Attacks on the World Trade Centre: an Engineering Perspective
I am still in shock over the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. My husband and I were watching television when breaking news about a plane crashing into the WTC came on. We watched in horror as events unfolded on the screen, and we sat in our apartment in Sydney wondering who we knew that might be in those buildings.
It is only now that we are hearing things closer to home. My mother-in-law works at a Westchester Japanese school and knows at least three children who lost their fathers on that day. There are many Japanese businesses with offices in the World Trade Centre. Both my husband and I interviewed for jobs there when we first moved to New York from Japan. My mother in Perth, Australia, knows two people who were on planes involved in the crashes. The ramifications of this tragedy have spread worldwide. It is not just that my husband is a New Yorker. It is not just that I worked and studied there for three years. It is not just that it is one of the most vibrant and exciting cities I have visited. This was pure murder of thousands of innocent people of all faiths, all ethnic backgrounds, all nationalities.
While the dreadful human losses are still hurting me, I cannot help but think that extraordinary engineering saved thousands of lives. If only announcements had not been made to send people back to work before the second plane hit, I think that even more people would have survived. My husband’s reaction, when watching the flaming Twin Tower after the first plane hit, was: “I can’t believe the building is still standing!” It is true. People have since asked the designers and redesigners of the WTC why the buildings collapsed, but the question should in fact be: How on earth did they stand up as long as they did? It is a testament to the civil engineers who worked on the Twin Towers.
No designer thinks of the possibility of a Boeing 767 hitting a building, and unfortunately airliner fuel flames and cannot be extinguished by water. Survivors report that sprinklers were working, but unfortunately special foam spray is required to put out this kind of flame. It was not the collisions themselves that destroyed the World Trade Centre, it was the fire that came after. The hijackers intentionally used aeroplanes set for cross-continental flights, so that they would be filled with fuel. They deliberately chose the deadliest bombs they could find.
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