Interesting coincidence--one of the folks quoted in this story "Engineers soak up what they can about building safety by studying Sept. 11 tragedy" will be coming to Birmingham on Thursday to give a lecture about the WTC collapse:

[...] A year of intensive study by academics, engineers and government officials also revealed a number of other key points.

They've concluded, for instance, that even if the towers hadn't collapsed, it would have been difficult, maybe impossible, to rescue victims from the higher floors because exit stairwells were severely damaged or blocked.

And they've learned that thousands of gallons of jet fuel burned off within minutes of each plane hitting its target. It was the resulting office fires that actually weakened the towers enough to fell them.

But much remains unknown -- including whether any other design could have changed the result.

"All bets are off when you run an airplane into a building," said Gene Corley, a lead engineering investigator on both the Oklahoma City bombing and the Sept. 11 tragedy. [...]

I plan to be there; it promises to be a very good lecture--Dr. Corley has an extensive history of forensic analysis of building failures, and testified before Congress about the WTC. This is a link to the American Society of Civil Engineers' newsletter article from April about his appearance.

A lot can be said for making buildings better at protecting their occupants from the consequences of those bent on wreaking destruction on innocent people. But folks, we can't afford to all live in bunkers, nor should we have to. We can build the strongest buildings on earth, but until we eliminate those who would do us harm, we will forever be hunkering behind Jersey barriers and concrete flower pots and shuffling through security gates.

That is not freedom, and it is not security.
posted by Terry at 2:04:00 PM