- Author
- Glanz, J.
- Title
- Reliving 9/11, With Fire as Teacher.
- Journal
- New York Times, January 6, 2004
- Keywords
- World Trade Center | fire tests | fire fighters | building collapse | terrorism | terrorists | steels | steel columns | simulations | jet fuels | fire models | fire investigators | fire spread | disasters | failure | fire investigations
- Identifiers
- World Trade Center (110-story-high) Towers, Manhattan, New York, September 11, 2001; National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
- Abstract
- As traces of the fuel's stench hung ominously in the air, a fiery burst quickly became a sullen orange glow, then grew until flames were licking the ceiling 11 feet above. The flames fed on a cluster of office workstations lying smashed, littered with collapsed ceiling tiles and office papers. Within minutes, a maelstrom of heavy black soot, gyrating sparks and brilliant flame was leaping through the tops of four narrow seven-foot-high windows, warming the nearby faces of men wearing bunker coats, oxygen tanks and fire helmets. The World Trade Center was burning again - at least one small part of it - in this fuel-soaked, full-size recreation of a Marsh & McLennan office on the 96th floor of the north tower, where the first plane struck on Sept. 11. This office is inside a towering laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. And it is only one fragment of the disaster being replayed for a federal investigation centered here. In other studies, steel recovered from the twin towers is being ripped apart at high speeds, rebuilt structural supports are baking in artificial infernos, and fireproofing insulation is being pounded with simulated plane impacts to see how well it sticks to the steel it was meant to protect.