Conference Facilitator: Good afternoon. We're now ready to start with public comments session four. But before we do that, I'm going to send the attention of the audience over to Jack, who will talk to you about the questions that were received by NIST and their responses - Jack.
Jack Snell: Thank you, Rich.
I hope we didn't print out 10,000 of these blue forms, because we got four questions. So if we have a lot of blue paper left over, you might want to use it for scratch paper.
Anyway, they're good questions. Let me just very quickly run through the answers. And one, for clarification, the overall plan involves investigation, R&D and the dissemination and technical assistance.
And we're going to try, as much as possible, to do these things in parallel, as opposed to sequentially, to cut down the time for implementation. Obviously, they can't all be done at once, but overlap them as much as we can.
The next item has to do with the very interesting information about the application of the fire-resistive coatings. And the question is, will fines or criminal action be taken against those found responsible for the violations reviewed in Mr. Moore's inspections?
Well, as I said - as we have said repeatedly from the outset, our authorities are for fact-finding and not fault-finding, and that the report of the investigation that NIST develops will not be itself submittable in litigation.
Now that isn't to say other things and other actions may not follow, but it won't be a direct consequence of what NIST does, or at least on the basis of that report.
The next question has to do with finding out about - Mr. Pauls said he felt it was - I forget the term you used, Jake, whether it was outrageous or a shame, or some such adjective, that we didn't know for sure how many people were in the building, and how many people evacuated, and so forth.
To some extent, those questions may never be answered to the extent that they can. Hopefully, with the leveraged activities that have been discussed, if we're able to get support for doing them, we'll come close to getting answers to those questions.
Last question had to do - will the R&D effort include assessment of other potential hazards not experienced on 9/11, such as bio-terrorism or radioactive contamination, and the potential mitigation technologies such as HPAC filtering?
You may recall in the R&D program - I'll just assume this individual came in after the introduction - there is an effort within the R&D program to look at guidelines for bringing the technologies that have been developed and successfully initiated in the defense environment into the civil environment for addressing precisely those potential hazards.
So that, our intention is that they will, indeed.
And will the investigation team compare the documents of the IBC, will they include the International Building Code in the comparison of the codes? And the answer is yes, because it's a part of now the ICC.
So, I think that addresses the four questions that we received. Thank you.
Conference Facilitator: Thank you, Jack.
Our first presentation in the last session this afternoon will be Javeed Munshi. He represents the Construction Technology Laboratories.
Javeed Munshi, Construction Technology Laboratories: Thank you. I want to thank Dr. Sunder and Dr. Snell for giving me the opportunity to present my comments here today.
My comment - I'm a structural engineer with the Construction Technology Labs, and basically do a lot of technical stuff day to day. And my comment today is more of general, big picture stuff to really give people an idea of what NIST is trying to do in just one page. This will hopefully also address the communication issues and also the project management issue that needs to be taken care of because this is a project of considerable size. And chances are he has been seen, that R&D projects can really experience scope creep, which is really getting out of control at some time. So keep the project intact, keep scope creep in check, and also keep the timeline in check because as other speakers have mentioned, there's urgency of this completion project to see (inaudible) and to follow application.
So, I'm going to touch on that briefly here. First of all, I'm going to look at what NIST presented. I want to commend NIST on putting out a very detailed and comprehensive plan. I couldn't find anything in that plan, so I went to a really big picture. This plan here kind of tells you what NIST is trying to do. To me, it was a little confusing, so I set out to do something on my own.
The way I saw the NIST plan, it has essentially three objectives. Number one is, "Why did the Towers collapse - building number one, two, and seven?" Number two is, "Why was there variation in fatalities and injuries in different parts of the building and different building?" And the - and the third one is, "What can be done to address these in the future?"
So the way I look at it, first what you do is you have to have an analysis forensic impact fire and combined thermal structural analysis. And this has been identified in the NIST plan. What is also going into this - into these objectives one and two is evaluation. And evaluation will be for design methods, codes and standards, construction practice, operation maintenance, fire protection system, (inaudible) and emergency communication.
Now, together, the analysis and evaluation will feed information into the two objectives that we are looking for. And (inaudible) outcome is the findings and lessons.
Now, from the findings and lessons, we know now these findings and lessons are specific to the structures we looked at. The implications will be broad-based. So, to be able to be able to implement and in broad-based code standards and design practice, we had to do further research. And here we may again go back and tap into analysis and evaluation of different aspects as are listed here.
So this loop is very important here. And other thing I would like to mention is that under research development, as has been mentioned previously by other speakers information has to be tapped from other research groups (inaudible) connect research in this area. There's a lot of information available that can be used to really form the broad-based recommendations. And those recommendations would be fitting right into the objective vision (ph), which is what can be done.
And that will follow right into what can be changed. Now, implications for change, again, will address the following: the design factors, codes and standards, construction practice, operation maintenance, fire protection system, occupant behavior, emergency communication. And this all has to be communicated so information gets (inaudible).
So this chart kind of gives you in one page an overview of what NIST's plan to me looks like. I would also like to mention here that there are going to be communication issues. As I see it, there're going to be different groups looking at different things. And they have to feed information between themselves. So there has to be coordination of effort and coordination of information flow. And, as I mentioned in the beginning, the critical thing is really the project management control - how to manage this whole thing - whole operation so that all these objectives can be fulfilled with time and budget.
Thank you.
Conference Facilitator: Thank you, Javeed.
Our next speaker is Brian Meacham from ARUP.
Brian Meacham, ARUP: Good afternoon. My name is Brian Meacham, and I'm here today representing ARUP. ARUP is a global engineering consulting firm of considerable experience in the design of tall buildings worldwide.
I would like to begin by thanking the National Institute of Standards and Technology
for the opportunity to provide comments on the scope of their proposed plan
for a national building and fire safety investigation of the
As designers of tall buildings throughout the world, we believe that it is
important to gain as much understanding into the mechanisms that led to the
collapse of the
In this case, although triggering events in Towers One and Two, impact from Boeing 767 aircraft were significant, they did not result in the immediately collapse of the Towers. Building Seven, which did not suffer the impact of an aircraft, nonetheless collapsed after some eight hours of fire exposure.
In order to understand as completely as possible the mechanisms that led to the collapse of these buildings, the significant investigative effort as proposed by the National Institute of Standards and Technologies was needed. In this regard, ARUP supports the need for the proposed investigation with a proposed scope as outlined in the NIST document of June 10.
In addition, we have a few comments on specific parts of the investigation and on the longer-term research effort that we think would be important to address. For project one, in addition to understanding the regulatory requirements at the time of construction, it is important gaining an understanding of the regulatory requirements associated with the normal use of the building, as well as those requirements triggered by significant renovation and modification. Investigating the scope of any regulation related to evacuation training, fire wardens, and related occupant response would also be of interest. These and other factors such as quality control issues may be useful with respect to the longer-term objective of potential modifications to regulations, guidance documents, and practices.
We agree it is important under project two to understand the structural condition of Towers One and Two immediately after the impact and prior to significant fire insult. Although the FEMA report and other sources of information available to date suggest that fire was a more significant factor in collapse of Tower One and Two than of the aircraft impact themselves, it is important to understand how close to collapse the Towers were as a result of the impact and how other load effects may have contributed to the collapse with or without the contribution of the fire effects.
In addition, given the complexities associated with these effort, it will be important to identify, assess the contribution of, and report on sources of uncertainty associated with the analysis and the resulting outcomes.
Project five - given the preliminary findings of the FEMA report which indicates that fire was a significant factor in the collapse, it is critical to understand the thermal environment of these buildings as thoroughly as possible. As with project two, however, this will be challenging and complex, and it will be important to identify and assess the sources of uncertainty associated with the analysis and the outcomes. This is identified for one of the tasks, but not for all of them. And we think it's important to throughout.
Based on the FEMA report and other sources of information, it appears fire was the most significant - essentially the most significant effect leading to the collapse of Towers One and Two, and given that there were no impact in Tower Seven, fire played a significant role. In light of this, we believe that this project may be among the most important of the fire and structural performance projects as outlined in the plan.
The tasks outlined for the project include many of the factors that we believe warrant investigation. In addition, we believe the following should also be investigated: the connection ductility for beams under different forms of static loading, the ductility of column slices and whether more a more ductile connection would have affected the failure mechanisms in debris, the influence of dynamic loading on connection ductility requirements, the significance of dynamic loading on connection ductility requirements, the effect of load transfer from critical zones to elements under duress and the composite action of the core slabs and connections to the frame, the performance of passive fire protection materials in both typical and extreme conditions, and the range of possible failure criteria.
In general we suggest the investigation include materially non-linear structure analysis of the floor and frame, and as with the other projects we believe uncertainty is an important factor to address.
We concur with the proposed plan that it is important to understand the state of the communications system, the egress system and related factors that affected occupants' decisions to evacuate.
In support of and in addition to these tasks we believe these points to be important: How the public address system was used or not, by whom, what instructions were broadcast, how decisions were made on what information was broadcast, and how the system itself performed when used.
In addition to the public address system, what other factors affected the occupants' decision to evacuate and what aided or hindered their decisions and ability to evacuate?
Once again, it will be important to address issues of uncertainty associated with any reconstruction of these events.
In addition to the investigative period over the 24 months we believe it is important to look at long-term research associated with what we learn during the investigation to what we can learn for building design regulation into the future.
These include such factors as, in general, the fire performance of structural systems, fire performance of fire protective materials, progressive collapse issues, models for global and local response to fire, rational design guidance for structures based on real fires and not standard fires, analytical equations for use in design, investigation into new or alternate types of communication systems to aid in that process, understanding human behavior issues, decision-making and associated risk perception, egress models, the use of elevators for egress, people, building, event performance models to look at how all these factors interrelate and a risk-cost decision support model.
In closing, we understand that the events of September 11, the FEMA investigation and the proposed NIST investigation will impact building regulation, design and operation.
As those responsible for regulation, public policy and related to building design, construction and operation consider the outcomes of these investigations we would ask that they consider any proposed changes for both new and existing buildings in terms of risk, overall building performance, failure modes determined to have contributed to collapse, protection measures, which worked as expected, public expectations and cost.
Thank you.
Conference Facilitator: Thank you, Brian.
Our next speaker is Monica Gabrielle from the Skyscraper Safety Campaign.
Monica Gabrielle, Skyscraper Safety Campaign: Good afternoon. My name
is Monica Gabrielle. I'm the co-chairperson of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign
and a widow of 9/11. I am also the "little mother from
I would like to thank Dr. Snell and Dr. Sunder for making this meeting possible, Mike Chinin (ph) for his frequent nights coordinating all the logistics and all the 9/11 families and concerned citizens for joining us today.
I am pleased with the proposed plan put forth by NIST. It is broad and comprehensive.
The plan demonstrates a true concern for finding the truth about the collapse
of the
However, regarding the scope of interviews I would like to recommend the following: It is imperative that the interviews for the NIST investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center, specifically Towers One and Two be based on a broad range of one-one-one, in person, in depth dialogues with a large sample of survivors, survivor families, families of the victims, firefighters, rescue workers, Port Authority employees, building maintenance, tenants of the World Trade Center and anyone else that might be able to provide insight into what was occurring inside the towers during and after and at the time of the attacks on the morning of September 11th.
The information from this disaster cannot be compiled by respondents simply by completing a questionnaire. The fact that over nine months have elapsed and memory has perhaps become vague dictates the need for in-person, face-to-face interviews. Dialogue between the interviewer and interviewee done by a trained professional could help to jog the memory by the sequence of questions asked for each particular situation.
The method and sequencing of questioning can only be determined by conversations with each interviewee. The scope should include the use of extensive research that has already been completed by the "New York Times", specifically their lengthy article dated May 26th, and "USA Today." Each of these publications has been collecting data since September 11th.
Also critical is the upcoming FDNY McKenzie Report, which will provide insight into the operations of the New York Fire Department on September 11th.
Important data can also be obtained from complete sets of 9/11 tapes, landline and cell phone calls, messages left on answering machines and BlackBerry e-mail devices. Transcripts and actual recordings of these calls have also been made available in magazines and syndicated television programs.
Our purpose here today is to help get the much awaited investigation underway. We, the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, the families of the victims and the public have many questions and need to find answers. We have also in our questioning been able to determine some of the immediate steps that can be implemented in order to prevent future tragedies and sorrow.
My husband Rich worked for Aon corporation on the 103rd floor of Tower Two. At the time of the second attack he was waiting for one of the two working express elevators on the 78th floor sky lobby. He was injured and unable to continue on to safety alone. He was alive and waiting for rescue workers to reach him. This information I obtained from a survivor who was with him at the time. Why had he only gotten to the 78th floor? Was he one of those that listened to the Port Authority announcements that the building was secure?
On the morning of September 11th some victims, in their attempt to evacuate the towers, encountered obstructed or nonexistent stairwells, some smoke and fire. Several found themselves lost in the conference room that was designed to be safe in a fire. The doors lock automatically. They did not know.
Some went up to the roof and found the doors locked, apparently a security change. They did not know.
And many jumped to their deaths.
In my opinion, based on this anecdotal evidence I disagree with the conclusions in the BPAT report that there were rigorous emergency exiting training programs for building tenants. How could so many people have thought that they could go up to the roof to get out or descend stairwells only to find dead ends?
It is obvious to me that the
I would also like to reiterate at this time that the BPAT was a study, not an investigation.
Hopefully the NIST investigation will uncover the facts and focus our attention on finding answers to prevent future tragedies of this magnitude. We are confident that the NIST investigation will get to the bottom of this in a professional and scientific manner.
The anecdotal vignettes tell us how utterly horrible it must have been inside those deathtrap towers. These stories do not yet tell us why. These stories do however allow us to make this function about corrective actions and procedures that can be implemented immediately to create as safe environment an environment as possible for all occupants of buildings in this city and across the country.
I would like to remind everyone that the individuals who died on September 11th were people, not numbers. They were husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. We grieve their loss and hope that their legacy will lead to changes in skyscraper building regulations and requirements that will create safe working and living environments.
In the aftermath of September 11th my daughter's company recently had its first fire drill. The building had 37 floors. Thirty more than the fire service can adequately reach with their aerial ladders. My daughter works on the 10th floor. That's three floors out of reach.
The fire drill consisted of gathering in the building's lobby area of each floor. The building's management proceeded to explain where the fire alarms were, which stairwell to use, A or B. They were informed that there were five handicapped chairs available for the entire building. A bit reminiscent of the Titanic.
They were told not to use the elevators in an emergency. They were told that they were responsible for themselves and others. This drill is post September 11th. Where are the lessons learned?
At the World Trade Center Morgan Stanley lost few employees. Why? Because their head of security insisted on regularly scheduled full drills. He insisted that everyone participate in these exercises. He insisted that all employees learn what to do in an emergency until they can do it blindfolded.
We need to address this issue in the interview. Survivors need to be asked about emergency procedures, what they saw and (inaudible). Do we need to have more specific training of personnel put in charge of safely ushering occupants out of buildings?
What kind of training would best serve the occupants? How often should retraining be done? How often should drills take place? Should we continue to only gather in a lobby or central location? Should full evacuation drills become mandatory?
It is imperative that OSHA be fully involved in this investigation as well. It is a federal agency that is intimately involved with building emergency evacuation procedures. It is the government oversight agency that regulates and monitors workers' safety. It is responsible for imposing finds and/or criminal charges when compliance is not met.
OSHA has received volumes of letters detailing complaints about the events of September 11th. OSHA needs to enthusiastically join NIST in this investigation to determine how their regulations can be better written and enforced to take into account extreme emergencies. The complaints that were received by OSHA post September 11th need to be submitted to NIST for their investigation.
There can never again be an entity that is raised from compliance with any safety or security regulations. There must be total evacuation drills mandated by law. OSHA and all agencies need to think outside the box. The safety and security of people must come before economic consideration in constructing and safeguarding buildings. We cannot put a price on the preservation of life.
The data obtained from people from videotape and from phone calls is critical to the investigation. Please don't let this crucial information slip through our fingers. We (inaudible) - we implore you, we do not want a repeat of what happened to the WTC steel evidence.
Some will argue that we do not need to make quick knee-jerk changes to our building codes. And few will even argue that no code changes are needed at all. What we need is the boot end of a knee-jerk reaction to expeditiously kick out the despicable building code provisions that allow 10-story buildings to be treated the same as 100-story buildings.
We need to ensure that new high-rise buildings are structured with quality, safety and security, not the same old bare minimum codes and structural requirements. And we need this on a fast track.
We hope that the NIST investigation will provide answers for the multitude of unresolved issues that remain in the wake of the recent FEMA BPAT assessment. We do not believe the this will happen unless NIST accepts and makes use of the subpoenaed panelists being offered by Congress. The fact remains that nine months after this disaster (inaudible) that we've gotten that are essential to the investigation have yet to be handed out by the Port Authority. This includes (inaudible) specifications and fire testing data.
We strongly believe that the NIST investigation will provide an irrefutable solid foundation for making appropriate changes to building codes, design practices and emergency procedures. This will be a true legacy for those who were lost on September 11th.
We support and endorse NIST's proposed investigation plan. And as Professor Corbett said earlier, this investigation should have commenced in September. It is almost July.
As for me, instead of making plans for my 29th wedding anniversary on July 14th, I am here before you today to urge you to commence a true, thorough investigation into the death of Rich and the almost 3,000 other victims. Let us attempt to ease the nightmare of the victims' families with the truth and let’s get moving.
Thank you for the opportunity.
Conference Facilitator: Thank you.
Our next speaker is Henry Bertoni.
Henry
Bertoni,
I am the professor of electrical
and computer engineering at
Among the unfortunate lessons
emerging from the
As they direct their personnel, commanders need access to building information that can be used to guide their response.
As in any major event,
the availability of information and the ability to gather and communicate it
is one of the key elements in effective response. The 9/11 tragedy illustrates
the problems of relying on limited voice-only communications. The incidence
commander was not able to see the conditions on the outside of the
The
Recent advances in wireless and other technologies can be brought to bear on providing solutions to the problems of Communications, Tracking and Information management at (CTIM). Technology for robust scalable communications, such as ad hoc packet rapid radio networks are under development by the DOD in response to the perceived needs of the military. Such networks can carry voice, they can also be made to carry video, such as from cameras, mounted on helicopters, or even on the helmets of the firefighters.
Also they can carry data, such as from sensors carried by firefighters or mounted in the buildings.
However, differences between military and emergency situations may influence the CTIM solutions for firefighters. These differences should not be ignored.
An important difference involves the potential availability of the building infrastructure that can be used to assist the firefighter. While the military must carry any communications infrastructures with it, buildings can be outfitted with systems to assist the CTIM functions. For example, passive feeder cable systems could assist communication between firefighters on different floors.
Tracking of firefighters could be done with radio ID tags worn by firefighters that communicate with smart smoke detectors or alarm devices located in the buildings. Digital devices will be needed, of course, to display all this information including displaying building floor plans and other structural information. These technologies are not you know, way off stuff or infeasible.
Some initiatives I’ve listed here: NIST should have as one of its goals to coordinate and support research aimed at exploring solutions to the CTIM needs of the first responders. Even more important, NIST needs to make the research relevant and to develop a nationwide market that manufactures can speak to.
To this end, NIST should encourage fire departments in major cities to establish Offices of Technology Assessment and to have technology officers meet on a regular basis so as to exchange ideas and experiences, and to review new approaches and products.
In the initial presentation,
I did, there was a question of dissemination and many groups were listed, but
one group that was not listed were the fire departments. I think that that's sort
of an area that needs to be incorporated, and to find a way to effectively bring
fire departments into the formulation of solutions. Finally, in response
to some of the previous speaker's comments, I'd like emphasize the importance
of projects seven and eight. A little under 100
firefighters die each year in the
The next terrorist attack will probably not be by airplane. We don't want to do as they always say about the military, we were always prepared for the last war, and not for the next one. Providing first responders with CTIM technologies may save lives in the fires we know will happen, and may help with other types of emergencies. I therefore recommend even greater emphasis on projects seven and eight, than were indicated. Thank you.
Conference Facilitator: Thank you. Our next speaker is Kathleen Tierney
from the
Kathleen Tierney,
First of all, I'd like to say that NIST is really to be commended for taking
the lead to integrate behavioral and emergency management issues into a study
of the
When it is completed, the NIST effort may well be, may well be the largest scale and most comprehensive and thorough
study of the human aspects of the
And I'll now spend an average of one minute talking about each of these points. First of all with respect to funding, adequate funding really needs to be allocated for this task. There are six different subtasks associated with project seven, all of which constitute significant efforts in their own right. The data collection and analysis activities, and here I'm talking about the collection of original data through face-to-face interviews, as we've just heard discussed. This original data collection could easily require at minimum, a budget of $2 million.
Second, and in a related vein, the time allotted for this study in the current NIST plan, 18 months, is too short to allow for careful study development, data collection, data analysis, synthesis of findings and report writing. In particular this schedule does not allow adequate time for resolving difficult issues associated with organizational entre and access to interviewees, or for synthesizing findings and conclusions across task areas. Two years would be an extremely ambitious schedule for a study of this kind.
Third, there are a number of very complex methodological challenges associated with project seven, especially with respect to task number one. Within the twin towers, for example, there are at least four different units of analysis for which data collection strategies will need to be developed. Individuals, work groups, organizations, both those within the towers and those which were involved from the outside, and ecological units, such as floors within the towers.
Since the scope of this study will also include the activities of emergency response personnel, data will need to be collected across a wide variety of emergency response organizations. It will be necessary to interview a substantial number of individual building occupants, employees who have specific safety related responsibilities, such as floor wardens, safety personnel within the trade towers, those responsible for emergency planning at the trade center site, emergency response managers and front line workers, among others.
Specialized data collection instruments will need to be developed for each of these different groups, and specialized sampling strategies will need to be devised in order to ensure adequate representation and generalizability of findings. Parts of the study that will require the analysis of archival and historical materials are also very complex.
Fourth, in scoping the study, NIST also needs to take into account that there will be a very large need for coordination. First, with researchers working on other projects within the NIST investigation, and also with other ongoing research that focuses on similar issues. For example, as we've already heard, both the Fire Department of New York and the New York City Police Department are conducting extensive after action studies, and other groups will also be carrying out research projects involving the same organizations and groups that will be the focus of the NIST investigation. So coordination is going to be needed both to ensure that relevant data collected by other researchers is taken into account, and also to avoid excessive burden on study participants.
Fifth, because of the very sensitive nature of this study, NIST also is going to need to take steps to protect both the investigators and research subjects from involvement in litigation. Such protection along with guarantees of confidentiality, anonymity and privacy are not only important from an ethical point of view, on the practical side, they enhance the validity of the research that will be conducted, by making it possible for interviewees to speak candidly about their experiences, without fear of exposure and without fear of reprisal.
Along these same lines, since many components of the NIST study and especially project seven, constitute federally funded research on human subjects, relevant Department of Health and Human Services requirements involving the protection of human subjects as outlined in CFR Title 45, part 46, must apply. Among other things, these regulations require prior approval by institutional review boards of most research involving the collection of data from human beings. NIST is going to need to carefully look at federal human subjects guidelines, which were last revised in November of 2001, and specify that contractors must adhere to all relevant requirements.
As with the legal issues that I just mentioned, the things involving litigation, issues of human subject confidentiality are of critical importance in a study of this kind. Many interviewees will simply not provide adequate and complete information if they have any doubts whatsoever about the confidentiality of the data that they are being asked to provide. Failure to provide strong assurances of confidentiality for subjects will jeopardize both the validity and the credibility of the NIST study findings.
And finally, as described in NIST's proposed plan, project seven will require a team effort, combining the skills and expertise from many fields, including various engineering specialties, architecture, sociology, psychology, other related social science disciplines, emergency management and related fields.
Now the current project description called for involvement in project seven of, quote, "experts in human behavior." But we need to keep in mind that there are many different kinds of social and behavioral science experts. And this is the kind of study for which very specialized expertise is needed. Those who were chosen to work on this project should also be required to provide evidence that they have the ability to work very comfortably in mutlidisciplinary teams and on very large coordinated research projects.
I want to thank NIST for giving me the opportunity to speak before this very distinguished group that has gathered here today. And if there is other help that we can provide with this study, I hope that you will call on us.
Thank you.
Conference Facilitator: Thank you, Kathleen.
Our next speaker is Richard Tomasetti from Thornton-Tomasetti Group.
Richard Tomasetti, Thornton-Tomasetti Group: Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for allowing me to speak here today.
In the way of introduction, I am the co-chairman of the Thornton-Tomasetti
Group, an engineering firm headquartered in
The study appears to focus very much on World Trade Center 1, 2 and 7, the
three buildings that experienced a total collapse. Although this is important,
it should be recognized that World Trade Center 1 and World Trade Center 2 have
structural systems typically not used in other typical buildings. The structural
system for these buildings were an appropriate one,
but it is typically not used. Probably the
Understanding the collapse mechanism due to the structure and fire interaction will be helpful if studies include strengths and vulnerability and more typically use structures such as other buildings in the area that experienced physical damage and fire spread and still avoided collapse. I know that some of this has been discussed earlier in these proceedings, but I still would like to emphasize this because we feel it is extremely important.
The outline does state also that the continuing R&D program - this is on page two - will include recommendations of the FEMA/ASCE report concerning low-rise World Trade Center buildings 4,5 and 6, and the World Trade Center Marriott Hotel, Banker's Trust, and other peripheral buildings. But like others, we feel that gathering the evidence and modeling your analysis for these buildings, we feel should take place at the very beginning of the investigative phase.
We recommend also redirecting the tremendous amount of effort that we believe is in the plan to remodeling World Trade Center 1 and 2, which is in project number two, to the other buildings. And considering what we would call "what if" scenarios for fire and progressive collapse for a variety of building types that are more typically used and more typically inhabited by the public. We think this is much more important for understanding public safety.
For example, portions of the low-rise
Such studies might be useful also to calibrate world performance - real performance in the world to the standards that we use now, such as those used by UL (ph) and the ASTM E-119 fire tests. We believe that broadening the study to a wider variety of building types will better assist accomplishing this goal for improving the way buildings are designed and constructed, for identifying possible improvements in building and fire code standards, and developing possible recommendations for the retrofitting of existing buildings, something that we cannot put our heads in the sand about and must also consider. It will also be very - much more responsive to the public's requirement to feel safe in buildings if we take this approach.
Concerning passive fire protection, such as spray-on fire protection of steel, we believe more emphasis should be placed on developing positive approaches to increasing the reliability and public confidence in the use of passive fire protection. Emphasis should be placed on testing for shock impacts and vibrations, as well as the fire resistance. I know some of that is being considered, but we think that it needs more emphasis.
And also, the practical reality that some portion of fire protection can always be disturbed during the life of the building and its come (ph) in and out. (inaudible) in testing the simulated possibilities of various portions of disturbed fire protection is recommended. Emphasis should also be placed on the role of protective structures for egress paths in buildings; closing egress and closing fire protective stairs. To what extent do we do that and not cross the line that that also becomes an entrapment? Again, we feel these approaches go to designing for the occupant safety, which is the primary goal.
One other point concerning the forensic analysis of phase saved structural components. And we recommend that emphasis be placed in trying to develop a methodology which determines whether physical or fire damage was the result of the incident or the collapse of the building. Without a vital methodology, the usefulness of the data accumulated could be very limited.
And I would like to end with a question, if I may. How do we best define the design threats and criteria for future codes and standards, and should they be public knowledge? Knowledge that others can use against us?
Thank you.
Conference Facilitator: Thank you, Richard.
Our next speaker is Shankar Nair from Teng Associates.
Shankar Nair, Teng Associates: Thank you.
What happened on
The nation and the government have responded appropriately to the disaster in that the primary focus of the response has been on security through military action and intelligence activities and so on. But we must also do what we reasonably can to make our buildings, especially our tall buildings, safer. By safer, I mean both less vulnerable to terrorist attacks and also safer in the face of other unexpected events.
American buildings will never be completely invulnerable to the type of attack that happened on 9/11, people in free societies do not want to live in fortresses. But we should still do what we can to improve the margin of safety against lesser disasters, and to reduce the casualties in events of the 9/11 scale. And that is what the planned NIST investigation should accomplish.
I believe the WTC investigation
program that NIST has developed will serve admirably to find out what happened
and why in the
If there still is a gap or deficiency in the scope of the investigation. An area where the scope could reasonably be expanded it is that this plan does not address a question that both laymen and skyscraper professionals have been asking ever since 9/11, and that is, how would other building designs have responded under similar circumstances.
Now this might seem like an academic
issue, but it isn't really. NIST is going to be spending a lot of time
and effort and money looking at the design of the
I don't think we have any basis
yet for assuming that the
So by looking only at the
It could be argued that
a design that performs better or worse in 9/11 scenario may not be better or
worse in some other situations, and that is certainly true. But I don’t think
that’s a good enough reason to refrain from trying to predict how other designs
would have performed. The 9/11 attack in fact did happen. And it is not unreasonable
to use that as a baseline for studying skyscraper design other designs as well
as the
There are several ways in which
we could select other designs for investigation and for comparison purposes.
One way would be to pick actual existing buildings of similar scale. These
could include structures of the same vintage as the
Another way would be to study
hypothetical rather than real building designs. This would mean in effect
redesigning the
No one is suggesting that an attack
of the type and scale that occurred on 9/11 should have been among the design
criteria for the
So the purpose of the study of alternative designs would not be to fix blame. It would be to advance the state of knowledge by investigating difference in how different designs would have reacted to this unique baseline event. And this would have a role in the development of improved practices for the future.
Finally, let me say that even if this expansion of the scope of the study that I am suggesting is not undertaken, I believe the proposed plan by NIST addresses the published objectives of the investigation very well indeed, in my judgment. And I think NIST is to be commended for it.
Thank you.
Conference Facilitator: Thank you, Shankar.
Our last speaker in session four is Vincent Dunn. He's representing himself, a retired New York Fire Department foreman.
Vincent Dunn, Vincent Dunn Consultants: Good afternoon. My name is Vincent Dunn. I'm retired Deputy Chief of the New York City Fire Department. I'm an author of a book titled, "Collapse of Burning Buildings."
For 15 years I was assigned to midtown
Today I would like to submit the following 15 recommendations for inclusion
in the scope of the NIST investigation on the
Recommendation number one: Please investigate the skeleton steel design of the World Trade Center Towers One, Two and Seven. One and Two collapsed in 10 and eight seconds. Building number Seven collapsed after seven hours, and no plane struck that building.
Specifically, the use of outer load-bearing tubular walls in building One and Two, floors supported by long-spanned, field bar trusses, and the concentration of support columns in the core area only.
Recommendation number Two: Please investigate the safety of having exits clustered in the center core area of the floor in a high-rise building. And consider the definition of the term remote exits. Exits are supposed to be remote to each other.
Recommendation number three: Please investigate the effectiveness of phase one and phase two firefighter service elevator systems, specifically, the effect of run-up water from sprinkler or hose screenings had on the electric wiring. Water stops elevators during a fire.
Recommendation number four: Please investigate the feasibility of a so-called phase three elevator. A phase three elevator would be enclosed and protected from smoke, heat and run-off water.
This phase three elevator could be used by firefighters to get to the upper floors of a high-rise building during a fire. And most importantly, it could be used by disabled people to egress the upper floors of a high-rise building.
Instead of chairs carrying people down 10 or 20 floors, why don't we build a phase three elevator that's protected from smoke, fire and run-off water.
Recommendation number five: Please investigate the effect of this spray-on fire retardant over steel beams supporting floors, and the feasibility of future use of concrete encasement to protect floors instead of spray-on material. We used concrete encasement in buildings up till 1968.
Recommendation number six: Please investigate the effectiveness of floor construction in high-rise office buildings. The fire resistance of four-inch concrete floors on fluted steel sheets is questionable.
Consider floor failures at the
The floors crack, they sag, they warp. They have to be supported before we can go in on them. They haven't fallen to the floor below yet, but that's coming.
Recommendation number seven: Please investigate the substitution of plasterboard for concrete blocks enclosing stairways and elevator shafts in high-rise buildings.
Our master streams and powerful hose streams collapse the plasterboard. It didn't do that with the concrete.
Recommendation number eight: Please investigate the effectiveness of smoke-proof towers and compare them to enclosed stairways we use today in high-rise buildings that fill up with smoke during fires.
Recommendation number nine: Please investigate the effectiveness of the antennas at high-rise buildings to enhance fire service radio transmission. If we don't have communications, we can't direct the people on the upper floors.
Recommendation number 10: Please investigate the misconception people in high-rise buildings have that they can escape from a fire by going to the roof and waiting for helicopters to rescue them.
How can this misconception be changed?
Recommendation number seven: Please investigate the fire and smoke-spread avenues created by HVAC systems, central air conditioning systems, that have heating, ventilation and air conditioning ducts that penetrate fire-rated walls through all kinds (ph) of partitions (ph) of high-rise buildings for 10 or 20 stories.
Recommendation number 12: Please investigate the recent introduction of HVAC systems with these ducts in public hallways of high-rise fire-resistible apartment houses, which allow smoke spread from floor to floor in public halls.
Recommendation number 13: Please investigate the so-called defense-in-place strategy that designers of high-rise buildings have imposed on the fire service. Today's firefighters using defend-in-place strategy must extinguish a fire while occupants remain in the building.
The stairways do not get all these people out in time. Especially consider this defend-in-place strategy used in modern high-rise buildings that one, are no longer considered fire-resistant. That is, they will not contain the fire from floor to floor.
Number two, high-rise buildings with large floor areas behind - beyond the extinguishment capability of firefighters.
And number three, in these modern high-rise buildings where occupants will no longer listen to or have confidence in the instructions of the fire chief or the fire safety director.
Defend-in-place strategy does not exist.
Recommendation number 14: Please investigate the time it would take to totally evacuate a high-rise office building. Knowledge of the time it would take for total evacuation of a high-rise building is very important information for firefighters during a fire or a terrorist attack.
We do not know how long it takes to evacuate people from a high-rise building. We - we're - in testing, we're finding it's not as long as we think. Consider life safety implications of a high-rise building which has a stairway capacity that requires five or six hours for total evacuation of all occupants and has fire resistant floors and stairway enclosure ratings for only two or three hours.
Recommendation number 15 - the last one - please investigate the safety considerations
of fire fighters continuing interior operation in unoccupied high-rise office
building for six, eight, or eleven hours while the floors have fire-resistant
ratings of only two and three hours. Fire fighters in
So, Dr. Snell, thank you for the time and may God assist you in this very important investigation. Thank you.