6 ms·

Why were there no parachutes? It would at least have given them a chance.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
sndean 10y ago
I was surprised to see there's some people with the same idea: http://www.sosparachute.com/en/site/sos http://www.sosparachute.com/en/site/sos And an ABC News story asked the same question two months after 9/11: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=126613&page=1 http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=126613&page=1
- mgkimsal 10y ago
  30 meters doesn't seem all that useful. What is that - 9 floors? I guess it'd be better than nothing, but have there been a lot of preventable deaths in 10 story building fires where this would have saved them?
  - sndean 10y ago
    It says "for heights of 30 meters and up," though. Unless I'm not understanding. I'm certainly no parachute expert.
sulam 10y ago
At some point you have to make an ethical decision -- what is the best allocation of society's resources? It would be expensive to outfit all tall buildings with parachutes in the exceedingly unlikely event that they would be useful -- and that's before you factor in the low probability that they would successfully save people with little to no training in normal parachuting, much less BASE jumping, a sport which often kills trained participants jumping under far more favorable conditions. You might as well ask why people who work in tall buildings don't take parachutes to work themselves. The answer is obvious, and I hope it's equally obvious why buildings don't do this. On a related note: having to send your shoes through the x-ray machine in an airport security line is almost as bad of an idea. :/
- jsprogrammer 10y ago
  You would only have needed to outfit the tallest buildings being built. Do you know how many individual paratroopers have jumped out of planes? There is no way the cost is prohibitive. Parachuting is one of the last ways I'd want to go down, but, why wouldn't I want one if my only choice were to splat or char?
  - drjesusphd 10y ago
    > why wouldn't I want one if my only choice were to splat or char? That isn't your only choice because the scenario is exceedingly unlikely to happen. If safety is your thing, you'd be much better off spending the several thousand dollars on doctors visits, healthier food, gym memberships, and/or public transit throughout the year.
    - jsprogrammer 10y ago
      if It's unlikely a seatbelt will save my life, but every car I go in has multiple. The original argument presented here is equivalent to arguing it's too expensive and useless to carry enough lifeboat capacity for everyone on a ship after the Titanic sunk. It's extremely unlikely that I'll ever impact an iceberg.
      - danso 10y ago
        How many times do you practice putting on your seatbelt, and how long does it take to put it on? For me, I put on my seatbelt every time I enter a car, and it takes me seconds. I've never put on a parachute or practiced deploying one. Lifeboats are not just for iceberg collisions. There are many reasons for a boat to sink that don't involve a collision.
        jsprogrammer 10y ago
        Practically no one had put on a seat belt before they were introduced either. The cost of parachutes and placards to describe their proper usage is absolutely trivial in consideration of the budget of any building from which parachutes could actually be deployed. Buildings don't just collapse from airplane collisions; fires, bombs, earthquakes, structural failure, hostile takeover, and more could all be scenarios where you might only survive if you have a chute.
superuser2 10y ago
Because there were fire stairs. The WTC (like all modern high-rises in the developed world) had a pretty impressive set of firefighting and evacuation infrastructure, procedures, and personnel. This training video goes through it pretty well [0]. - Smoke detectors and pull stations everywhere to ensure any fire is detected and responded to quickly (i.e. before it gets out of hand). There was a fire station across the street. - A huge console for responding firefighters to see the location of alarm conditions, make building or floor-wide announcements, and even have two-way conversations with intercom stations on particular floors. - Sprinklers and redundant power for the pumps that run them. - Fans to push smoke out of the building and supply clean air to evacuation routes. - Fire stairs, kept closed under positive pressure to keep smoke out, kept unobstructed by regular patrols, encased in material that wouldn't burn through for hours. - A network of piping and wall-mounted hoses easily fed from the dedicated fire-truck parking. - Fire drills, designated authorities for the evacuation of each floor, security personnel trained to watch over the fire alarm equipment. It's not like the WTC wasn't prepared to evacuate in a fire. It's just that nobody anticipated all that infrastructure (pipes, stairwells, etc) getting sheared through by an airplane. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28laYNm5YNw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28laYNm5YNw
- jsprogrammer 10y ago
  Fire stairs, like, a single column of stairs, or, multiple columns? If they were placed near each corner, some of them should have survived until collapse. Impact by planes had been imagined prior to the crashes, but I don't know if it had been by the designers. Considering these were very tall structures, it seems likely someone would have at least briefly imagined it.
  - mcjiggerlog 10y ago
    There were 3 stairwells in each building. Here's an excerpt from this fascinating wikipedia page[1] about one of the only four people to make it out from above the impact in the South tower: "The airliner that struck the North Tower struck it perpendicular to the north face. The impact severed all the elevators and all three stairwells. The airliner that struck the South Tower struck at an angle, severing two stairwells, but it left Stairway A, the one they were using, more or less intact." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Clark_(September_11_survivor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Clark_(September_11_surv...
tomjen3 10y ago
Or tons of helicopters trying to save those stranded on the roof? Seriously NYC doesn't have any police/rescue helicopters?
- dia80 10y ago
  I'm guessing the tremendous amount of smoke and all the obstructions on the roof would have made this impractical. The situation wouldn't have been aided by helicopters falling on to rescuers below.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mgkimsal 10y ago
  " and there were no plans for helicopter rescues from the roof, as the NYPD deemed it too unsafe to attempt due to dense clouds of smoke and rooftop antennas." If you're referring the 9/11 situation, this is the reason why it wasn't attempted - from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Clark_(September_11_survivor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Clark_(September_11_surv... That said, I suspect that had they known the towers were going to go down within 2 hours, there might have been some different decisions made. But that's just hindsight. :/
  - tomjen3 10y ago
    Right it has been so long that I forgot it was a surprise that the towers collapsed that day. I remembered it a as being obvious, which it is in hindsight.
mountaineer22 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architects_%26_Engineers_for_9/11_Truth#Advocacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architects_%26_Engineers_for_9...

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

I was surprised to see there's some people with the same idea: http://www.sosparachute.com/en/site/sos http://www.sosparachute.com/en/site/sos And an ABC News story asked the same question two months after 9/11: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=126613&page=1 http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=126613&page=1

mgkimsal 10y ago
30 meters doesn't seem all that useful. What is that - 9 floors? I guess it'd be better than nothing, but have there been a lot of preventable deaths in 10 story building fires where this would have saved them?
- sndean 10y ago
  It says "for heights of 30 meters and up," though. Unless I'm not understanding. I'm certainly no parachute expert.

sulam 10y ago

At some point you have to make an ethical decision -- what is the best allocation of society's resources? It would be expensive to outfit all tall buildings with parachutes in the exceedingly unlikely event that they would be useful -- and that's before you factor in the low probability that they would successfully save people with little to no training in normal parachuting, much less BASE jumping, a sport which often kills trained participants jumping under far more favorable conditions. You might as well ask why people who work in tall buildings don't take parachutes to work themselves. The answer is obvious, and I hope it's equally obvious why buildings don't do this. On a related note: having to send your shoes through the x-ray machine in an airport security line is almost as bad of an idea. :/

jsprogrammer 10y ago
You would only have needed to outfit the tallest buildings being built. Do you know how many individual paratroopers have jumped out of planes? There is no way the cost is prohibitive. Parachuting is one of the last ways I'd want to go down, but, why wouldn't I want one if my only choice were to splat or char?
- drjesusphd 10y ago
  > why wouldn't I want one if my only choice were to splat or char? That isn't your only choice because the scenario is exceedingly unlikely to happen. If safety is your thing, you'd be much better off spending the several thousand dollars on doctors visits, healthier food, gym memberships, and/or public transit throughout the year.
  - jsprogrammer 10y ago
    if It's unlikely a seatbelt will save my life, but every car I go in has multiple. The original argument presented here is equivalent to arguing it's too expensive and useless to carry enough lifeboat capacity for everyone on a ship after the Titanic sunk. It's extremely unlikely that I'll ever impact an iceberg.
    - danso 10y ago
      How many times do you practice putting on your seatbelt, and how long does it take to put it on? For me, I put on my seatbelt every time I enter a car, and it takes me seconds. I've never put on a parachute or practiced deploying one. Lifeboats are not just for iceberg collisions. There are many reasons for a boat to sink that don't involve a collision.
      - jsprogrammer 10y ago
        Practically no one had put on a seat belt before they were introduced either. The cost of parachutes and placards to describe their proper usage is absolutely trivial in consideration of the budget of any building from which parachutes could actually be deployed. Buildings don't just collapse from airplane collisions; fires, bombs, earthquakes, structural failure, hostile takeover, and more could all be scenarios where you might only survive if you have a chute.

superuser2 10y ago

Because there were fire stairs. The WTC (like all modern high-rises in the developed world) had a pretty impressive set of firefighting and evacuation infrastructure, procedures, and personnel. This training video goes through it pretty well [0]. - Smoke detectors and pull stations everywhere to ensure any fire is detected and responded to quickly (i.e. before it gets out of hand). There was a fire station across the street. - A huge console for responding firefighters to see the location of alarm conditions, make building or floor-wide announcements, and even have two-way conversations with intercom stations on particular floors. - Sprinklers and redundant power for the pumps that run them. - Fans to push smoke out of the building and supply clean air to evacuation routes. - Fire stairs, kept closed under positive pressure to keep smoke out, kept unobstructed by regular patrols, encased in material that wouldn't burn through for hours. - A network of piping and wall-mounted hoses easily fed from the dedicated fire-truck parking. - Fire drills, designated authorities for the evacuation of each floor, security personnel trained to watch over the fire alarm equipment. It's not like the WTC wasn't prepared to evacuate in a fire. It's just that nobody anticipated all that infrastructure (pipes, stairwells, etc) getting sheared through by an airplane. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28laYNm5YNw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28laYNm5YNw

jsprogrammer 10y ago
Fire stairs, like, a single column of stairs, or, multiple columns? If they were placed near each corner, some of them should have survived until collapse. Impact by planes had been imagined prior to the crashes, but I don't know if it had been by the designers. Considering these were very tall structures, it seems likely someone would have at least briefly imagined it.
- mcjiggerlog 10y ago
  There were 3 stairwells in each building. Here's an excerpt from this fascinating wikipedia page[1] about one of the only four people to make it out from above the impact in the South tower: "The airliner that struck the North Tower struck it perpendicular to the north face. The impact severed all the elevators and all three stairwells. The airliner that struck the South Tower struck at an angle, severing two stairwells, but it left Stairway A, the one they were using, more or less intact." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Clark_(September_11_survivor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Clark_(September_11_surv...

tomjen3 10y ago

Or tons of helicopters trying to save those stranded on the roof? Seriously NYC doesn't have any police/rescue helicopters?

dia80 10y ago
I'm guessing the tremendous amount of smoke and all the obstructions on the roof would have made this impractical. The situation wouldn't have been aided by helicopters falling on to rescuers below.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mgkimsal 10y ago
" and there were no plans for helicopter rescues from the roof, as the NYPD deemed it too unsafe to attempt due to dense clouds of smoke and rooftop antennas." If you're referring the 9/11 situation, this is the reason why it wasn't attempted - from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Clark_(September_11_survivor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Clark_(September_11_surv... That said, I suspect that had they known the towers were going to go down within 2 hours, there might have been some different decisions made. But that's just hindsight. :/
- tomjen3 10y ago
  Right it has been so long that I forgot it was a surprise that the towers collapsed that day. I remembered it a as being obvious, which it is in hindsight.

mountaineer22 10y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architects_%26_Engineers_for_9/11_Truth#Advocacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architects_%26_Engineers_for_9...