Towers Of Terror
Written: Sep 12 '01 (Updated Sep 12 '01)
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Pros: The Big Apple is a kaleidoscope of cultures, landmarks and neighborhoods.
Cons: Because of the terrorist attack this area will never be the same.
The Bottom Line: I would definately go to NY and help out in anyway if I could. My heart felt sympathy to families and victims of this tragedy.
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| thunderkat's Full Review: New York |
The Big Apple
New York remains a tourist attraction city of legendary proportions. A city made famous in books, music, poetry, and movies, it is a city of boroughs, bridges, steel canyons and concrete buildings, where dynasties have been created. The Big Apple is a kaleidoscope of cultures, landmarks and neighborhoods. It is super dense with super stores and breathtaking views from the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center. New Yorkers stride down fashionable avenues and dart through traffic, making their way to places such as Chinatown and Little Italy. It's all part of the great city's charm.
Empire State Building
According to a study done by the National Park Service, the Empire State Building is one of the top ten destinations for U.S. travelers, receiving in excess of 4.3 million visitors. The building itself contains more than 60 miles of water pipe and 60,000 tons of steel -- that's enough to build double railroad tracks from NYC to Baltimore. Amazingly, the Empire State Building was built with horse power rather than the cranes, mixing trucks, and other machines available today.
At 1,454 feet, it has the world's greatest TV tower, reaching 8 million TV sets in a four-state area. Despite its world-class stature today, the building had difficulty attracting tenants when it was first completed, and ridiculed as the "Empty State Building." The Empire State Building has 73 elevators that move through 7 miles of shafts.
The top of the building is left dark often on foggy or rainy nights in the spring and fall to protect 80 or so species of migratory birds that fly at lower altitudes in bad weather and might otherwise be attracted to the floodlights that illuminate the 72nd to 102nd floors and rush toward them like moths to a flame.
This famous office tower has more than 6,500 windows, which must be washed all the time. The top 30 floors are often strung in colored lights to celebrate holidays throughout the year: red, white and blue for the 4th of July; green and red for Christmas, and so forth.
The Empire State Building's observation tower is open daily from 9 am to midnight (last tickets are sold at 11:20 pm). Admission is $9, $7 for seniors and $4 for children under 12. To get there by subway, take the B, D, F, Q, N or R to 34th Street/Herald Square or the #6 to 33rd Street.
--The World Trade Center
--The World Trade Center welcomed its first tenant in December 1970. More than 430 companies from 28 countries lease space in the complex. They are engaged in a wide variety of commercial activities, including banking and finance, insurance, transportation, import, export, freight forwarding, customs brokerage, trade associations and representatives of foreign governments. An estimated 40,000 people work in the World Trade Center, and another 140,000 visit the complex daily.
April 26, 2001 Silverstein Properties, Inc., and Westfield America, Inc. have agreed to a net lease transaction for a term of 99 years, worth an estimated $3.2 billion on a present value basis. The net lease covers four buildings at the World Trade Center, including the Twin Towers and the retail Mall.
The original cost estimate of the World Trade Center is $350 million, the Port Authority was expected to spend some $200 million in wages to labor. The job would require up to eight thousand men working at the site during building. Material requirements for the project called for 200,000 tons of structural steel. Some 1.25 million man-hours of work would be needed to excavate 1.2 million cubic yards of earth and boulders, not to mention about 45,000 yards of bedrock prior to laying the foundations.
The World Trade Center, an engineering marvel, became a highly successful office and retail complex in downtown Manhattan, attracting tenants from around the world and becoming an international symbol of New York. It was the most valuable commercial property in the history of New York.
To buy tickets for the indoor observation deck on the 107th floor and the outdoor promenade on the 110th floor. Open daily from 9:30 am - 9:30 pm (extended to 11:30 pm from June to September). Admission is $13.00; $11 for students 13-17 or with valid ID; $9.50 for seniors; and $6.50 for children ages 6-12. Despite the great views, it will only be a memory in the minds of everyone in the world.
I was watching a movie at a buddies house when he came running in from the other room screaming. “What did you say!,” were the first words out of my mouth. My friend said he heard on the radio that Terrorists had just hit the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
We rushed to turn off the movie, switch to the TV and change the channel to CNN. BAMM! There it was on the screen. We all fell to our butts in disbelief. It took a couple of minutes to realize the impact that this will cause and what will needed to be done. Then the call came in telling me I was on telephone standby and to restrict movement on or off base. The crud just hit the fan; I needed to call my family to see if they knew what was going on.
I started calling my wife’s phone but it was busy so then I called my Parents number; Mom answered but was unaware of what has been happening, I instruct her to turn on the TV. I tell my Mom that I love her, and must try and get a hold of my wife in St Louis. (Which was unsuccessful until later that night)
The World Trade Center Towers Of Terror both collapse after an hour or so, it is unbelievable. The 110-story twin towers of the World Trade Center, which stood at a height of 1,353 feet, were designed to withstand earthquakes as well as impacts like that of a plane. The Towers withstood a tragic bombing in 1993 which was the target for terrorist. Many reports saying what more likely caused the buildings' collapse was the resulting fire, exacerbated by the huge quantities of jet fuel present.
When a fire ignites in a large building, its steel core does not melt, but over time it weakens. As the steel supporting the floors collapses, a "pancaking" effect will result, with each of the upper floors collapsing onto the floor below. This is why the disintegration of the towers was not limited to the top floors. With the accumulated weight of each collapsed floor, the stacked floors continued to fall. This explains why the building collapsed vertically, rather than tipping over.
Big buildings are designed to withstand a blaze between 2 to 3 hours--time enough to put out the fire and evacuate occupants. Both World Trade Center Towers collapsed in about an hour, probably because the jet fuel caused the fire to burn hotter and faster than any would have anticipated.
It would have been extremely difficult to evacuate the 50,000 workers + 140,000 visitors estimated possibly to have been inside the buildings. The tragedy would have been compounded because, while many of the buildings' occupants could not have been evacuated via the exits, they would have been moved to ostensibly "safer floors." As it turned out, there were no safer floors. Plus all the Rescuers in and around the building could have also become victims them selves.
Who Responds to Terrorist Attacks?
Terrorists have crashed hijacked commercial airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon today, Tuesday September 11th. How will the government respond to this terrorist attack?
The federal government divides its response to a catastrophic terrorist attack into crisis management and consequence management.
Crisis management means going after the bad guys--it's a law-enforcement response headed by the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. (Crisis management also involves anticipating and preventing acts of terrorism.)
Consequence management involves the humanitarian side of the response, including measures to protect public health and safety, restore essential government services, and provide emergency relief to governments, businesses, and individuals. The lead agency for consequence management is the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The first line of defense in any emergency is city governments (including fire and police), who turn to their state governments when they fear their resources have been exhausted. If state governments don't have the resources to respond, they ask the federal government for help. So, the primary responsibility for consequence management after a terrorist attack goes to state and local governments, with assistance from the feds.
On the crisis management side, the FBI director and the attorney general notify the president and the National Security Council of their actions as warranted and coordinate their response with the White House. The FBI also coordinates its activities with local law enforcement.
What's the role of the military during all of this?
The Department of Defense is considered a "support agency" that assists in counter terrorism measures. But the federal Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the military from acting as domestic police, so the military does not assist in crisis management. Instead, it may assist FEMA with consequence management.
A couple years ago, the Pentagon considered creating a "homeland defense" commander, who would serve as the commander in chief for the defense of the United States. Civil libertarians objected to the possibility of an increased role for the military on American soil, and the idea was batted down. Civil libertarians take note: Two years ago, a Pentagon official told the New York Times that a major terrorist attack would be "the most threatening event to civil liberties since Pearl Harbor," a reference to the subsequent internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans.
What Liabilities Do Insurance Companies Face From Terrorist Acts?
Are insurers on the hook for the collapse of the World Trade Center? In general, yes. Today's disaster is sure to require billions of dollars in payments from insurance companies to the businesses and individuals (and survivors of deceased individuals) who occupied the twin towers. These payments will come out of property insurance policies, life insurance policies, workmen's compensation policies, even automobile insurance policies--no doubt many a car in the vicinity was demolished. There might even be claims under liability insurance policies if it can be proved that any of the World Trade Center's tenants failed to engage in proper safety precautions that might have minimized the damage wrought by the terrorists. And, of course, there will be massive payments from reinsurers, which are in effect insurance companies for insurance companies, to the insurers themselves.
The World Trade Center disaster is being widely compared to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, an act of war. Acts of war are typically excluded from insurance policies. Generally, though, a mishap can only be categorized an act of war, for insurance purposes, if it involves a declared war between nations. That obviously isn't the case here. But there's another catch: During the last decade or so, some insurers have inserted into their policies exclusions for acts of terrorism. That the World Trade Center was the target of a well-publicized earlier attack in 1993 may mean that at least a few of the building's tenants had terrorism exclusions in their property insurance policies. And since today's disaster was clearly an act of terrorism, which will leave some would-be claimants high and dry.
How Good Were the Pilots Who Hit The World Trade Center ?
How good would a pilot have to be to hit the World Trade Center? Short of facts, what follows is inference and speculation; the conclusions offered here could all turn out to be wrong.
Still, on the basis of the evidence today, two conclusions seem very likely. One is that the original pilots on the United and American flights were removed from the controls, probably by being killed. The other is that the people who replaced them in the cockpit were skilled pilots, probably with jetliner experience and training, and at least with special preparation in the systems and controls of these planes.
A conclusion may seem obvious, but it's worth spelling out the reasoning. A pilot with a knife to his neck might well be forced to fly the plane on a suicidal mission into the ground. (What's his alternative? If he refuses on principle and lets himself be killed rather than give up his passengers' lives, the pilot-less plane will eventually crash anyway.) But it is very difficult to imagine that an unwilling pilot could be forced to fly an airplane into a building--in effect, forcing him to murder countless additional victims. Forcing the pilot to hit the target would be like trying to force him to kill all of his own family members.
So what about the people who actually steered the planes into the towers? Changing what an airplane does can be difficult, especially doing it in a smooth, controlled way. All of these planes changed course and altitude substantially--and apparently without the out-of-control veering that an inexperienced pilot would have encountered.
According to flight-tracking software, one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center, American Flight 11, made a dramatic change from its original course--turning south, toward New York, rather than continuing west toward Los Angeles. At a minimum, accomplishing that turn would require a pilot who knew how to switch off the "Flight Management Systems" and autopilot that were programmed to guide the plane to Los Angeles
More impressive, Flight 11 was at 29,000 feet before it made that turn. It had to lose 28,000-plus feet of altitude by the time it hit the tower. Making a plane descend is easy if you know what you're doing. But if you were experienced only in small airplanes, a descent in a big airplane could be terrifying. You wouldn't know how much to reduce the power, to prevent the plane from gaining too much speed as it went down. (A descent at full power can push a plane past its "never-exceed" speed and lead to structural failure.) You wouldn't know how or when to arrest the descent, to be sure you could level off and be under control when you neared the target. Everything would be faster, bigger, and heavier than you were used to. You'd do what almost every pilot does when encountering a bigger, more powerful plane: "over-control" it, making the plane lurch from side to side and up-and-down, and "getting behind the airplane," reacting with ever-growing lag time to what the airplane was doing. The result would less likely be a suicide attack, like the ones in New York and Washington, than simple suicide.
In short, odds are that at least three of the four hijacked airplanes were flown by experienced pilots, who one way or another had gotten big-jet training. And conceivably, a difference in piloting experience may explain why the fourth hijacked plane simply crashed in Pennsylvania, rather than crashing into a target. When the facts are out, of course, the real explanation for that fourth crash could be something else entirely.
My prayers are with the victims and families involved. Lets all give our support for them that because of the terrorist attack this area will never be the same.
A couple websites
http://www.essentialbigapple.com/wtc.html
http://ur.rutgers.edu/focus/index.phtml?Article_ID=147&Issue_ID=19
http://www.panynj.gov/pr/68-01.html
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