No helicopters could fly to the rooftop to rescue people from the twin towers due to too much smoke. The smoke is going up.

I dont get how this was possible. I mean they built a 2 huge towers but no outside fire ladder? No outside emergency escape? I get that none of the building nowadys are equipped the way you would think they should be in the case of fire.

Here are my ideas:

-1) Fly the helicopter next to the people at the windows! How hard can that be? There is no smoke and people were breathing and hanging to the windows for hours. Dont tell me that was not possible. I believe it was.

Shoot a rope to the people from the helicopter and rescue them one by one.

2) Put a good old fire ladder on every building. One like this. Mandatory.



3) Put a safety net at the botton of every tower/ skyscraper. It might not look pretty but it will do the job.



4) Have ropes on every floor. Probably the most simple method. Mandatory.


This video really got me thinking. I will get a rope now like QP mentioned. It wont hurt. Im living in one of those higher buildings now.

It is outstanding imo.



Here are a few other ideas:

Guess this should have been expected as your next rabbit hole.

If this is about skyscraper safety, I have no idea why it's in this forum.

If this is about 9/11, I have no idea why it's not in one of the existing threads.

As for all of your ideas, maybe you should do a little thinking and research before filling your post with a dozen schemes to save one person at a time. Think about the fact that the towers each accommodate 50,000 workers and 200,000 visitors per day, and then consider how well some of those ideas would hold up. And that systems designed to work for 2 or 3 story buildings might not scale up so well for 110. Ropes and slides for 110 stories? LOL.

Or maybe a little research to see why some of those ideas are just truly terrible. Let's start with fire escapes:

https://www.fireengineering.com/fire...-fire-escapes/

https://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...nament/554174/

The thing about these buildings is that no matter how many interwoven layers of steel you have, no matter how much fireproofing, fire resistant furniture, giant metal cores that act as heat sinks....no matter how much of that is in place we now know that all it takes is a little heat and the honeycomb of a steel frame will collapse like a Jenga.

If you made the mistake of hosting Emeril Lagasse's cooking class inside one of these death traps, one too many "BAM!" could send down a whole skycraper at near freefall speed.

I say we all just stay on the ground. Or live in trees. Trees have natural camouflage from above. The terrorists won't be able to see us.

You can merge in into one of the 9/11 threads if you like.

I believed this deserved its own attention.


What is so stupid about a few ideas?

Whats wrong with flying a helicopter sideways to the building?

Whats wrong with having ropes and gear for a safe abseil?

They were clearly not prepared for a big fire. I wonder how it is nowadays.

These idiots when building these towers didnt think of the worst case. Only about the looks.

They were thinking of emergency escape ladders in new yorks 10 story building a hundred years ago already, but not on the new buildings?



A net like this would imply there is danger. And there is.

If you want to save yourself a ton of time that you will use to consume stuff to explore this new (and expected) topic of yours - just assume that if you were there with all your innovative sideways helicopter and netting ideas that the world would be different, but alas that was not meant to be in this case in this timeline. Note, I have not clicked on a single video you linked, and odds are few if anyone else did.

You may not have clicked but I didn't want you to click. All I wanted for you is to see the picture.

Towers in Germany are required to have a giant tank of water on the rooftop. I know this because j just learned that our building had a spa area with huge tanks, swimming pools at the top. They had to close due to covid. That would kill any fire in the building.

The problem is getting a lot of water up. In our case only helicopters could have done the job.

Fire at the twin towers lasted 102 minutes.

Being honest - I did not even read much of the contents of your posts (other than a speed read of a few words), because I do not regard you as a source of information that would be important on this topic. Good luck with your current quest I guess if it helps you in some way. Good job using "helicopter sideways" as a term as that does stand out in a speed read, even if I did not read what context you were using it for.

Sideways Monti.

:

Yeah, those idiots. Clearly never took a single measure in case of big fires. If only they had washoe consulting; he could have shown them dozens of videos and saved many lives. Who needs engineers?

If they had just hired Fire Marshall Bill as a consultant, thousands of lives would have been saved on 9/11.

While I'm sure there are legitimate questions around skyscraper safety in New York, or any city for that matter, but you will never see something that can prepare you for attacks of this type and truly be expected to work.

I recall being at a seminar for rescue operations in regards to cruise ships, larger vessels of the type that can carry 3000+ passengers. There were engineers attending, and one of them was asked what the engineering contingencies were for cruise ships going down quickly, upon which he dryly replied "to not sink quickly". What he meant was that it is disaster of such a scale no contingency is going to stop that from being a horrifying disaster. Your only option is to plan for it not to happen.

This is not an excuse to ignore errors in construction, planning, emergency procedures or rescue efforts. Nor is it an excuse to not build or engineer in a way that minimizes risk. It is merely the realization that some things are simply beyond the scope of drafts and construction efforts.

In regards to the thread, it's a weird topic approached in a weird way, but building safety is indeed a political issue, a lot of disasters have been caused, amplified, avoided or reduced in scope due to building and urban planning legislation passed by politicians. The disaster at the Surfside condominium collapse in Florida is a recent and good example.

I'll grant that it is a rare one to broach on political forums and concede that it might not be one that sees a lot of headlines, but it is a vital part of urban planning. I don't see a reason to move this into an existing thread.

9/11 wasn’t a typical fire. They hijacked flights full of jet fuel that were going to the west coast. The temperatures created by this jet fuel bomb helped to compromise the towers.

Pretty much this. Fire safety measures shouldn't be ditched just because the measures can't save everyone. Rescuing 20 people is better than rescuing none. But I am not at all convinced that your proposed measures would have saved a single life in 9/11. All but one of the internal, concrete stairwells were impassable above the impact zone. Any sort of external fire escape would have been completely compromised. And the last thing you would have wanted was people below the impact zone trying to use a compromised, external fire escape.

I suspect that flying helicopter rotors to within a few feet of a burning skyscraper and then shooting ropes (with attached vests, I assume) horizontally into blown out windows is more challenging that you are assuming. Even if it were possible, it would have been slow going and would have saved only a couple of people. And if people below the impact zone had waited on a helicopter rescue rather than going down the internal stairwells, the proposed plan might have killed more people than it saved.

Also, skyscraper windows don't open. In most high rise fires, there would be no open windows unless they were blown out by a raging fire, in which case they would be useless for the rescue plan you are imagining.

Ropes and slides of course are a ridiculous solution to a 9/11 problem. I'm not sure what sort of mythical material you would propose to use for the ropes and slides. And climbing 1000 feet down a rope (even a rope ladder) is beyond the capability of most people. And it certainly isn't something your average person could do in less than an hour or two.

I don't know what sort of net would be required to catch someone falling at close to terminal velocity. Unless you executed a professional landing, I'm guessing that you would die if you jumped into a net from 700-1000 feet.

Over 1300 people were trapped above the impact zone. Only about 20-30 people out of this found a way out from there in damaged stairways. The fire/ sprinkler system did not work and was damaged by the impact. The impacts did not cause the collapse. The structure was just fine afster the planes craching in, you have to know that the mass of the tower was over 100-1000 times the mass of a boing 737. The buildings collapsed due to fire, and over 2700 people died because of that, not to mention the millions of life's lost in the coming 20 years of war.
That's what I should have said in the op. That is the problem, they were jumping because they couldn't bear the smoke and the heat. That was the only deliberate act they could still do. Nobody wanted to talk about this. The media mutually acted out a self censorship. All we saw later was the coverage of combined rescuing efforts. I agree that was better to digest. But should they have talked about the jumping people? The picture of the falling man was never been showed again. (It wasn't only one person jumping, it was dozens if not hundreds)

200 people were trapped and died in the elevators. I'm not talking about below the impact zone. These people found a way out. 99% of them were rescued. Although the rescuer's radios didn't work properly.


Engineers explain the fall. "9/11 conspiracy theories debunked: 20 years later, engineering experts explain how the twin towers collapsed"
https://www.theconversation.com/amp/...llapsed-167353

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coll...d_Trade_Center

Washoe, emergency planning for a nuclear attack on the US will never involve planning to fly US citizens out from the country one by one by helicopter. Do you understand why?

I mean, after the fact you can ask 'why not' but it is just not something they will plan for.

And btw no person stuck at floor 100 would be able to get on to a helicopter hovering outside the window. There is simply no way to just throw them a rope and have them traverse that distance. They would have to jump down and once the rope became taut pulled up or the helicopter would have to take off fast in the opposite direction and just yank them out of the building. There is a reason all helicopter rescues tend to have the professional first lowered to the 'victim' who is then secured and the professional then brings them out.

The danger of a helicopter doing multiple close proximity trips to the side of the building and risking blade contact with the building would also be immense. Towers like that cause massive swirling and unpredictable winds, put aside the added risk of explosions caused by the fire inside. One falling helicopter that crashed into front lines workers below could easily cause far more casualties than all helicopters in service would save, one by one.

But as I stated in the other thread, 9/11 did make me take one precaution that was easily within my control. I did a lot of Rock climbing when younger and know how to repel. And as my office was on a high floor (52nd) and I always pick condo's to live in on high floors (currently on 32nd), I bought and keep 2 sets of ropes (200ft each) and my repel harness and gear.

Make no mistake, as I think the odds of ever being in that situation are miniscule and moreso being one in an area to survive it are also miniscule.

But should I find myself in that horrid position, whether via natural disaster (earth quake, terrorism, etc) where the building was compromised, stairs and elevator inaccessible and the fire or other death inside the building was coming for me, I could at least try to find a window to break on a side of the building where I could repel down, 200ft at a time before resetting and traversing the next 200 ft, in the hopes of reaching the ground, or an area of the building where i could access stairs to get to the ground.

I imagine seeing me scaling down the building like this...



...would make for a lot of news fodder for a long period thereafter.

The WTC would take about 7 resets of the ropes to hit the ground whereas my current condo would only take 2.

QP I get what you are saying about the helicopters. That only left one option, may it sound crazy. But you think flying a helicopter and throwing parachutes to to windows would have been an option?

Those people were leaning stacked on top of each other at the windows leaning out. A few even climped out and were basically locking themselves like a climber against the construction. So, no the windows were not locked, Rococo not at all, or they could not have done this. They jumped one by one! I know the church does not regognize this, nor the state, becuase this would mean suicide. It wasnt imo.

I get what you are saying, the twin towers were 1370 feet, longer than most ropes.

Watch this, its a great doc:

Correct.

Outside movies you never see this type of lateral rescue. It is always from above for a reason.


I do suspect those stuck in upper floors would be able to break a window or find one already compromised, but as you suggest, then what??


Correct. 99% of people would not be able to repel down with no gear and training to do so.

It would be impossible via strength alone. And even dropping in the proper equipment would require them be trained on it.

Nets absolutely could be set up to withstand that drop but they would need to be pre set up, which means in all areas around the base since you would not know which said would be accessible.

Here is the World Record Net jump by a skydiver from 25,000 ft into a net.

Is that directed at me?

I am sure there would be 400ft ropes but that does not really matter.

What matters is the ability to retrieve the rope and reset and use it again, as many times as is needed until you reach safety. You obviously cannot just use a top knot that would require someone be up top to untie it when done.

So at the top the rope would go thru one of these which gives is a smooth frictionless surface to rest on...



the knot joining the two ropes would be made big enough that it would not pass thru the opening and would serve as the stop...



The ropes would then hang down like this where you would put all your weight going down on the orange rope (forcing the knot into the carabiner), and once you got to the bottom of that length (almost 200ft) you would have to stop (break a window and go in) and then pull the rope out by switching your hands to the green rope and pulling it all out the opposite of the way you fed it in.

Yeah it was, but sorry, a 400 foot rope wouldnt have done it probably. Im not sure at what height they were above the impact zone. That must have been at around 1000ft?

googled longest rope:

"What is the longest climbing rope you can buy?
Climbing Rope Length

Dynamic ropes for rock climbing range in length from 30m to 80m. A 60m rope is the standard and will meet your needs most of the time."

Video is not working.

No using helicopters to get close (immense risk due to rotor contact) to then throw parachutes to the people would not work.

First off Parachute use is not intuitive. It must be trained. And even a super skilled skydive is not allowed to Base Jump off a building without hundreds of jumps as the swirling winds off the building require a specialized trained for expertise..


But more so you must consider the Opportunity cost of the man and equipment power you are suggesting to save those people one by one.

Instead of expending most of that effort in a futile way take those same people and other equipment and instead rescue more people compromised on the lower more accessible floors. With that same time and effort spent trying and failing to rescue one person from above the impact zone, probably 12 below the impact zone could have been gotten out.

it was tragic to see that image of them choosing to plummet to their death as the heat of the fire was literally cooking them into delusions before they jumped but there really was nothing that could be done for those upper people.

They are skydiving into cardboard and nets nowadays, so yes its possible.

Sorry Im using videos, just for the visual, or proof. I dont know how to embed pic (actually I do but this works too)

This is a normal rock climbing rope and you can buy it in lengths typically from 100-300ft.



I keep 2 lengths of that at 200ft each.

To realistically repel down the WTC top floors (~1400ft) would require approx 7 resets or 8 uses of the rope.

I would estimate even in a rush state, each set up and then repel would take me about 15 minutes each segment or a total of 8 times 15 minutes for 2 hours. Perhaps the firefighters extend a ladder seeing the descent and grab me at their top height saving some time.

And that is kind of a best case scenario where I get reasonably quick areas at the top i can find to secure the rope to. If those are not readily available and i had to break windows around a frame point each time to get that, it would take much longer.

So even in what I see as a best case scenario with my own ropes, it would be near impossible to reach the ground before it collapsed anyway. Two 4 hundred foot lengths of rope might have made the difference though.

Its not working? I just double checked, for me it is. Thanks for giving me feedback on that, idk why it isnt working for you. For anyone else too?

The parachutes was just an idea, imo they would come down somehow probably severely bruised but with at least a chance.

I just dont get how nobody was doing anything. Probably easier said than done. But you would think if they see people jumping they would get a net of some sort.