had of what went inside (the structures) was in each human flight recorder’s head.  Thus we had to basically reach out to all these human flight recorders to get data.

After some study, I found that the sample sized ended up.  Being defined as audit which means interview everyone who is willing.  I can tell you in about five sentences why you have to interview, in one way or another, every person who you can find who exited those buildings.  (this is to get adequate data to cover the timeline of the even from each floor and locale in the WTC).

As a part of the project promotion, I learned there was no governmental agency that I could take my proposal to, in order to study the evacuation research there was no agency prepared to contact the occupants, build a database and perform the analysis.

(I repeat)  There was no government agency that I could go to, and I went to all of them.

We need to recover and analyze experience data from the survivors in what was basically a giant laboratory experiment that’s now over.

We need to model the evacuation just as FEMA and the building structure task team have modeled the structure failing.  What I’m telling you is that we have to basically study every floor. 

We want to show the volume of people in the beginning on each floor.  We want to show every stairwell, every concourse.  And we want to be able to show the beginning, the during, and at the final moment, where these people were and how many were still left in the stairwells.

We want to find out what problems they encountered along the way?  Which parts of the buildings were not operating properly?  Where did they (the evacuees) have problems?

We need to cover each corner of the World Trade Center, and I don’t know where (only) one, two and seven came from because there were seven buildings, there was a coordinates, and they had to get out somewhere. 

So we really need to know exactly where everybody was, what path they took and what problems they encountered.  This is kind of simple math.

What we are talking about today, and what I’m talking about, is that there are basically two stacks of information and area of inquiry.

The first one is basically the building and system performance study and that’s largely done and/or planned.  The second one is the operation of evacuation systems, the occupant evacuation experience, and emergency response team related activities these are largely not done and not properly supported in the plan.

And I add in this second group, operation of the evacuation systems, which are basically distinct from most of the building structure. 

The 9/11 disaster study - and I will - how much time do I have left here, two minutes?

Conference Facilitator:  (inaudible)

Ken Camarro:  What, sir?

Conference Facilitator:  Two minutes and 55.

Ken Camarro:  OK. Fine.  So, we’re only going to get through the summary material.

The 9/11 Disaster Study Project is a powerful tool.  It can reach 30,000 to 40,000 World Trade Center survivors, potentially 200,000 neighborhood victims, and hundreds of constituent groups.

The study is within the state-of-the-art.  Prospective users have a favorable perception towards the Internet.  The project includes collection, analysis, presentation, organization, repository set-up, information dispersion.

We can ask any question of these survivors, and we can detect almost every problem, and that’s what we need to do so that we can basically develop new countermeasures.

A 9/11 disaster study capability is required, because there is an inflection in the curve due to the emergence of new threats.  Now this is something for which there has been no discussion in the NIST Investigation plan.

We’re going from missiles and explosives threats to many new threats including biologic, radiologic, chemical and combinations of these.

And what happens when you’re dealing with these new threats, is that you have a latency factor.  It’s not just the event, it’s what’ll happen for some period after the event.

The 9/11 disaster study was intended to find out what happened to evacuees the duration of the event and after they left the location.  This is very important.

In the case of the World Trade Center, people were injured, they didn’t have clothing they had difficulties getting home.

So now we have a two to three time threat increase, there is a war and this requires and independent occupant safety effort and a new group of occupant champions and I don’t see that. 

Also in summary:  A National Building safety organization is required to protect occupant safety, one that is very much like the NSTB.

Safety against new threats is a frontline burner issue, and somehow, someone placed survivorship on a back burner.

Many simply did not recognize the evacuation as a gigantic laboratory data generator.

The Disaster Study Project is an investigative tool, and not a one-off project.  It can assist NIH in a aftermath of biological and radio logic strikes.

If we talk about the Disaster Study Project as an investigative tool and an example, I am saying that for NIST Project, a similar tool should be developed that can be reused later again and again.  You don’t want to take the approach of just saying, we’re going to do 500 interviews or 800 interviews and just cost it in.

You have to build a tool to collect the data, put the data in the database and make the data accessible and analyzable.  So that’s it, pretty much.

Lastly three strong recommendations: 1) NIST should utilize a Disaster Study like approach because the investigation is no one-off data collection exercise.  A reusable too is required.  2) A consensus is required on what data should be collected, not just WTC 1, 2, and 7 but the entire WTC complex.  We need to talk to all the occupants and family members who conversed with the victims.  And 3) a National Building Safety Board will enable collaboration between disciplines, improved systems integration new occupant egress and survivability recommendations, and new building vulnerability reduction recommendations. 

Thank you. 

Conference Facilitator: Thank you very much.

Our next speaker is Charles Jennings from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Charles Jennings, Assistant Professor, John Jay College of Criminal Justice: Good morning, members of the panel.

My name is Charles Jennings.  I'm Assistant Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York where I teach in the Department of Public Management in the programs in fire science and protection management.  I'm concerned with safety and security in the built environment.

I'm also a member of the Advisory Board for the Skyscraper Safety Campaign.  And I've been involved with high-rise office building fire safety from a policy standpoint for the past 12 years, including publishing articles on building evacuation and conducting an evaluation of Local Law Five here in New York City.

I also consult actively with fire departments across the United States on issues of management and operations.

My remarks today, however, are my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of any of the institutions with which I'm affiliated.

First of all, I'd like to thank NIST and the Building Fire and Research Laboratory for the open, professional and thorough fashion in which they've conducted their inquiry to-date.

The myriad issues raised by the horrible events of September 11th must be faced head-on, free of organizational bias and from an interdisciplinary standpoint.  And I think those are two of the hallmarks of why this investigation is so important and so critical.

Also, I would like to implore the elected officials and Congress to see that this inquiry is fully and properly funded.  And in my opinion the timeline should be accelerated, as the issues before you are central to building safety and emergency response in high-rise buildings and urban areas generally.

And as the previous speakers have indicated, we are entering a new era now in terms of homeland security and unanticipated threats to the built environment.

And literally millions of dollars are being spent on various aspects of homeland security.  And many of these monies are really being spent largely for symbolic purposes.

This effort and this investigation is critical in order to develop scientifically valid information that can be used to make sensible improvements in the built environment in terms of our codes and standards and changes in operating practices.

Before improvements in codes are fashioned, and I believe they should be, the building code community will need objective, reliable scientific information.  And I see this as the only opportunity to get this.  And this truly is a national issue.

Although this investigation rightly is focused on the events here in New York City, I think the lessons learned will be of benefit to the entire nation.

My remarks today in terms of scope will be limited to two areas of the proposed work plan - projects seven and eight - of which the previous speaker indicated.

And I would like to say at this point that I completely endorse the remarks of Jake Pauls, and certainly the thrust of the previous speaker in terms of the importance of looking at occupant behavior and evacuation in the World Trade Center.

Again, it's appalling that such a long period of time has passed, and there has not been any government inquiry into the evacuation of the building.  And there's just so much information there that can be learned that can be helpful in designing policies and procedures, education, and designing buildings in the future.

And there are very much lessons that can be extrapolated to other high-rise office buildings across the country.

With regard specifically to project seven, I wish to suggest that the scope encompass organization systems for evacuation, specifically provisions unique to New York such as Local Law Five, which is a, for those of you who may not know, the High-rise Fire Safety Ordinance which is enacted in the early 1970s, and after being challenged by the real estate industry, was eventually upheld and implemented in the late 1970s.  That's an exemplary piece of legislation that was rarely represented the fire service and the building safety community recognizing a change in circumstances in the built environment and coming up with a comprehensive solution. 

And Local Law Five has been very effective.  However, I would say that has not been systematically studied.  The study that I did which looked at the sprinkler equivalencies under Local Law Five was the only one that I know that's ever been done, and nothing's been done subsequent that.  And the legislation is over 20 years old now.

The model codes are very vague, in addition, on specifying exactly what is meant by a "Fire Drill."  There is no standard on a definition nationally.  National guidance on these subjects is critically needed.

There's a real possibility that in a future event, evacuation could be ineffective because of a lack of confidence in building staff and emergency responders, leading to poor compliance or perhaps inappropriate occupant movement.  And these are very real issues that people in the building community in New York are facing post-nine eleven is that the people don't have confidence in the buildings and when the fire alarm activates or they - people suspect that there's a threat, they're just going to go walking down the stairs.  And that can be a disastrous circumstance depending on the particular situations.  And we look beyond fire to other threats such as bombings or novel attacks - chemical - biological attacks in which you may, indeed, be safer to leave people in the buildings.

So there's a crying need to thoroughly document the evacuation and use the lessons learned to modify existing practice. 

I would also suggest that NIST coordinate its efforts with Homeland Security.  And I know they have enough problems already, but it's really critical that this should be tied in.  And I think it's rightfully something that should be getting funding because it's just, as I see it, the most practical and frontline piece of homeland security work that the government's doing right now.  We really need to understand what's going on in these buildings and how people are going to react.  We need to seek additional funds for the late - for related projects to develop guidance for emergency services and building management on occupant movement under non-fire scenarios.

Then with regard to project eight, fire service technologies and guidelines, under task one, I would suggest that NIST recognize that unlike the structural issues of the World Trade Center which have already been addressed albeit in a limited fashion by the FEMA's BPAT  team, there has been no outside inquiry into emergency response nor is there one being conducted by any level of government.  And I leave out specifically the efforts that are being undertaken independently of each other by the Police and Fire Departments here in New York City because they're not going to be integrated and there's no outside review of what's going on in those projects.  And in fact, I don't have any certainty that those reports are even going to be made public - or certainly not public to me.

Some organizations are undertaking internal studies, which may or may be not released.  There are serious issues of coordination of multiple agencies and responders, particularly with regard to police, fire, and EMS, which have been plagued here in New York by independent and uncoordinated actions in previous emergencies.  I'd hope that NIST would include documentation and raise any coordination issues and offer guidance with regard to unity of command and scene control. 

Under task two, I'd suggest that NIST review the recommended actions in the FEMA Mitigation Report following the 1993 World Trade Center disaster, which was very interesting reading, and I would say there's probably some more that needs to be done in terms of follow-up. 

Under task three, given the extreme challenge faced by responders on 9/11, I would suggest that NIST is not merely looking at other major cities' response because we could contend that almost any major city would be overwhelmed by the scope of an event such as 9/11.  But we - I think we need to step back and take a - really a fresh look at the fire service, the command and control capabilities in light of information technology and communications capabilities that have come along in the last 20 years.  We have things like wearable computers, coordination of response with in-building sensors, and many different areas in which NIST has expertise.  But no agency today has really pulled this together in a meaningful fashion, and local governments are basically thrown out there and left on their own to try to put together and specify a system to deliver information that they need.

In order to retrieve critical pre-incident building information, a format useful to command decision-making under emergencies is going to take some more work, and I hope that some of these issues will be highlighted by NIST.  Perhaps more importantly, we should examine command decision-making.

And I'll truncate my remarks here to stay on time. 

As a final area of concern, I would recommend that NIST enlarge the scope of project eight to critically evaluate the organization of fire services with a particular regard to the required training, education, and skills needed for dealing with complex emergencies and structures designed according to performance-based posts. 

I believe that 9/11 was a multiple systems failure that has implications for the performance-based design of the buildings at (ph) fire service and emergency service response.  And I hope that the scope of the inquiry will encompass these issues. 

Thank you.

Conference Facilitator: Thank you.

Our next speaker is Beverly Eckert representing herself.

Beverly Eckert:  Good morning.  My name is Beverly Eckert.  I'm co-chair of Voices of September 11, a family advocacy group.

I'm here today because I support a NIST investigation whose scope will include human behavior, the role of the fire safety directors and of the fire safety evacuation plans that were in effect at the World Trade Center on September 11 because only then will we understand what went so wrong that hundreds who survived the initial impact of the plane ended up dying anyway.  And I'm here to ask our elected officials to make sure that NIST is given the funding needed to address these important questions.

My husband and best friend, Sean (ph) (inaudible), worked for Aon on the ninety-eighth floor of Tower Two.  He's dead because on September 11 there was an overall failure in communication and policy-making on the part of those in charge of safety at The World Trade Center.  He was given misinformation and that prevented him from making the right choices in a life-and-death situation. 

It's well documented that the Port Authority intervened in the initial, instinctive, and immediate evacuation of Tower Two by the occupants.  After the plane hit the other building, one of the fire wardens on my husband's floor cut through the cardboard and tape that was covering the emergency exit door and directed people to begin filing down the stairs.  But shortly thereafter, a Port Authority announcement sent them all back.  It was another 15 minutes before the Port Authority acknowledged the danger already recognized by the floor warden.  I have a voicemail recording from Sean when the announcement finally came at 9:02 A.M. that the occupants themselves should decide what course of action to take - that if conditions on your floor warrant, you may wish to begin an orderly evacuation.  And since conditions on their floors warranted it, the occupants once again began to leave.  But the window of opportunity for a safe evacuation was gone.  United Airlines Flight 175 was only seconds away.

The Port Authority institutionalized an evacuation process where they maintained too much control.  Floor fire wardens appointed by the tenants were never clearly vested with the power to proceed independently, despite the fact that in an emergency, these fire wardens might often be in a superior position to assess the situation on their individual floors.  In the future, emergency announcements should begin, not end, with the suggestion that if conditions on your floor warrant, you may begin an orderly evacuation.  It should be clear in all fire drills that the floor wardens can and should use their own judgment.  Those located on higher floors especially must move quickly and decisively.  Aon employees worked in a location that put them nearly a quarter of a mile from the ground and safety.  And my husband's building not only was smoke from the other Tower billowing against the windows they could feel the heat and smell the jet fuel.  But the Port Authority, from its limited vantage point below, decided to abort the spontaneous evacuation that had already begun.  The Port Authority's first and most critical failure of communication was to countermand the judgment of others who were operating with different information.

Another critical failure of communication was the absence of signs at each emergency landing stating that there was no access to the roof.  When they encountered problems in the stairwell they tried to descend, my husband and others thought they had an option to await rescue from the roof.  Not only was it not posted but the doors leading to the roof would be locked when they got there.  People didn't know that the roofs had been altered after the '93 bombings so that helicopters could no longer land.  In fact, a critical escape option for those working in skyscrapers, a rooftop rescue squad doesn't exist in New York.  Los Angeles has one but New York, the city of skyscrapers, does not.  And when the Port Authority, after '93, cluttered the World Trade Center roofs with antennas and other barriers so that the police or military helicopters that do exist couldn't land, they neglected to tell the people to whom it would matter most.

Lack of communication of this policy prevented people from making the right choice in an emergency.  My husband and others were completely and tragically unaware that their only rescue option was down so they expended critical time going up, and in the meantime another window of opportunity slammed shut.

I was on the phone with Sean for the last half hour of his life, beginning at 9:30 AM.  He described the situation, what escape routes he had tried and asked me for information based on what I was seeing on TV.  He was calmly and rationally trying to assess his options.  I reached 911 on another phone but a full half hour after the planes had struck they had no information to pass along.

Communication systems among the rescue teams were archaic and inadequate.  Failures of communication equipment were rampant.  During the hour before the towers collapsed no constructive information was disseminated to where it could benefit anyone.

So despite advanced technology and a multitude of potential ways to transmit information to those whose lives depended on it there was no useful information being relayed, even though many of us were in contact with those who were trapped.  The technology was there but the foresight was not.

Imagine the number of lives that would have been saved had those few who had found an escape route from the upper floors of Tower Two been able to communicate to authorities which stairwell was open.  It could have been passed along to those in the tower who were in contact with the world outside.  Think of it: High-tech wireless communication devices located on every emergency stairwell and fire drills that trained every occupant when and how to use them.  I hope that someday this will be a reality.

Sean died because of failures in communication, but the deck was stacked against him in other ways.  The stairwells weren't ventilated, despite the fact that the Port Authority had been directed to do so after the '93 bombing.  Based on what my husband told me the smoke in the stairwell was worse than on the floors.

Other witnesses say that sheetrock, which afforded the only fire protection for the stairwells, not only failed to withstand the impact but peeled off in huge sections letting in smoke and blocking the passage.  And because all three emergency stairwells were clustered in one small area they were all vulnerable to the same set of circumstances.  The sheetrock and the clustered rather than dispersed locations of the stairwells were all designed to save money at the expense of safety.

The deck was also stacked against him because of the sheer height of the building.  It takes a firefighter a very long time to climb a hundred flights of stairs.  In a situation where the sprinklers had failed a fire could easily be out of control before the firefighters arrive.  Given the floor space of the towers once the fire spread beyond a few thousand square feet their hoses would be useless.  Sprinkler failure is not uncommon.  It failed at the Meridian building in Philadelphia but only a handful died because the building, constructed of steel girders and a traditional framework, stayed standing despite being engulfed in flames for 16 hours.  The World Trade Center collapsed in less than one.

Occupants of higher floors are more at risk than those on lower floors.  The deck is stacked against them.  The more people that flood the stairwell the slower the descent for those entering from the floors above.  The Port Authority congratulates itself on the numbers of people who escaped on September 11th.  Luckily the buildings were far from full.  Luckily, before the second plane hit, hundreds decided that elevators were preferable to trying to walk down.  Avoiding the stairwell accelerated passage before and even after the planes struck, since elevators on the lower floors still worked and continued to be used.  Had everyone used only the three narrow staircases provided for purposes of evacuation hundreds more might have still been in the building when it collapsed.

The towers of the World Trade Center were deathtraps.  Fire not flames brought them down.  I've heard the structural engineers and the builders speak with pride of the innovative design of the buildings, how they made them economically viable to build and to rent by making the interior structures lightweight and open.  They used trusses and bolts to hold that house of cards together.

I wish the engineer and the builder could have listened to my husband die the way I did.  I wish they could have heard the sounds he made when those lightweight trusses melted and those flimsy bolts sheered and the floor fell out from underneath him.  I wish they could hear just once the sound that will haunt me forever.

I sent a letter to OSHA in March because I wanted them to investigate the evacuation of the World Trade Center.  I wanted them to find out where the problems were so that no one else caught in a skyscraper fire would have to die.  Saving lives is embedded in OSHA's mission statement and I thought they'd be motivated to take action. 

It was with disbelief that I read their letter that I received in May informing me that it would be very difficult to conduct an investigation of the World Trade Center.  OSHA has washed its hands so we now must rely on NIST to find out what happened in those buildings to prevent it from happening again.  I hope that NIST gets the funding they need to accomplish their goals and that the final report encompasses every item I've mentioned here today, and I hope they accelerate their timetable.  The need to improve safety in existing buildings is urgent.  Buildings are already rising from the ashes of ground zero.

I want NIST and those who must provide the funding to please make my husband's death mean something.  There are lessons to be learned from what he and so many others endured. 

And there will be a next time and I hope when that happens that the men and women who go off to work will have a fighting chance to make it home safely that night.

Thank you.

Conference Facilitator: Thank you very much.  (Applause.)

Our next speaker is William Schell, representing himself.

William Schell:  Hello.  My name is Bill Schell.  One of the reasons why I am here is because I watched the Congressional hearing by the Science committee that was dealing with the WTC collapse.  I was not satisfied with what I heard during the meeting.

One of the questions raised by previous speakers and addressed in the NIST report is the performance of the fire proofing of the steel.  I worked as a plumber in the World Trade Center complex in '72 and '73 so I'm real familiar with the fire coating, and if you whacked it with a hammer while you're working or you hit the girder with a pipe you'd scrape it off, okay.  So it does its job in all situations; when a plane crashed in there, it scraped off or in the explosion it probably got scraped off.

Plus the question I'm asking now because of what I heard other people speak of, when the steel expands that's part of its properties, when it's heated up it expands, what happens to that sprayed on fire coating when that expands is it just flakes off.  I don't know.  That's the question I'm asking.

I was a firefighter for 22 years and I came on the job in '78.  From the beginning in 1978 I was taught about truss construction, how it fails, how it collapses, how it kills people, so I'm very aware.  So it is no surprise to me why those buildings failed.  The trusses failed and it came down. 

I've watched everything I could about the Trade Center since it came out and the stuff I saw on TV and I know buildings collapse.

I was a lieutenant at midtown area, fought high-rise fires for five years from '87 to '92.

For two years I was an instructor at what's called the First-Line Supervisor Training program.  What this is, in 1985 New York State mandated training for all fire officers with paid programs.  It's a month-long program that's held at Randall's Island at the fire training academy.  And I instructed for building construction collapse and safety collapses there.  And we went through all the components of building interconnections and trying to show the officers who these failed during fires or eccentric loads that happens to buildings and they fall down.

A couple things I would point out:  In this class we looked at past failures.  I read that report on the Internet about the World Trade Center.  I thought it was actually really detailed and it really pointed out how strong these buildings really are.  But they fell, they came down.

In FLST, in this First-Line Supervisor program with the buildings we really train the guys to know that buildings fall down.  We are called when something's wrong:  Fires or accidents, buildings are collapsing, so that's what we prepare for, that's what we get ready for.

And in the FLST class I go back a long time.  In the 12th century they started building cathedrals that got larger and larger and start to collapse so they put flying buttresses on these things, okay, so you can build them a little larger and prevent them from failing.

In 1966 we lost 12 firefighters in a floor collapse on 23rd street.  We have a little plaque on the building.  Every year we have a little ceremony, lay a wreath there.

In I think 1976, I think it was Stanford, Connecticut a garage under construction collapsed and I think killed 26 firefighters.  I think it was about 15 stories tall.  It was a small connection to a jack they were using to jack up the building.  That failed.  That came down and killed these people.

So it's very interesting and probably nobody really knows about but I saw it in the FLST class.

A point to Bill Lanazier (ph), he's a civil engineer on Citicorp building up the street here.  In 1978, they were afraid the CitiCorp building’s going to collapse in hurricane Ella. OK, and they said – the mayor and police department started evacuation plans, be prepared if that came down.  And what you found out was that – he said skyscrapers weren’t editing (ph) to wind.  And when erecting this building, he said the city code that they had to figure out the force of the wind coming at one side of the building, and he said a student called him up in ’78 and said, “Gee, I don’t know how this building’s standing.  What happens if the winds do this from the corner? (ph)  So we have, really (inaudible) wind sails forced against this building, OK?” 

And he went over his measurements and looked at the building, and there was a change when they were constructing this building.  Instead of the connections being welded, they were bolted.  And so the seven engineers was afraid this was going to fall down.  Luckily, the hurricane missed New York, and they welded all these joints, OK.  In 1981, the hotel Regency Hilton Pike Regency Hotel in Kansas City, a sidewalk collapsed.  I think 103 people died.  It was a simple bolt connection that failed, OK. 

So, and in space, Challenger, that failed because O-ring broke, OK, and all the astronauts died.  And in 1985, the engineer Beaujolais (ph) told NASA that if you operate this space ship below 40 degrees, this O-ring’s not going to hold, and it was piped (ph) on the space ship that morning when they launched anyway, and it exploded.

So what I’m getting at – in the fire service we – at least in New York and New York City, we try to deal with all these components of buildings because we know they fail, OK.  Not very often, but we know they fail.  And we try and prepare our people.  So, like I said, and we’re taught at the beginning, if there’s an uncontrolled fire in the truss, it burns about 20 minutes, that’s going to give way.  When that gives away, the whole building’s coming down.

So that fire was burning for a long time before we got up there.  And the problem was, it’s so far away.  In a 1993 fire, OK, according to fire department reports, we have backed (ph) in terms of fire department calls.  WNYF, with New York firefighters.  You know, chiefs have figured how long it would take guys to get to the top to save people.  It took up to three hours for a guy to get up there, for a lot of reasons, heat exhaustion, anxiety, people coming down, smoke, you know, just the way we work.  So one guy had a start (ph) a pure (ph) gallon (ph) 28 engine on his helmet.  He was exhausted, young 28-year old kid.  You know, he freaked us out, just throw me up there, OK. 

So it takes you that long to get up there.  And the report that I read on the Internet, the report said it would take at least two hours to evacuate a building.  So part of the problem is that these buildings are large, OK?  If you climb the Himalayan mountains, how long is it going to take you to get help if you get hurt up there, OK?  Not that these are the Himalayan mountains.  If nothing ever goes wrong, there’s no problem, OK? 

And it was a terrorist attack, OK?  The engineers can’t really figure out everything they want to do, OK? This was an abnormal situation, but it happened.  And unfortunately, the results were there.  And the report also dealt with having engineers, architects, deal with fire services to teach them perhaps about the fires.  Like I said, we’re on track, we probably have to re-emphasize as much for (ph), and in our path to promotion to obtain counter (ph) chief, we’re asked about construction on these paths (ph), OK.  So we’re supposed to study it, we’re training guys in this all the time.

In 1984, Chief Lindston Dunne (ph) worked with Manhattan College School of Engineering to teach them what happens to fire components – building components due to fire, how they weaken, and how they collapse.  Again, you people are engineers and architects.  You build things nice and strong, as long as nothing goes wrong, there’s no problem.  Looking at pictures of World Trade Center, I think the wind was big factor in bringing that down.  OK, once those components were – you know, were broken, the wind pushed, you know, you had probably over 100 – 120,000 square feet of sails catching wind, just sending (ph) that building, and how far it can it give in a weakened state before it goes over.  I don’t know, the engineers can figure that out, so that’s part of it.

So once the building components start falling apart, who is to say that it will stand.  We say it in the fire service – we know at times,sdit will not stand.  It’s going to come down.  How frequent?  I don’t know, the engineers can figure that out.  Let’s (inaudible)

On the evacuation plan, they closed down elevators.  We’re trained, in the fire service, that elevators can be a death trap, OK.  And so in one proposal, under what lifts (ph) were for firefighters to bring up to fire, but if they’re not safe, what are you going to do, kill both firefighters going up there.  OK.  It’s my job, when I became a captain, my primary goal was to get guys home alive at the end of the day.  I knew the guys were dedicated, I knew the guys would risk their lives.  My job was to make sure that they were prudent about their lives, OK, and just save everybody.

Well, I’ve got some other things to say, but I’m out of time, thanks a lot.

Conference Facilitator:  Thank you, William.  Our next speaker is Roger Morse of Morse Associates.

Roger Morse, Morse Associates:  My name’s Roger Morse.  I’m an architect.  My practice is centered largely around forensic investigations of buildings.  As part of that work, I investigated the fireproofing in hundreds of buildings, maybe in thousands of locations.  One of the things that I was called upon to do was to look at the fireproofing in the World Trade Center.  I did that over about a ten year period of time, starting in the early 1990s, and the last time I was in the building was in June of 2001.  There were problems with the fireproofing in the World Trade Center. 

I thought that NIST ought to know of those problems, so that was why that I’m here today, that – please understand that the problems that existed in the World Trade Center towers are not unique to the World Trade Center towers.  These are generic sort of problems, they exist in many high rise buildings all over the United States, certainly, and it’s to my knowledge, into Europe. 

This is a slide of the fireproofing on a long span joists.  This is the end of the long span joist.  The red color that you see toward the bottom is the red lead primer that’s on the joist.  You can see that the fireproofing in this location is extremely thin.  It’s certainly not the three-quarters of an inch that was indicated in the ASCE report.

Another view of the end of one of the long span joists.  You can see red lead on the bottom strand of the truss, the diagonal is going up to the outside wall.  This is the end of the long span joist.  You can see that the fireproofing thickness on the diagonals is certainly not three quarters of an inch.  This is again one of the diagonals, coming to the end of the truss.  You can see the red lead on the top of the truss and you can see that the diagonal coming to the connection point to outside walls is basically completely exposed.

This is not a situation where the fireproofing was knocked off later in the occupancy of the building.  You can see cement paste has run down over the surface of the red lead.  This is a place where the fireproofing was never applied in this particular location.  Or if it was applied, it was applied on the back side, on the side away from where this photograph was taken.  And you have the same kind of situation on the secondary trusses, these ran from the – from main truss to main truss and supported the floor.  You can see in the main truss coming forward in the photograph that you can see the red lead where the fireproofing is missing completely from the webs of the truss on the tributary truss.  You can see that the bottom chord, it’s not fireproofed at all, and that the diagonals are thin and have missing fireproofing.

Again, it’s the same sort of situation.  One of the things that happens, generally, in fireproofing applications, is that the fireproofing is applied from the floor, and the applicator simply may not be able to see the areas – all the areas that need to be covered with the fireproofing material.  Also, the fireproofing on a long span joist, or any kind of joist construction is very difficult, it’s sort of the round rod and the small angles that are in the top and the bottom of the truss – makes for a very difficult target for the applicator.

Again, this is one of the tributary trusses and you can see red lead at the top on the angles that form the top cord of the truss.  The joist to wall connection, there were problems with that, you can see in this photograph, we have the end of the trusses, the long-span joist.  They’re sitting on an angle seat that’s welded to the face of the exterior columns.  You can see that the fireproofing material in this location is a wetspray gypsum, plaster sort of fireproofing material.  You can see that it’s very thin.  It’s so thin that it hasn’t even completely disguised the shape of the bolts that are connecting the truss to the seat. 

You can see that the trusses are not fully seated, they’re not all the way to the outside wall.  The thickness of the fireproofing material on the exterior wall, the inside face of the exterior wall is also very thin.  You can see that because again, it hasn't disguised or hidden the bolt pattern where the spandrel panels were bolted together.  This was supposed to have a fire rating of four hours, according to the drawings of the building, that would take somewhere around an inch to an inch and a half of this fireproofing material.

Again, this is one of the connections, you can see that the fireproofing material is very thin on the, on the seat that's supporting the end of the long span joists.  If this were properly fireproofed, the entire space behind the seat would be filled with fireproofing material.  You need, the space behind the seat is less than an inch.  You need more than an inch of material to be able to completely protect that, so that that would be justly completely imbedded in the fireproofing material. 

On the core columns, I looked at the core columns up to the 78th floor.  I wasn't able to get access to them above that.  The fireproofing on the core columns was failing in story high sheets, it was just falling off of the face of the columns.  What had happened was that the fireproofing was applied to rust that was on the steel, the rust was coming free from the underlying steel of the columns, and the fireproofing was failing as a result.  This is a picture of the face of the column, also it's the face of the column showing the rust scale. 

I found upon careful examination that the fireproofing was sticking just fine to the rust, the problem was that the rust was coming loose from the face of the steel.  When I looked at the back of the rust deposits that remained on the column, I saw that there was cement, excuse me, cement paste on the back of the rust flakes, so that it was clear that the rust existed at the time of the fireproofing installation.

The fireproofing on the columns in the core, the beams in the core, in the elevator shafts, this was again below the 78th floor, were missing in a number of locations due to impact blows from the cables in the elevator shafts.  Why would these kind of problems arise in any kind of building construction, any kind of high-rise building construction?  One of the problems is obstructions from ductwork, you can see that the ductwork has made it virtually impossible to get to the, for the fireproofing applicator to get to the top chord of the truss in this location. 

Ceilings that are in place before the fireproofing is installed can make it difficult for the applicator, and then difficult for the inspector to determine what's gone on.  You can see this is the location where the structure for the ceiling was in place prior to the application of the fireproofing.  And later work that occurs in the building, where the fireproofing may be completely removed in locations, either during later construction in the building.  This is a location where the fireproofing has been removed from the column during the installation of the elevators.  Or where conduit or that sort of thing being installed, that there's degradation of the fireproofing system. 

The fireproofing systems are installed at the point at which the fireproofing work is complete.  They're not inspected again prior to the occupancy of the building, so that this kind of damage does not become apparent.  There are some errors in the ASCE report, there was a dry spray fireproofing, mineral wool fireproofing with a Portland and gypsum binder, Portland cement gypsum binder, that was used on the long span joists, the floor trench headers, the outside face of the outside wall on the columns and beams and the core.  In the inside face of the outside wall and the long span joist supports were protected by a wet spray fireproofing. 

The other thing that, I'm just about of time here, I'd like to point out that the fireproofing that was used in the floors that were impacted by the airplanes was just, were fireproofing that had no asbestos in them.  This was a changeover point in the technology of fire protection in buildings, from non-asbestos to asbestos containing fireproofing, and alas, the non-asbestos materials weren't as good a material as were the asbestos containing materials.  They were less dense, less uniform, less cohesive on the surface. 

This was a time before there were tests to assure the quality of a fireproofing installations, to be able to make field tests, field quality assurance tests, to assure that the fireproofing was installed properly.  Had those tests existed, they came into existence in 1977, the deficiencies in the fireproofing that I showed in my earlier slides would have been discovered and would have been corrected.  Thank you.

Conference Facilitator:  Thank you Roger.  Once again let's refrain from any applause so we can get all the speakers up here as quick as possible.  Our next speaker is Bill VanAllen, and he's a Consultant.

Bill VanAllen, Consultant:  I'm a retired, not an active consultant.  I have a long association, was a professor out at Stony Brook, SUNY Stony Brook, and about 15 years ago, when I was working with the Port Authority as a temporary employee I was trying to push the idea of having the Port Authority fund a research study examining the use of thermal spray coatings which are, could be anything from ceramic to sprayed glass, on any other material as a alternative to asbestos or the non-asbestos foam coatings. 

I'm, I spent my early part of my career in the Navy, I was a Damage Control Officer on a Naval tanker.  Spent years thinking about fires and with some fighting, and then I was there when, around with the Belnap (ph) in the same area, when that ship went, had the collision with the carrier and the fire, the superstructures.  All these things were early planted in me, and so I came to the World Trade Center and the Port Authority, I had jobs where I would crawl all over the, every facility the Port Authority had.  I've been through every pile in the water, been down to the World Trade Center to the outfall all the way to the top.  And even machinery spaces.  Just there seemed to be a problem with the fireproofing material. 

And again, another thing, I left the Port Authority in 1991, so I don't have a clue, you know, what went on after the 1993 bombing.  And so I'm basically here today just trying to restate what I did 15 years ago, that I think a research study is needed, I  think the people out at Stony Brook are, have a full grant from the National Science Foundation, and would love to, still love to study it as well as the U.S. Army Corp. of Engineers.  As I've listened to the speakers today, I've shifted the way I wanted to present this, instead of the, what thermal spray materials are all about, but I'd like to just leave a couple points.  I'd like to have the DOD more involved in this analysis, or invited to participate. 

And also the Naval Research, you know, lot's of history there on fireproofing, you know, you can go look at the - I was looking last night over the old, the Balkans war, and how each of those ships had problems with fires and dealt with the actual stuff.  The offshore oil industry, you look at the fires on the, on the rigs, and again the way the steel was protected, corrosion you know, the surface preparation, we had studies I'd also like you to get the Corp. of Engineers as well in looking at surface preparation, automate the surface preparation.  Get that man out of that loop on that, particularly on construction, because to manage any construction, particularly in a city like this, you've got all kinds of contractor problems, you know, human factors.  I just encourage you to do that.  So, can I have the next slide.

Again, this is the lab out in Stony Brook, and, you know, not to bore you with the details here.  But I'd like you to really think of the issue of getting the DOD-related interest of all here (ph).  That's what (inaudible).

Thank you.

Conference Facilitator:  Thank you.

Our next speaker is John G. O'Neil from Gage-Babcock & Associates.

John G. O'Neil, Gage-Babcock & Associates:  Good morning.

On behalf of Gage-Babcock & Associates we thank Dr. Snell and Dr. Sunder for the opportunity to receive comments from a firm who specializes in fire protection engineering and security engineering and work with building owners every day to help solve these problems.  We are also involved in - heavily involved in the codes and standards development, particularly the National Fire Protection Association standards.  So we wanted to offer just a few comments on a couple of the projects.

First, we are very encouraged about this program to deride a very positive impact on building fire safety.  The tragedy of 9/11 can lead to comprehensive fire safety improvements as we face new threats, challenges to the built environment.  Certainly the types of threats and the challenges that the fire protection engineering field has not had to deal with on such a large - potentially large scale before.

And we are very pleased that NIST is taking the lead.  It has a strong track record of developing fire test data, fire models that we in the fire protection engineering field use on a day-to-day basis.  It has the internal resources, and coupled with the integration of outside expertise, it can accomplish the program goal.  We need to get that program funded.  I think we all need to urge Congress to move ahead and develop the Administration to fund this effort.

Now in general we appreciate the program should learn as many details as possible without the prior structural (ph) factors that effected the outcome of the World Trade Center events.  But recommend that also a high priority be given to the research and development phases.  And the dissemination and technical assistance program phases must be the principal focus of this effort.  It's how we will use this information from the 9/11 World Trade Center tragedy to help minimize the consequences of future strategies on this scale will be the principal criteria upon which this program will be judged.

I just have a couple comments on two of the project areas within the time limit.  First of all, on project number one, dealing with the application of codes and practices, we would suggest that a - kind of a security-related risk analysis concepts may be - should be applied to the recommendations that would come out of the effort.  If it's determined, this would help code officials, code makers, determine whether the recommendations would be appropriate for a given situation.

And we have applied inherent risk or hazard analysis over the years in the codes and standards.  For instance, in a use group A, for assembly or assembly occupancy, we have always required greater life safety features than in a business occupancy because it was understood that it was a greater concentration, greater number of people at risk.  It's possible that with this new era that the risk concepts dealing with the different types of office buildings: a government center, a financial center, may be appropriate to develop different codes and standards as they apply for these buildings.

If there's not some sort of risk analysis - and I was glad to hear Dr. Snell emphasize that a major part of the program is going to be talking about this risk management idea - I'm concerned that down the road that the - just due to costs, and if there's a question about whether it's really appropriate for all buildings in general or which buildings in general, economics may put some of these recommendations on the shelf.

And then the second project area, which is an area that I'm personally involved with in terms of our NFPA standards activities, deals with the project activities on fire protection systems.  We would hope that the priority be given for input for fire sprinkler and stand pipe system design.  I think it's no secret to any of us involved in codes and standards that we count on building fire sprinkler systems to be a very key component of the fire safety that's in any building.  And certainly the stand pipe system must be there for the firefighters to be able to use in the taller buildings.

We need a means to improve - excuse me - the means for systems to deal with a single catastrophic event.  Right now the fire sprinkler systems, there's some rare exceptions dealing with the - some special hazards.  But are basically designed to deal with a relatively low energy, smaller fire.

We need to have that input.  And I can tell you, I'm chair of the NFPA technical correlating committee that oversees all of the sprinkler standards developed by NFPA. And, of course, these are adopted into codes throughout the country.  We would welcome input in this regard.

But we would also like to have this security risk-type assessment analysis brought forward with it to help us to deal with how we would set those new recommendations and standards for the different types of buildings, given the events and what we learned out of this investigation.

Thank you very much.

Conference Facilitator: Thank you.

Our next speaker is Calvin Zhou from ZQ Technical Consulting.

Calvin Zhou, ZQ Technical Consulting:  First of all, I'd like to thank NIST for providing this alternative for the public to provide their for this very important issue.  And my discussion today will be focused on the building (inaudible) and the possible (inaudible).

And just to (inaudible) through briefly the (inaudible) of what's happened, so we know the (inaudible) impacting to the building and the (inaudible) large (ph) factors (ph) and (inaudible) and possibly helping (ph) out those fire (inaudible) materials.  And (inaudible) a fire burning for the (inaudible) structure (ph) and causing the global collapse.

But my topic will be focused on what happened there the floor far below the impact wound (ph).  There was no initial structure collapse, no initial structure damage.  There was no fire burning there.  And the only possible reason for those floors to collapse is the impact loading from above, the dynamic loading.

So based on this (inaudible), I started to recommend the (inaudible) a better way to stop this (ph).  And I have years of experience in decompression (ph) (inaudible).  So we devised some (inaudible) measures to (inaudible).

I think the system (ph) through condition (inaudible) to (inaudible) continue a global (ph) (inaudible) - not global (ph) (inaudible), not a fire burning (ph), but (inaudible) on the floor far below the impact wound (ph).  The first condition is that there must be a high impact loading.  Once the global (ph) (inaudible) occurs, basically, we know (inaudible) above the impact (inaudible), and the velocity (ph) is not low (ph).

So (inaudible) must exceed the safety margin of the (inaudible).  And the (inaudible) initially, in the system the kinetic energy must be increased, because each additional (inaudible) that (inaudible) potential energy (ph) (inaudible), the (inaudible) cannot fully absorb all the relief (ph) - cannot (inaudible) the relief (ph) (inaudible).  So the remaining may be more than 15 (ph) percent of the potential energy will go to kinetic energy.  So it's been - and we know the mass increased as more and more floors collapsed.

So the whole system has an increasing kinetic energy.  And there's no way to stop it.

So based on my experience being vapo-crash (ph) at the (inaudible) pocket, and can we develop something to put in the system, so the kinetic energy does not increase, it's decreasing.

We know these impact loading for inter-crash (ph) (inaudible) is low enough (ph), then the lower part of the building will be able to support the upper part.  Because the (inaudible) they bond (ph) to support packaging (ph) above it is not any motion.

So based on the expending (ph) of this energy transfer I devised (ph) a big (ph) complex with a possible countermeasure based on the strategy of arresting (ph), is also progress (ph) in conjunction with both other (ph) defense (ph).

For once the global collapse has started, then we can devise something based on some high efficiency energy absorbing system that can be put into a building to absorb the kinetic energy, so the kinetic energy won't go up, it'll go down.  I'll show the evacs (ph) later.

If those kind of device can be installed in the buildings, in the collapsing  locations, I don't have kinds (ph) of the data (ph) yet, then if you (ph) have global collapse, the device can be promptly engaged.

If those two conditions are met, I can assure you that I have evidence from computer simulations, the device has afford  enough energy for each additional floor collapse, it has a floor over (ph), with newly released potential energy.

Now, a floor collapse already accumulated kinetic energy, because now the upper part is in motion due to local collapse.  So there is already kinetic energy there.

So, it basically works, then the device has (ph) global (inaudible) collapse, then if the tracking of - collapsing speed  velocity strong (ph) enough, then maybe up to two or three or four floors collapsing, the track can be arrested based on all this lower part of the building can't afford support the upper part, is not in motion, or it speeds the explosion up, because we know there are some safety margins (ph) there (ph).

So, I did a computer simulation to see, OK, that this such a device exist..

So this is a specially designed structure that under impact loading, it had collapsed.  Meanwhile, it can absorb energy.

And stressing curve - this is just one of the designs I got from the computer simulation, is thes curve.  So the energy absorbed, which is (inaudible) here (ph), basically the trasher (ph) conflabbed (ph) about the 75 percent cost of the total (ph) (inaudible).

So it's pretty vicious (ph).  And those performance parameters, like capacity, cross-strength and energy absorbing for (ph) unit modeled, those numbers are not very meaningful until I applied those numbers through a pace (ph).

So, this there approximates an estimate based on the, what we consider total mass.  And if I applied the device say  on 18th (ph) floor, I know all the masses above eight (ph).  I know how much potential energy will be released if that floor collapsed.

Then, it will - I will take away about 49 square meter space from the usable floor space to install my Then as the floor goes down, because there are heavier mass above, so you will need more space for this device.

An interesting comparison with total floor area within the perimeter, it's about 4,000 square meters.  So the percentage taken away by the device is really only about two percent - two percent.

Next, we need to demonstrate this device, it's (inaudible), you know, computing class (ph) (inaudible), computer simulation.  And also we need to be (ph) back (ph) measured (ph) for (inaudible) taking (ph) the square (inaudible), increasing buildings, because we know it's probably easier to install this device in a new building, so it'd be probably very high cost, but we don't know yet.

Now, I hope (inaudible) had surveyed at the last (inaudible), but in addition to better fireproofing and better load redistribution channels.

So the first type will be, would have to be rather a computer model method.  We know the efficient method is for design to have (ph) ends (ph) of gravity load, wind load and earthquake load.

Those three (inaudible).  Not to analyze the project barrier (ph), we need to perform a dynamic (inaudible) analysis, which I think our - we have a the experience and  expertise to do that, because we have years of experience in (inaudible) crash (ph) anomaly (ph), and the countermeasures we found (ph).

Thank you.

Conference Facilitator:  (inaudible).

Our last speaker will be Patricia Lancaster from the New York City Department of Buildings.  Thank you very much.

Patricia Lancaster, Commissioner, New York City Department of Buildings:  Thank you.

Good morning, Dr. Snell, Dr. Sunder, members of the investigation team, and members of the audience.

My name is Patricia Lancaster and I am Commissioner of the New York City Department of Buildings.  For those of you who don't know, my agency is in charge of the New York City Building Code.

I'm here to support NIST's proposed national building and fire safety investigation, and provide input on New York City's efforts to review construction and building safety requirements in light of the World Trade Center disaster.

The September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks and subsequent collapse of the World Trade Center Twin Towers and building number seven, were a national tragedy with enormous impact on New York City.

In the wake of these unprecedented events, we must make every effort to fully understand the cause of this catastrophe, and to ensure that our requirements, standards and practices in the design and construction of buildings are adequate to ensure public safety.

Success in this effort will require the dedication of significant resources and technical expertise to ensure that we have a comprehensive understanding of what happened, and a sound basis for developing appropriate standards.

FEMA's building performance assessment team performed its assessment team, BPAT, has provided the critical start to this process.  The investigation proposed by NIST will be another critical part of that effort.

Before giving my comments on the specific components of the proposed investigation plan, I would like to present you with our efforts to review New York City's construction and safety requirements in light of the September 11th events.

On March 19th, the Department of Buildings convened the World Trade Center Building Code Task Force.  The task force consists of an 11-member executive committee and five working groups focused on structural strength, fire protection, emergency evacuation, mechanical systems and the Department of Buildings operations - like changing the code, for example.

Using available information and research, the working groups are reviewing current building design, construction and operating requirements to determine if modifications are needed in order to ensure public safety in new and existing buildings.

Findings and recommendations from these working groups will be reviewed and adopted where appropriate by the executive committee.  The task force is scheduled to present its findings and recommendations to me by the end of this year.

Thus far, the task force and its working groups have gathered input from other government entities, professional design and engineering associations, the construction industry, private real estate owners, private and academic subject matter experts, and individuals directly affected by the events of September 11th, including emergency services personnel and victims' families.

The task force has heard presentations from eye witnesses and experts and reviewed in section reports, news articles, expert testimony, research reports and in some cases empirical test results.  A critical source of information regarding the events of September 11th has been in the FEMA BPAT report.

This report provided invaluable information regarding the performance of the Trade Center buildings and peripheral buildings affected by the collapse.  Its conclusions point to several areas in our current standards and requirements that may require modification. 

However, as the study notes, extensive technical policy and economic studies of these identified concepts should be performed before any specific code changes are developed.  The task force has been diligently working to identify and differentiate where this information already exists, where it is currently being developed, and where additional study is required to adequately review existing building and safety requirements.  The proposed NIST investigation will be a critical component of this effort. 

I would like to highlight several areas where additional information and study may be required.  In some cases, the task force is aware of other efforts to provide this information.  These areas include robustness and redundancy requirements of open (inaudible) floor - excuse me, trusses, transfer trusses, structural connections, and other integrated structural elements, technologies and methodologies for fire proofing, fire protection readings and performance under various fuel load conditions or after active fire protection systems have been compromised, alternative design and construction methods to assure adequate fire protection systems, emergency egress areas and mechanical systems that they remain intact, methodologies also for assessing the need to incorporate enhanced safety requirements, and the comparative effectiveness of innovative design.

In most cases, these areas echo the conclusions of the BPAT investigation and report.  Our previous conversations of  your proposed investigation plans indicate that you are familiar with these areas of inquiry.  In addition, the eight project areas articulated in the proposed plan appear to address these issues, either directly or indirectly.  As as a result, I anticipate that the results of your investigation will be a critical component in our evaluation of current design, construction and safety requirements.

I would also like to address the technical approach outlined in the proposed plan.  The technical approach you've presented addresses the need for a fact-based, objective evaluation of the events of September 11.  The data collection, modeling and testing methodologies you provide - you propose will provide the type of technical information required to assess and develop appropriate standards that localities like New York City would find it difficult to provide.  In addition, the approach appears to balance the technical focus with the need for input from and dissemination to these same groups to insure that the technical information can be effectively utilized.

Before concluding, I would also like to discuss one area of concern with regard to the objectives and timing of the investigation as they relate to our mandate to insure that design and construction safety requirements for new and building - new and existing buildings are adequate.  The need to develop technical information as a basis for evaluating and developing standards is immediate.  Without question, the projects you've outlined will achieve your first, second, and third stated objectives related to understanding the collapse of the World Trade Centers buildings.  In addition, these conclusions will provide a basis for identifying codes and practices that warrant revision and setting the agenda for NIST's subsequent research and development effort. 

Understanding the difficulty in developing this type of information, I encourage - I'm encouraged by the aggressive timeframe and the fact that interim reports will be provided as tasks are completed.  This will help our endeavor immensely. 

However, because the World Trade Center was so particular in its design and construction and the investigation will focus only on the performance of these structures, the timeliness and relevance of this effort may be diminished.  Understanding that this approach will enable you to make a fact-based conclusion, I encourage you to initiate your research and development as soon as possible.

In every - in the wake of the catastrophic events of September 11, we must make every effort to insure the standards and practices for the design and construction of buildings in New York City are not only adequate, they are necessary and sufficient.  NIST’s proposed investigation plan will be a critical component in the evaluation and development of these standards. 

I support the proposed plan and looking forward - and I'm looking forward to working with you throughout the process.  Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

Conference Facilitator:  Thank you, Patricia.

Patricia Lancaster:  Thank you.

Conference Facilitator:  Well, we're right on schedule.  Everything's going very well.  What I'd like to do is make a reminder or two. 

Reminder that there are the various forms to fill out - if you want to request to be a speaker in the two-minute sessions this afternoon, you need to do that very quickly.  The cutoff for that is moments because  they're going to review who will be speakers during our lunch period. 

Also, you may still submit any additional information.  You will receive a receipt for any information you submit to NIST, and everything you submit will be considered part of the public record.

A couple of other reminders - if you're scheduled as a speaker for session three, please report ten minutes prior to the 12:40 start time for the third session.  We'll see you all back at 12:40.