Report Said to Find 9/11 Evacuation Slow

Report Said to Find 9/11 Evacuation Slow

Tuesday April 5, 2005 2:16 PM
Guardian

By DEVLIN BARRETT

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Investigators have concluded that new thinking is needed on how to evacuate people from endangered skyscrapers and how to get rescuers into them more quickly, according to two individuals familiar with a federal report on the collapse of the World Trade Center towers.

Engineers were to issue three reports Tuesday in New York analyzing the Sept. 11, 2001, twin tower collapses and the response by rescue workers and building occupants.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology also will detail how early decisions played a key role in determining who lived and who died. The attacks killed some 2,749 at the towers, including those who died on the two jetliners that hijackers crashed into the buildings.

The findings represent NIST's last step before issuing its final recommendations in June, the culmination of exhaustive research and testing that produced 10,000 pages of data.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4914878,00.html

who actually pulled it off.

didn't help either.

On 9/11 Bush froze -- like a deer in the headlights -- when the country most needed a real commander in chief.

Bush, once again, was AWOL.

I understand that the book s protagonist is an annoying goat who ruins the farm--destoys property, eats everything, causes the family general hardship. The he saves the family (from what, I'm not sure...) and becomes their beloved mascot. Who the F does that remind you of?

Can anybody confirm or elaborate on the story line?

The Pet Goat

A McGraw-Hill publication

Reviewed by: Gene Weingarten

In this uplifting allegory of prejudice redeemed, a girl gets a pet goat. The girl is never given a name -- she remains always "a girl," imparting a universality to her plight, and a timelessness to the tale. She is anygirl, and her goat is anygoat, and what befalls them could befall any of us who happen to live in an area where pet livestock is allowed, such as certain portions of Fauquier County.

The goat is an undisciplined pet, with a most extraordinary digestive system. To quote: "The goat ate things. He ate cans and he ate canes. He ate pans and he ate panes. He even ate capes and caps."

The author of this tale, which is contained on pages 155 and 156 of a reading workbook, is never identified. This is tragic because one cannot help but admire the author's skillful minimalism; as in the short stories of Ernest Hemingway or Eudora Welty, the reader is provided tantalizingly sparse detail and is invited to draw revealing conclusions. What are we to make of a household with "canes" and "capes"? Is this the home of a magician?

The magic, we soon see, is in the hands of the storyteller.

It turns out this household also contains a "dad" who is "mad." The dad orders the girl to get rid of the remarkable pane-eating goat, but she pleads with him to let her try to cure the animal of its dietary excesses. And she does. With this restoration of order, one might expect the story to end, but here is where the author's narrative mastery comes in. Here may well be where the president elected to set a spell, spellbound.

A robber arrives to steal the dad's red car! But the goat butts the robber and saves the day. The delighted dad is no longer mad. Now he is glad. He declares that the goat may henceforth eat whatever he wishes. And so: "The girl smiled. Her goat smiled. Her dad smiled. But the car robber did not smile. He said, 'I am sore.' The End."

so that's where he gets it from. :-)

.

mentioned by Gore Vidal: "By coincidence, our word 'tragedy' comes from the Greek: for 'goat' tragos, plus oide for 'song.' Goat-song. It is highly suitable that this lament, sung in ancient satyr plays, should have been heard again at the exact moment when we were struck by fire from heaven, and a tragedy whose end is nowhere in sight began for us." From Dreaming War, c.2002

I can't even begin to imagine the chaos and confusion that morning. I think it's easy to look at any emergency situation after the fact and say that the area could have been evacuated faster, but this kind of analysis doesn't take in to account the human factor. No one automatically thought the first plane was terrorism, people were scared, panicked, and confused and first responders from all over the city were rushing to the WTC.

NYC was a city full of heroes that day. I fault them for nothing.