Large groups of exhausted FDNY men were seen resting in a north-tower elevator lobby just before the building came down.ĭespite the confusion and physical strain, firefighters doubtless saved lives by helping people evacuate. Several firefighters reported chest pains. Many fire-fighters went 10 or 12 floors, rested, climbed five or six more, took another “blow,” then scaled three or four additional flights. One unit took an hour to reach the 31st floor. They wanted to go up and put the fire out.” In the FDNY’s oral histories, a number of firefighters recalled being told to prepare to extinguish the blaze, or being given vague orders to simply head upstairs.ĭoing so was extremely difficult. … Some firefighters at the company level were disturbed by the operations order that signaled a change toward assisting with the evacuation. “It was likely that many of the occupants trapped at or above the impact zone would die before help could get to them.”ĭespite this decision, the NIST report and individual firefighters’ oral histories reveal that some fire companies were ordered to head to the impact zone and set up a post for what NIST dubbed “rescue and firefighting operations.” That report found that “as the senior command level strategies were communicated to the lower levels, the concepts appeared to take hold at a slower pace at the next level down. “At best it would take hours to establish meaningful firefighting operations on the upper floors of the buildings,” the NIST report found. So FDNY commanders decided early on at the World Trade Center that they would mount a rescue operation, not a firefighting one. The elevators were-with a single exception in each tower-rendered immobile, robbing firefighters of a method for reaching the fire faster. The standpipes in both buildings were believed to have been severed by the aircrafts’ impact, meaning no water could reach the upper floors. Not only were multiple, huge floor areas in flame, the fires were also whipped by wind pouring in through the buildings’ shattered sides. The time it takes a person wearing at least 50 pounds of gear to climb dozens of flights of stairs could be longer than the time a civilian can survive trapped amid toxic smoke.Īll these challenges were exacerbated on Sept. Rescuing people in high-rise buildings is complicated too. To extinguish even a flaming half-floor of the WTC would have required, by NIST’s calculations, 1,250 gallons of water a minute, a deluge that might take 10 engine companies to provide. Even when that water is available, some high-rise fires are simply too large to put out. Most important, they usually have to use a water system built into the high-rise building to put out the blaze. Firefighters can’t leave a tool in their truck and run down to get it or easily step outside for a new tank of air. But it might have taken a lower toll on the fire department if problems with communications and personnel had been averted.įighting fires in high-rise buildings is very different from battling blazes in shorter structures. 11 would never have happened if terrorists hadn’t decided to kill Americans. But none of these would give a full accounting of why people ended up injured or dead. You could blame the Hindenburg only on static electricity. You could discuss Hurricane Katrina and omit any mention of the levees. You could talk about the Titanic and focus on the iceberg, not the lifeboats. 11’s painful lessons for the city and its fire department.ĭeath in a disaster usually has multiple causes. “I don’t really think any organization did a true fatality investigation of the incident.” (In fairness, the scale of the losses would have made such investigations, which detail the precise circumstances of each death, difficult to complete.)ĭespite these obstacles, three reports-the NIST study, the 9/11 commission investigation and an FDNY-authorized report by the consultant McKinsey & Co.-managed to, very delicately, spell out Sept. “At the time, I just think because of the magnitude of the event, nothing was done,” says Tim Merinar, who leads NIOSH’s firefighter fatality investigations. Meanwhile, neither the FDNY’s Safety Battalion nor the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which routinely probe firefighter deaths, investigated the World Trade Center fatalities.
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