Explain the WTC collapse in view of the firefighter's tape, please

MS. SALLY REGENHARD: One of the most tragic and abominable failures of 9/11 was the total breakdown of emergency communication and coordination in the World Trade Center. Lacking any real plan for terrorism and lacking a unified command structure, the Port Authority, NYPD and the FDNY operated basically separately on 9/11. For the most part they did not and could not communicate with one another.

The FDNY generally could not even communicate among their fellow firefighters. Numerous newspaper articles, interviews and 9/11 tapes have evidenced this fact. The fact that my son and his FDNY brothers were sent into the World Trade Center with radios that did not work in 1993 and were no more capable of working in 2001 resulted in evacuation orders which were unheard and therefore unheeded, a fact that surely contributed to their deaths.

...

The sad truth is that whoever could get out, did get out. And while the FDNY valiantly entered these buildings to save lives, it was an impossible and deadly situation. They were essentially sent in to an inevitable death, with radios which did not work. To this day, no one has been held accountable or responsible for these massive failures of the public trust.

http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing5/9-11Commission_Hearing_2003-11-19.htm

MR. JAMES R. THOMPSON: Can either of you two gentlemen clear up at least the confusion in my mind about the repeater system for the fire department radios? The staff statement indicates that the repeater system was ordinarily not on and it had to be activated during the course of an emergency. Is there any reason why repeater systems can't remain on constantly, or is that not appropriate.

MR. REISS: I guess I'll take that Commissioner. Our repeater system operated on the same channel, the VHF citywide channel that the fire boats and other commanding officers were on. So to prevent interference from multiple transmitters talking at the same time and all you hear is squeals and buzzes on the radio, it was normally left off. When I had it installed in 1993, originally the on and off command point was at the World Trade Center police desk. So the battalion chief or whomever would show up and say, I'm the Port Authority Police. Activate the repeater. And it would be turned on by the desk officer.

In late 2000, the fire department asked that that control function be changed and be moved to the actual fire command desks in the lobbies of the buildings, the actual individual fire command stations. So we did that. They also asked that we install a UHF digital radio repeater at that time, and the Port Authority funded that and installed that. So that day, the control was at the actual fire command desk in both One and Two World Trade Center and it was for the fire department to turn on. Now, from talking to your staff, it appears that Chief Pfeifer told the deputy fire safety director to turn it on. I have no personal knowledge of who turned it on, because I was in the lobby of 5 World Trade Center at the police desk. But the basic fact is when you listen to the Dictaphone tape recorder, the repeater was working. There was one antenna, as your graphic showed, on the roof of 5 World Trade Center, sort of a "V" that pointed at the two towers, to pick up the signals on one frequency, put them into a transmitter and re-broadcast them on a separate, different frequency. That's the essence of the repeater.

So the repeater was used so anybody in the building-- and we had what was called a leaky cable. Think of a hose with lots of little holes punctured in it. We ran that all around the sub-grade, so if a fireman was in the basement, he could talk through the repeater to the truck company or the engine company at street level. I listened to the tape a number of times, and you can hear the firemen talking back and forth in the lobby of One. But they don't recognize that it's working because they say, I don't have the hardwire.

So something was wrong with the desk console. Either the volume control was turned down, there was a technical problem with it, the right button wasn't pushed, I don't know. I wasn't there. But walkie-talkie to walkie-talkie communication was present and that was recognized by the chief, when he went over to Two World Trade Center and he's talking from the 78th floor to firemen trapped in an elevator, and back down to the lobby.

So there's another critical lesson learned, you had asked earlier about lessons learned. I recognized very quickly in 1993 that we had to make sure that the fire department had adequate communications in the complex, so we put this system in. It needs to be installed in all the high-rise buildings in the city. As Chief Pfeifer said, without information you don't know what you're doing. You really need to have information at the command post. We had no information at the police desk. The people at home watching on the TV knew more than we did.

http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing11/9-11Commission_Hearing_2004-05-18.htm

MR. BEN-VENISTE: There is no question but that on that day, thousands of lives were saved by the heroic actions of the first responders in evacuating the towers and the surrounding areas. Among the most significant of the problems we have seen were ones that reflect barriers between the effective communications between and among the first responders because of equipment that had not been standardized. The country had seen a previous analogy to this in connection with its armed forces which into the '80s did not have standardized communications equipment, ammunition, other things, that made communication between the army, the navy, the air force and the marines, an option during times of emergency.

These were barriers which had grown up in these services which were proud, individual and important sectors of our armed forces. It took strong leadership to butt heads together and to require standardization, to require that we be able to communicate between and among the services. So my first question to you is given the fact that you were no shrinking violet, and given the fact that the differences in the equipment that were used, in the radios and other communication technology over the years, made it obvious that there could not be easy inter-agency communication, what barrier was there that prevented you from ordering standardization?

MR. GIULIANI: No barrier, the technology, and that's reason why there isn't standardization today, and the difference in mission between the fire department and the police department. If I can explain it, the way in which the fire department and the police department communicate is different because generally they have different missions. The fire department communicates, opts for a radio that allows for much less range of communication, but much more accurate communication in a small area, where more people can be on the line, because when they're managing an emergency they need to have as many people on the line as possible, because they're deploying a number of different companies, they're putting them in different places and having people communicate with each other.

The police department communicates by, essentially simplifying it, basically police officer to headquarter, or police officer to dispatcher, because you're largely dealing with a one-on-one mission rather than a major emergency mission. So the general way in which a police department communicates is different than the general way in which a fire department communicates. And when they're in the same emergency, they really have to get on the same frequency in order to be able to communicate with each other.

We had purchased for the fire department radios, I believe the radios came in, in early 2001, I think it was early 2001, I don't remember the exact date, but the radios had come in well before September 11, 2001. We had purchased for them new radios, they had attempted to use them and found them too complicated to use and had withdrawn them and were training people in how to use the new radios. That has proven to be so complex and so difficult that until a few weeks ago they haven't been able to do it. So there are significant difference in the way in which the two of them communicate.

And the best answer is to create an interoperable system so that the police radio can be switched over and be used the same way, again simplifying it somewhat. Generally, a police radio and a fire radio should operate differently because 90 percent of the time, 95 percent of the time, they're doing different things. Police officers are chasing criminals, fire fighters are dealing in mass emergencies. But they should have radios that are interoperable, so that in an emergency, both of them could be switched onto the same channel.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: But in the interim--

MR. GIULIANI: Those radios do not exist today.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: In the interim, would you not suggest that there has to be in place some kind of a system where communications can be synthesized, that even if the radios are not interoperable, that there has to be a level of communication which was not in place on 9/11?

MR. GIULIANI: Well, it was in place, there are, there were--

MR. BEN-VENISTE: But it didn't operate effectively on 9/11?

MR. GIULIANI: It may not have operated but they all had a radio system that would have allowed them to communicate with each other, but they decided that they couldn't use it, that it wasn't operable, that they weren't able to get through. And part of the problem that you'll face, even when you create an interoperable system is that if too many people are trying to communicate at the same time in any channel, they will begin to interfere with each other.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: But at the very top there's got to be some coordination, that's my only point, yeah.

MR. GIULIANI: Yes, absolutely.

http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing11/9-11Commission_Hearing_2004-05-19.htm

The duration and the maximum temperature of a fire in a building compartment depends on several factors, including the amount and configuration of available combustibles, ventilation conditions, properties of the compartment enclosure, weather conditions, etc. In common circumstances, the maximum temperature of a fully developed building fire will rarely exceed 1800°F. The average gas temperature in a fully developed fire is not likely to reach 1500°F. Temperatures of fires that have not developed to post-flashover stage will not exceed 1000°F.

Source

There is fairly broad agreement in the fire science community that flashover is reached when the average upper gas temperature in the room exceeds about 600°C. Prior to that point, no generalizations should be made: There will be zones of 900°C flame temperatures, but wide spatial variations will be seen. Of interest, however, is the peak fire temperature normally associated with room fires. The peak value is governed by ventilation and fuel supply characteristics <14> and so such values will form a wide frequency distribution. Of interest is the maximum value which is fairly regularly found. This value turns out to be around 1200°C, although a typical post-flashover room fire will more commonly be 900~1000°C. The time-temperature curve for the standard fire endurance test, ASTM E 119 <15> goes up to 1260°C, but this is reached only in 8 hr. In actual fact, no jurisdiction demands fire endurance periods for over 4 hr, at which point the curve only reaches 1093°C.

The peak expected temperatures in room fires, then, are slightly greater than those found in free-burning fire plumes. This is to be expected. The amount that the fire plume's temperature drops below the adiabatic flame temperature is determined by the heat losses from the flame. When a flame is far away from any walls and does not heat up the enclosure, it radiates to surroundings which are essentially at 20°C. If the flame is big enough (or the room small enough) for the room walls to heat up substantially, then the flame exchanges radiation with a body that is several hundred °C; the consequence is smaller heat losses, and, therefore, a higher flame temperature.

Source

It is common to find that investigators assume that an object next to a flame of a certain temperature will also be of that same temperature. This is, of course, untrue. If a flame is exchanging heat with a object which was initially at room temperature, it will take a finite amount of time for that object to rise to a temperature which is 'close' to that of the flame. Exactly how long it will take for it to rise to a certain value is the subject for the study of heat transfer. Heat transfer is usually presented to engineering students over several semesters of university classes, so it should be clear that simple rules-of-thumb would not be expected. Here, we will merely point out that the rate at which target objects heat up is largely governed by their thermal conductivity, density, and size. Small, low-density, low-conductivity objects will heat up much faster than massive, heavy-weight ones.

Source

This handbook describes a full-scale fire test conducted on a 36m × 12m four-storey steel-framed school building on the premise of Perwaja Steel Sdn. Bhd., Gurun, Kedah in May 8, 2001. No fire protection was applied on the structural steel. The primary objective of the fire test was to study the behaviour of structural steel in real fire.

During the fire, even though the room temperature in the fire compartment measuring 15m × 9m reached more than 900°C, the steel temperature barely reached 700°C. Despite the elevated room temperature, the steel structure maintained its stability and integrity due to restraining effect of unheated steel members.

The test demonstrated the inherent fire resistance of unprotected hot-rolled steel framed building to justify the use of unprotected steel. Many fire engineers have agreed to include performance based concept in the construction industry as it has significant effect in reducing cost.

http://www.penerbit.utm.my/cgi-bin/katalog/buku.cgi?id=349