Scientists are completing a major study of the behavior of World Trade Center survivors in a bid to make skyscrapers safer and easier to evacuate.
Key recommendations and suggestions include blaze-proof elevators, sky bridges linking high-rise buildings and curbs on mobile phones during evacuations.
"It would add tragedy to tragedy if we did not learn from 9/11," said the study's leader, Ed Galea of the University of Greenwich, England.
Galea and his team analyzed the written accounts of 250 survivors of Sept. 11, and found they show a startling variation in human behavior. Almost half those working on floors below where the planes struck took more than five minutes to begin leaving the building. Incredibly, five percent were still there more than an hour later.
"They sat at their computers while the building blazed," he said. "It is astonishing. We also found most people had long mobile phone conversations to relatives during their evacuation. Such behavior contrasts with the expectations of high-rise building designers. They assume people will exit in an orderly fashion in seconds of a fire alarm sounding."
THREE ZONES
The Sept. 11 disaster had three zones: the floors where the two planes struck; the floors above, and the floors below.
"Everyone on the impact floors ... was killed very quickly," Galea said.
Nearly all those in floors below the impact survived, however, while all but a handful of those above died -- because the crashed planes severed all elevators and each tower's three emergency staircases.
The staircases were clustered together and made of plasterboard. Had they been widely spaced and made of concrete, one staircase might have survived and those above the impact could have got out before the towers collapsed."
SPECIAL SOFTWARE
Using special software called Exodus, Galea also calculated how long it would have taken to evacuate the towers if they had been fully occupied.
"What happened on 9/11 was horrible, but it could have been a lot worse," he said.
"Each tower usually had about 25,000 occupants. However, Sept. 9 was local election day and many people were voting, it was the first day of school term and many parents were late coming in, and it was quite early in the morning. The towers were struck at 8:45am and 9:03am. As a result, there were only about 8,500 people in each tower," he said.
"Had it been later on a normal day, about 13,000 people would have died as opposed to the estimated 2,700 victims who died that day," he said.
In fact, the people on floors below the impact zones only just got out, Galea's calculations revealed. There were only a few minutes between the last occupants reaching the ground and each tower's collapse. Many refused to leave their desks, a situation that could have been improved if senior executives, and other figures of authority, had been recruited as fire marshals.
In addition, as people descended the narrow staircases, firemen were coming up, carrying equipment, causing delay though, according to simulations, not enough to cause loss of life.
The report warns that many high rise buildings are currently not designed to enable the complete evacuation of their occupants.
"We can no longer tolerate that attitude," Galea said. "That is the real lesson of 9/11. We have to find ways to all people out."
A ship that appears to be taking on the identity of a scrapped gas carrier exited the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, showing how strategies to get through the waterway are evolving as the Middle East war progresses. The vessel identifying as liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier Jamal left the Strait on Friday morning, ship-tracking data show. However, the same tanker was also recorded as having beached at an Indian demolition yard in October last year, where it is being broken up, according to market participants and port agent’s reports. The ship claiming to be Jamal is likely a zombie vessel that
Cannabis-based medicines have shown little evidence of effectiveness for treating most mental health and substance-use disorders, according to a large review of past studies published in a major medical journal on Monday. Medical use of cannabinoids has been expanding, including in the US, Canada and Australia, where many patients report using cannabis products to manage conditions such as anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and sleep problems. Researchers reviewed data from 54 randomized clinical trials conducted between 1980 and May last year involving 2,477 participants for their analysis published in The Lancet. The studies assessed cannabinoids as a primary treatment for mental disorders or substance-use
NATIONWIDE BLACKOUT: US President Donald Trump cut off Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba, strangling the Caribbean island’s already antiquated grid Cuba’s national electric grid collapsed on Monday, the nation’s grid operator said, leaving about 10 million people without power amid a US-imposed oil blockade that has crippled the already obsolete generation system. Grid operator UNE on social media said that it is investigating the causes of the blackout, the latest in a series of widespread outages that last for hours or days and that this weekend sparked a rare violent protest in the communist-run nation. Officials ruled out a major power plant failure, but had still not pinpointed the root cause of the grid collapse, suggesting a problem with transmission. Officials said that
‘HEALTH ISSUE’: More than 250 women are hospitalized every day due to complications from unsafe abortions, and about three die, a study showed Jane had been bleeding heavily for days before finally seeking help, not from a hospital, but from the man who sold her the pills meant to end her six-week pregnancy. Abortions are strictly outlawed in the mainly Catholic Philippines, forcing women to turn to a patchwork of providers operating in the online shadows. While rare in practice, Philippine law allows for prison terms of up to six years for abortion patients and providers, leaving thousands of Filipinas to search for solutions in online forums where unlicensed sellers promote abortifacients. “It was very painful, as if my abdomen was being twisted,” said Jane, whose
RSS