The anniversary of 9/11 was used for many, many different reasons on Monday. Most of them were geared towards making money, using it as a political step stool, or sensationalizing and dramatizing the event. Very little of the hooplah was actually geared towards the memory of this event and how to avoid it happening again. I could sit here and rant and rave about how sick it makes me to see people using it to further their own agendas, but I won’t. When it comes down to it, that’s who we’ve become in this country, and that’s one of the ways we have evolved. It’s capitalism at its ugliest, and finest, and it doesn’t play favorites.
So instead I’ll offer today a few insights that most may not have heard, as my colorful past has taken me through two careers that have a special bearing on the events. I grew up in construction, and I was in the military. Between military training and reading books that you can find on the open market today, I got a different read on events as they happened, and in study afterward.
I watched both towers burn on TV. I saw the first fall. One of the “traps” that you have to be aware of as a responder to a terrorist attack is the double whammy. That’s my term. Essentially, you have one attack at the site of the incident, and then secondary attacks around the outside area of the incident after the police, firefighters, and the lookie loo crowd gather to watch. The second attack nets as much damage, or more, than the first. This isn’t a secret, people. There’s a couple hundred novels out there describing it. I’d be more worried if the terrorists spent time in our libraries. Some of the authors in this country have a much more vivid and calculating imagination than your simple terrorist. So when the tower fell, my first thought was that someone had rigged a secondary. While it turned out to be incorrect, it might as well have been. The majority of the casualties to the Fire Response and Police response were taken when that first tower fell. At least they were aware that it might happen on the second.
Now for the construction background info. If you’re an engineer, this may not be 100% accurate. Fine, leave a comment and correct me. This is for the non engineers. The tower went down when the floor that the main fire damage was on collapsed. They’ve got tapes of Osama and lieutenants discussing what happened. They figured on maybe taking the floors above the plane entry level. They’ve got engineers, too. When that floor went, you’d might think that it wouldn’t be a problem. It’s the same weight above that it was supporting before, right? No. When the columns collapsed, the floors pancaked together. The impact loaded the floor in a manner in which it wasn’t ever intended to support. That created the chain reaction of pancaking floors all the way to the bottom.
Do you remember the video of all the papers flying around in the air like confetti after the towers collapsed? When two flat slabs pancake, it compresses the air, then blows it outward. All of the airspace in the offices on each floor were suddenly compressed to nothing. The sudden pressure caused the windows to shatter and blow glass shards outward for yards and yards. The same pressure forced every loose paper to fly outward, too. Imagine all the movies you’ve seen where an airplane gets a hole in it, and all the loose stuff in the plane starts getting sucked out of the hole. Now imagine that same scene, only the air is inside, pushing, rather than sucking stuff out. Everything loose is forced out in the span of a second. Anyone standing at a window at that time would have been blown out with the force of a bomb.
So anyway, that’s two looks at the event that you may never have had before. Will it do you any good in the long run? Probably not. But its something to think about. And if something like this ever happens again, maybe you’ll remember this little note, and not be one of the Lookie Loos that gets taken down by the secondary. At the least, I hope that you won’t join the circus next year.
Michael
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