TURN YOUR TV ON NOW!!

[Huge]

No, it's severly damaged as of right now. It's the brown one with the glass domes on top. Sort of blocky-shaped. I'll see if I can find a pic...

 

[Huge]

here it is

 

[trinity1]

And Huge, I was working nights in the American Express tower to the left of your building for close to a year.
I wonder what has happened to the WinterGarden Atrium during all this catastophe? I had spent many an hour in that beautiful place ( which is especially breathtaking around the Christmas holidays.)

A photo for those who never been there...

 

[trinity1]

And what did you see as you walk up to the front of the WinterGarden, and looked up through the glass roof....

 

[Professur]

Not to be crass, but Huge, your view of the skyline just improved.

And again, not to be crass, but this is the US's chance to regain the title to the tallest building again. Or do you think that the site of the WTC will become a memorial park?

 

[unclehobart]

The real estate is worth too much to just slap a memorial on it. Its the very heart of the financial district. There were 50,000 employed there. If Disney can build a theme park at Gettysburg, then monuments have become a passing joke in this nation. If you need a memorial, I say rebuild those puppies and make the observation deck area a memorial with all of the trimmings and flourish.

 

[Noite Escura]

Just came to my mind now, how can so much buildings be affected by plane crashings? It's like a domino's falling. It sure demonstrate they were not prepared at all for this type of disaster. I can bet if this has happened in the western coast(were earthquakes use to happen) the damage would not be so great. Off course the towers were way higher than normal thus his collapse has strongly affected another buildings, but hey they use to consider this probabilities.
They have to realize a plane crash it's not impossible, and if this buildings are going to be reconstructed, they'll be for sure lower or stronger or builded with more distance between.

 

[Gonzo]

Noite Escura
The WTC bldgs are built to withstand 100+MPH winds from a hurricane & earthquakes. The problem is that jet fuel burns extremely hot & it melted the steel which in turn allowed EACH 6million pound floor to crash in upon each other-thus the lack of spread around mess. Look at the photo's-it's an awfully clean building collapse. Straight Down.

The one intersting fact-there were NO fire sprinklers in that building, Would it have helped, unlikely bbut maybe.

 

[sin2]

WTC is suppose to stand 200mph winds. Also the impact of the airplanes was equivalent to 1k ton bomb. Still looking at the initial impact, the buildings survived. It did it's job. If it was a missile it would've stood there. The problem is the jet fuel which burns intensly hot than regular gasoline.

Structural steel is rated to last about an hour in instense heat. The straight downward collapse similar to implosion was part of the design. The engineers figured it's better to come straight down than have a 110 story building falling sideway.

The design was excellent. Then again all skyscrapers were designed near perfection. Most damage in quakes are to smaller buildings that had poor structural designs. The larger building had so much safety factors calculated. Except burning jet fuel. Now who would've though of that?

 

[Gonzo]

Originally posted by sin2

Except burning jet fuel. Now who would've though of that?

Usama Bin-Laden

 

[Q]

The WTC was also built to withstand the impact of a 707, which at the time of it's construction was the largest commercial aircraft available. It was also designed to withstand an earthquake with a rating of 7 or 8 on the Richter scale. The impact of the planes (much larger than a 707) did not compromise the structural integrity of the buildings. Like it was stated in previous posts the jet fuel was what ultimately caused the destruction...this would be something no engineer could forsee when designing any structure ( possibly an airport, but I kinda even doubt that). And although sprinklers might have prevented some of the injuries due to smoke inhalation, I seriously doubt they could have prevented the eventual collapse. The added weight of the water could have even hastened the collapse.

 

[Professur]

As for sprinklers, someone else can work out the specifics, but imagine the weight of a column of water 1000 ft high. Imagine the size of the pipes you'd need to contain that much pressure. Imagine the power of the pumps you'd need to push that weight of water up that high at a rate sufficient to operate sprinklers.

Highrises use a system of tanks and pumps every few floors in order to keep the weight and pump strength reasonable. But that limits the volume of water to the upper floors to what can be provided by the lower floor's tanks, and it's refill rate. Many high rise buildings get arround this by maintaining a massive reservoir tank on the uppermost floors. But this gets harder and harder to support as the building gets taller. Beyond 30 stories or so, it's too heavy for the building to support.

Therefore, they install firefighting stations on each floor, tied to that floor's tanks. Thatway the limited volume of water can be directed where it's most useful.

 

[unclehobart]

There is a way to make the steel invunerable to jet fuel. Its just that it made it too costly at the time. Remember that anything you own, drive on, go into was made by the lowest bidder... unless you happen to have some Cartier or Rolex gear laying about.

Hindsight makes that cost seem fairly cheap by comparison.

 

[Noite Escura]

Hey you guys seem to know a lot about buildings. Anyway they have to be lower(shorter?) or more spaced. So much destruction can't happen again. I hope the insurance of the building include a clause for crashing planes.
BTW did you noticed that even Hardware Central has allowed off-topic in this case? Last time I checked Eric Grevstad himself has opened the topic in the General forum.

 

[fury]

I was watching the TV earlier today - they're asking for 11,000 body bags

 

[Q]

The reason for 11,000 body bags is because each and every body part they find requires it's own seperate bag. They will not find even close to 11,000 bodies even if that is how hany were killed. If 256 floors of concrete and steel were reduced to a relatively small pile of rubble the bodies of the victims were reduced to ash as well

 

[Huge]

Trinity, thanks for posting the pics. I just saw the lobby on tv a few minutes ago; a lot of debris fell through the glass structure but it looked pretty much intact. My bro-in-law's biggest client is AMEX and he is always going to 3WFC for meetings. I just got a call from my temp agency saying that Merrill Lynch is trying to set up a make shift office in midtown to resume work. Hopefully, I won't be out of work for long.

The bridges linking Manhattan Island with the outside world began blowing at precisely twelve minutes after three in the predawn darkness of Saturday, August 30.

The first to go was the Manhattan Bridge between lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. Carefully placed charges dropped wreckage inot the East River. Within seconds another explosion wrecked the center span of the Brooklyn Bridge, then the Williamsburg Bridge shuddered under a third impact and splashed down into the outgoing tide. Part of the span crashed onto a small shack near one edge of the handball court in East River Park. Sleeping in it was a forty-eight-year-old vagrant who had wandered eastward from his usual haunts on the Bowery. His name was Harry Dunn, and as the twisted girders of the Williamsburg Bridge crushed the life from his body, he became the first Manhattan casualty of the Three-Day Revolution.

By three-thirty, every bridge linking the island with the mainland and the other boroughs had been blasted. But the George Washington still spanned the Hudson. Charges failed to sever its suspension cables. An air strike had also failed. The mighty bridge swayed and leaned in the brisk breeze that funneled down the edge of the Palisades – but it still stood.

The demolition experts of the rebel army were busy men that August night. In addition to bridges, there were tunnels to take care of, seven in lower Manhattan alone: the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, which carried automobile traffic from the island to Brooklyn; five others that linked Manhattan's subway system with Brooklyn; plus the Tubes under the Hudson River to Jersey City. The Holland Tunnel was left open, mined and defended with heavy machine gun emplacements.

Farther uptown, the Lincoln Tunnel was open, but the Queens-Midtown Tunnel was blasted through its roof. The East River flooded in. No one will ever know how many died in the first thirty minutes of the revolution. Most of the guards and maintenance men in the tunnels were either shot or crushed in the explosions. Those who survived drowned when the water rushed in. Not all the casualties were noncombatants. Rebel demolitions men lost their lives too: some by accident when they misjudged the blasts' effects, some shot down by alert police.

But despite confusion and miscalculation and missed signals, at twenty minutes to four in the darkness of the morning of August 30th, the island of Manhattan was cut off from the outside world and dominated by rebel forces. They held nearly a million hostages, many of them still soundly asleep in their beds and consequently unaware of the events exploding outside their apartment doors. They would wake up in the morning to discover, when they turned on their radios or TV sets, that they were unwilling pawns in what was then being announced as the Afro-American War of Liberation.

Prologue
"Siege"
Edwin Corley
Copyright 1969
Stein and Day

My father wrote this over thirty years ago and if he were alive today, I don't think even he could imagine what has taken place here in Manhattan.

 

[trinity1]

Talk about irony, Huge!
Was there actually a book published by your Father or was that excerpt part of some notes from a project he was working on?
In any event - very interesting reading, and eerily prophetic.

As I type this, I am in awe of the fact that more and more Fireman are being rescued and 2 guys that were able to walk and have been examined at St. Vincents are insisting that they go back to pitch in rescuing others! Talk about the Human determination and Spirit.

 

[Huge]

Sorry for the delay in posting (the phones have been knocked out here since late Thurs), yes this was my father's first book (he was vp of some ad agency and hated it and switched to writing full time). Some of his books have made into movies, such as Hijacked which was renamed Skyjacked with Charleton Heston and a couple of low budget films, and a few lately of which haven't been credited to him (for which his publicist says copyrighting an idea is next to impossible) for "Volcano" and "Air Force One" from my father's "The Genesis Rock" and Air Force One", respectively.

 

[Huge]

*bump*

(or lest we forget?)

....