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Re: WTC structural site



At 22:53 9/16/01 -0400, Hugh Haskell wrote:

/snip/ stranding people
in upper stories of skyscapers, with no escape route until a fire
is extinguished is unacceptable.

We have been running away from this problem for years. Maybe now we
will have the backbone to address it.

As I mentioned before, it doesn't seem that adequate planning was
made for the exit stairs to handle the load put on them. They filled
with smoke and dust, and the people trying to get out and the
firefighters tryuing to get up clearly interfered with each other.
That is unacceptable, and can have no effect other than slowing the
evacuation down even more than was planned for.

And giving the building only a two-hour lifetime after a severe fire
is simply condemning the firefighters to death.
/snip/
I have to admit, I am at a total loss to imagine a practical way to
get people out of the upper stories of a burning skyscraper
/snip/
Hugh Haskell


I mentioned the Titanic disaster, which led to reasonable
standards of lifeboat/liferaft/lifebuoy provision, among other
improvements.

It takes no innovation whatsoever, to provide lifeboats or
capsules at several stations up a high skyscraper.

A capsule with seats for say 50 or 100, suspended by several
constant velocity rapelling lines, can be made perfectly reliable
with no external power.


brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net> Altus OK
Eureka!