9/11 Building Construction

Many people believe jet fuel can melt steel and others, like myself don’t. The documentary focuses on numerous buildings on fire for more than 17 hours and they still stayed standing, the structure didn’t even weaken. No fire, however severe, has ever caused a steel-framed high-rise building to collapse. The World Trade Centre was what engineers call a “tube” structure, it was made of a very strong mesh of steel. The construction manager of the World Trade Center said he designed the towers to “stand even if a fully loaded 707 crashed into it” which was the largest plane at the time. Before the 9/11 attack, fires had previously occurred in one of the towers, for 3 hours but there wasn’t any structural

In this article, one of the main issues is that the tower’s structural engineer, Lee Robertson, addressed the problem of terrorism in the plans for the building, claiming he “designed it for a (Boeing) 707 to hit it”. In the center of the tower there is a central support core. This core is built of sheer concrete reinforced by 44 beams of construction grade steel, which were sealed in asbestos. When the plane hit the north tower it took a direct hit to the core, but the plane that hit the south tower went in on an angle, almost parallel to the core structure. The fuel barley grazes the core of the south tower, with most

The deconstruction of the Twin Towers became one of the most compelling aspects of the falling of the buildings and ultimately the death toll on 9/11. The resources available now have demonstrated how, the building systems impacted the falling of the Twin Towers. In addition, it also shows how deconstruction also had a direct impact on the death toll. For the most part, the building systems were not properly tested. If they had been properly tested, it could have decreased the overall death toll on 9/11.

When a building is on fire, those inside expect that the structure will hold up long enough for a safe escape. In the twin towers, this did not hold true. On September 11, 2001, the World Trade Center, once a beacon for commerce and business was attacked by two hijacked planes. The explosion caused the jet fuel to ignite, sending fire through the buildings. Ineffective fireproofing led to a catastrophic amount of deaths and victims. In Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn’s 102 Minutes: The Unforgettable Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers, stories and statistics from first hand accounts help to prove that this is true. The greatest contributing factor to the loss of live on 9/11 was the ineffective fireproofing in the World Trade Center.

Within the United States there are five different types of construction. Firefighters need to know and understand each of them. Every construction type have fire resistant weaknesses, these weaknesses will result in fire spreading in the building. If firefighters understand how the fire will spread, then understand how to extinguish the fire faster and more importantly firefighters are better protected from injuries or worse. In America all buildings are associated with one of the types of construction, identified by Roman number. The building codes are, fire resistant (type I), combustible (type II), ordinary construction (type III), heavy-timber construction (type IV) and wood-frame construction (type V). It is important to remember that all buildings are not the same. Each different building construction type will burn much differently than the others do. In order to be able to size-up a building 's fire hazard, firefighters need to be able to understand a buildings contents and construction. Materials that are stored inside of the building and also materials used to construct the building will both fuel the fire. Also know that if a structure is vacant or if the contents in the building are not combustible, the main fire hazard is the building. The scale of the construction types are scaled according to the fire load of combustible material that was used for its construction. A fire resistant building is constructed with least amount of combustible materials, and a

The explanation that the towers were brought down primarily by the fires is a bit hard to believe. Merely due to the fact that a steel building has never collapsed as a result of a fire. MIT engineering professors, Thomas Eagar and Christopher Musso, argue that the Twin Towers were brought down by the fires that had ignited throughout the floors. The fires are said to have burned at uneven temperatures that were hot enough to distort the steel and cause it to lose its structural integrity. Due to the distortion of the steel, the joints on the severely burned floors gave way, causing the perimeter columns to bow outward and the floors above them to fall (Eager and Musso 5). This in turn

9/11 Building Design For years, the question of how the design of the World Trade Center affected the amount of casualties on 9/11 has been debated and analyzed by experts. Many argue that the implementation of more strict and cautionary building plans could have gone a long way in saving lives, while others hold the opinion that the high number of casualties was simply an inevitable consequence of such a large-scale terrorist attack. Although it was highly unlikely that any sort of realistic building design at the time could have prevented any deaths altogether, there are definitely many precautions, some even mandatory, that could have had an effect on the matter. These include the addition of extra stairwells, improved fireproofing, and

10 main characteristics have fuelled the fire of the controlled demolition conspiracy theory which have been used as the back bone of many arguments surrounding the debate of how the Twin Towers along with WTC-7 actually came to collapse on September 11TH. Some of these keys facts about the controlled demolition are that no modern steel-framed high-rise building has ever collapsed due to fire. Another fact that people argue is that the collapse of all three buildings occurred in a symmetrical, straight down fashion. With all three buildings collapsing in the same manner as each but only the Twin Towers having been hit by the planes. Dust and debris may have been hurled outwards and significant damage was done to other buildings around the site of the collapse, the Towers appeared to have essentially fall in on

The World Trade Center stood to be built as a reflection of peace with a fierce ambition and disciplined achievement on a massive scale. The statement of these buildings was to construct an uplifting stamina of downtown Manhattan. Its purpose created both a negative and positive aspect in its construction to help those in need of it, but it also caused some damage in its creation. Its massive scale as buildings allowed the people of New York City to see it as a symbol of expansion in that particular area of Downtown Manhattan from it reign being the peace towers to the construction of the Freedom tower. The reasons as to why the Twin Towers was an expansion for downtown Manhattan it allowed the extended invitation for international trade and

So many changes had come about when the World Trade Center collapsed. Engineers and design teams all across the country came together and wanted to make changes to buildings they build today to reduce to number of fatalities and to have more means of egress in case of an emergency. Not even years after the terriorist attacks, they came up with some changes that would help out the situation and came up with some new safety regulations. Some of them include additional stairways in buildings. More stairways in buildings is great when buildings exceed more than 1,000 plus people inside a building at one time. Having just one or two stairwells and having 1,000 plus people exiting will sometimes cause a hold up in getting out. Having more inside

This interim report details the work so far completed, for the 3rd year project entitled ‘World Trade Center collapse – Investigation into the collapse sequence’. The said project is almost at its midpoint, and therefore allows for a balanced analysis of the Project, and how successful it has proved so far. This report succeeds the ‘Project Proposal’, which may be referred to at points in this up to date report. Some sections found in the ‘Project Proposal’ have been reviewed in this document, in conjunction to this, new sections have been introduced such as results to date. It is hoped that in that this report will give a clear and concise illustration to the reader as to how this project has gone so far, and the direction the

The World Trade Center was a global icon of The United States of America. The tallest of the buildings was over 1,300 feet high (10). With such large buildings, the materials used in construction needed to meet certain standards just to successfully stand erect. The design intent has the biggest factor for the material selection. In the World Trade Centers, the materials were supposed to meet certain properties and requirements. The analysis of whether or not the World Trade Center buildings were built to requirements will be discussed.

The next risk that emergency responders will encounter when responding to the scene of a terrorist attack is the risk of structural instability. Structural instability can occur in buildings after a bombing or fire and something more significant, such as when the planes were used in the World Trade Center attacks. When a building’s structure and integrity have been compromised, first responders may not realize the extent of the damage while rescuing the injured, consequently leading to the building collapsing on emergency personnel after they enter. After the attacks on the World Trade Center, the collapse of the towers ended with over 400 emergency responders being killed (Thompson, et al., 2014). Structural instability does not just

Skyscrapers in New York started in the early 30’s and they are  fascinating to observed. This is not due to the fact of how enormous they are, it is nonetheless due to the structure and support that they need to have. Every 10 years after the buildings started to become skyscrapers, there was always a new building labeled as the “Tallest building in NYC”. An example of this is the Pan Am building; it construction started in 1960 and took three years to be completed. When the Pan Am building was completed in the year 1963, it became the tallest commercial building in New York City. Not only for the reason of the volume and massing of the structure, this also due to the spacing. Skyscrapers during this time were in a sort of battle; the fight to be tallest building would represent power and economy.

WTC 7 was never hit by a plane; however, it imploded on itself at free fall speeds, meaning there was zero resistance. WTC 7, a reinforced steel building, burned for roughly four hours before collapsing. Through research, I learned that structural steel requires a temperature of 2,750 degrees Fahrenheit (F) to melt steel, whereas office fires burn at a temperatures of only 1,100 degrees F. I was