This is what an engineer hired to assess the collapse discovered. Abolhassan Astaneh, Engineering Professor at University of California in Berkley, did a five-year study of the collapse of the Twin Towers. He had access to the architecture plans only days after the event. After reviewing the plans his conclusion was, "A better design likely would have prevented many of the nearly 3,000 deaths that day."
Astaneh, doesn't mince words, about this information. He said he had access to guarded architecture drawings of the 110-story building. The design shows the building was supported by thin steel beams on the outside.
"Thicker beams on the exterior and more concrete surrounding the stairwells would have added at least $30 million to the cost of the building, but could have saved hundreds or thousands of lives after airliners hit both towers. Instead, the resulting 1,000 degree fire easily destroyed the structure," Astaneh said.
The public believed these buildings were like any other skyscraper. Astaneh projected that Chicago's Sears Tower could survive a similar attack. From the study of the structural soundness of the Twin Towers, the enormous sky scrappers were destined to pulverize and fall to the ground with such a blow.
Astaneh presented an animation simulation of the planes bombarding into the towers. The clips showed an animated display of a plane hitting the realistic version of the tower. Then he showed the plane hitting a similar animated reinforced building replica. In the clip of planes hitting a building with thicker beams, the planes were shown to disintegrate almost immediately after hitting the tower. Instead, the planes crashed and jutted through the under-reinforced exterior with little trouble. Astaneh said, "The airplanes weren't so strong; the building was weaker."
Another engineer from the Civil Engineering Association studied the Word Trade Center devastation. Contrary to Astaneh's conclusion, he believes that most large buildings like the Twin Towers would have collapsed after being hit by huge jetliners. Another civil engineer allied with his fellow professional and said the New York buildings performed better than expected, allowing thousands of people to get to safety before the collapse. There was no intention to cover up any facts regarding the devastation. There is a lot of uncertainty here; there are several contributing factors so engineers shouldn't jump to one conclusion for the collapse.
Astaneh's did his study on behalf of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign. This campaign is comprised of a band of relatives who lost loved ones in the World Trade Center collapse. The Campaign is working to reform laws for skyscraper construction. Sally Regenhard leads the campaign and said if the New York building codes had been implemented the deaths could have been prevented. However, it was the federal laws that gave builders the exception and allowed them to ignore the codes.
Regenhard says there is a need to change the system. She struggles in the campaign in memory of her son, a firefighter, who lost his life in the horrific attack on September 11. Also, preventing such a disaster from taking away other loved ones in a similar situation might be mitigated by following building codes already set in place by the City of New York. The Freedom Towers being built to replace the World Trade Center Towers are under the same exception regarding following City Codes. Regenhard believes the system must be changed.
When architects draw up their plans and see them through to completion, what part do they play in the whole process? According to a basic definition of the architect's job from the handbook of descriptions of classes and careers at most universities, the description is this:
- Consulting with other professionals about the design of an environment,
- Preparing and presenting design proposals to the client,
- Using IT in design and project management, specifically software packages such as Auto Cad and SketchUp,
- Advising the client on the practicality of their project,
- Keeping within financial budgets and deadlines,
- Producing detailed drawings from which costings are made,
- Preparing tender applications and presentations,
- Negotiating with contractors and other professionals,
- Preparing planning applications,
- Coordinating the work of contractors,
- Making site visits to check on progress and ensuring that the project is running within the agreed timescale,
- Solving problems that might occur during building,
- Carrying out defect inspections.
Perhaps builders in New York and the federal government who allowed the exception to building codes didn't have the foresight to use the same software Astaneh used to predict the structures being rammed by jetliners. Who could have foreseen such a catastrophe? OK, maybe not then, but now, after all we've learned? So let's look into the Katrina disaster where levees didn't hold and cities were flooded and lives lost.
A similar group of civil engineers, were consulted to get to the bottom of the fitness of the levees collapsing during the class 4 hurricane, Katrina. The Army corps of engineering originally started the levee built on 17th Street Canal in the early 1980's. They admit there were mistakes made at that time. The concern was the layer of peat moss beneath the structure. At the time, Army engineers estimated it to go only 15 feet and did not place pillars deep enough. They extended them to 17 feet. Foresight failed them as well; they did not consider floods of such intensity to wipe out soil 35 feet below ground level. Recalling from news reports, the levees were not expected to withstand more intensity than a class 3 hurricane.
The rebuilding of the levees is being based on civil engineer findings around the depth at which pillars need to be extended in light of recent findings. The information alerts engineers that they need to rebuild more than the 3 miles of levee devastated by flood -waters. They need to replace all pillars not grounded deep enough to withstand high flood forces.
