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911 Title: EMERGENCY RESPONSE OPERATIONS AT WORLD TRADE CENTER 7 It is advantageous to know the details of the emergency response and the timeline of events. The following is presented for educational purposes only. World Trade Center 7 (WTC 7) was an important building with regard to the attack on the World Trade Center. The New York City Office of Emergency Management (OEM) was located on the 3rd and 23rd floors of WTC 7. The OEM office on the 23rd floor contained the emergency operations post for OEM and was designed to function as a command center to help coordinate multi-agency operations at incidents in the city. On September 11, 2001, WTC 7 became threatened as the WTC complex was attacked. When the first aircraft struck WTC 1, the electrical power went out for several seconds inside WTC 7. Many people immediately began leaving the building, and the OEM operations center began receiving calls related to the emergency. As the second aircraft struck WTC 2, a decision was made to evacuate WTC 7. By the time WTC 2 was struck by the second aircraft at 9:03 a.m., many WTC 7 occupants had already left the building and others had begun a self-evacuation of the building. Shortly after WTC 2 was struck, a firefighter entered WTC 7 from the Washington and Vesey Streets side, connected a hose line onto the "A" stairwell sprinkler riser and started the Engines pumps. At approximately 9:30 a.m., FDNY, EMS established a Division for assisting victims at WTC 7. An EMS triage center was established in the lobby of WTC 7 as occupants from WTC 1 and WTC 6 evacuated through WTC 7. At approximately 9:44 a.m., after the report of a third aircraft heading into the city and news that the Pentagon had been attacked, a Deputy OEM Commissioner ordered the complete evacuation of WTC 7. This order included the evacuation of the OEM operations center on the 23rd floor. The loss of the OEM operations center created difficulties related to the coordination of emergency responder operations and resources. Before the OEM operations center was evacuated, OEM had assigned personnel to work with each of the emergency responder command posts. This reduced the impact of the loss of the WTC 7 OEM office. (See Chapter 8.) Occupants evacuating from WTC 7 used both the elevators and stairways as they left the building. Shortly after WTC 7 was evacuated, the FDNY Fire Commissioner arrived, looking for the Mayor who he believed to be at the OEM center on the 23rd floor. A guard met the Commissioner in the lobby and ordered him and his staff out of the building. The guard told him, "This building has been evacuated." and that "OEM, the mayor, they?re all gone." At 9:59 a.m., WTC 2 collapsed, and debris from the collapse struck the south face of WTC 7. At 10:28 a.m., WTC 1 collapsed and a significant amount of damage was done to WTC 7. A large amount of debris crashed through the front center of the building from approximately the 10th floor down to ground level, and debris ripped a part of the southwest corner off from approximately the 8th floor up to the 18th floor. The collapse of WTC 1 also appears to be responsible for starting fires inside of WTC 7. With the collapse of the two towers, a New York City employee and a WTC 7 building staff person became trapped inside of WTC 7. The two had gone to the OEM center on the 23rd floor and found no one there. As they went to get into an elevator to go downstairs the lights inside of WTC 7 flickered as WTC 2 collapsed. At this point, the elevator they were attempting to catch no longer worked, so they started down the staircase. When they got to the 6th floor, WTC 1 collapsed, the lights went out in the staircase, the sprinklers came on briefly, and the staircase filled with smoke and debris. The two men went back to the 8th floor broke out a window and called for help. Firefighters on the ground saw them and went up the stairs. In addition, a security officer for one of the businesses in the building was also was trapped on the 7th floor by the smoke in the stairway. As the firefighters went up, they vented the stairway and cleared some of the smoke. They first met the security officer on the 7th floor and firefighters escorted him down the stairs. Other firefighters from the group continued up the stairs, shined their flashlight through the staircase smoke and called out. The two trapped men on the 8th floor saw the flashlight beam and heard the firefighters calling and went down the stairway. The firefighters took the men outside and directed them away from the building. At approximately 11:30 a.m., FDNY assigned a Chief Officer to take charge of operations at WTC 7. The Chief was initially given orders to put the fires out in WTC 7. From the Chief?s assigned location at WTC 7, he reported that looking south toward WTC 7, they could not see the building because of the large smoke and dust cloud. The Chief Officer was able to negotiate the debris fields, get to the building, and see the WTC 7 logo on the side. There were numerous burned out FDNY vehicles around WTC 7. At the corner of Vesey and West Broadway, a FDNY Engine was connected to a hydrant at the corner of WTC 7. Hose lines were stretched, and the Engine?s pump was still running even though the Engine was on fire and was almost burned out. There was no water coming out of the hydrant system. One FDNY Chief Officer that entered WTC 7 indicated that he opened a standpipe on the 4th floor of one stairway and found no water in the standpipe system. A FDNY fire boat and the retired FDNY fire boat "Harvey" were located at the shore on the Hudson River near the site. They were starting to stretch lines up to the WTC. According to the FDNY first-person interviews, water was never an issue at WTC 7 since firefighting was never started in the building. When the Chief Officer in charge of WTC 7 got to Barclay Street and West Broadway, numerous firefighters and officers were coming out of WTC 7. These firefighters indicated that several blocks needed to be cleared around WTC 7 because they thought that the building was going to collapse. Con Edison personnel arrived at the scene and consulted with FDNY. They wanted to know if they should cut the power off at the WTC 7 power station. It was decided to leave the power on and not allow Con Edison personnel to enter WTC 7 because it was not safe. The Con Edison personnel also indicated that fuel tanks were located in the lower level of WTC 7. However, they could not determine if the fuel tanks were involved with the fires burning in the building. FDNY personnel reported that they did not see any indication of burning liquid fuels before the building collapsed. No accurate time is available for this event during the operations; however, the sequence of events indicates that it occurred between approximately 12:00 noon and 2:00 p.m. One Battalion Chief coming from the building indicated that they had searched floors 1 through 9 and found that the building was clear. In the process of the search, the Battalion Chief met the building?s Fire Safety Director and former Deputy Fire Safety Director on the ninth floor. The Fire Safety Director reported that the building?s floors had been cleared from the top down. By this time, the Chief Officer responsible for WTC 7 reassessed the building again and determined that fires were burning on the following floors: 6, 7, 8, 17, 21, and 30. No accurate time is available for these actions during the WTC 7 operations; however, the sequence of event indicates that it occurred during a time period from 12:30 p.m. to approximately 2:00 p.m. The Chief Officer then met with his command officer to discuss the building?s condition and FDNY?s capabilities for controlling the building fires. A Deputy Chief who had just returned from inside the building reported that he had conducted an inspection up to the 7th or 8th floor. He indicated that the stairway was filling with smoke and that there was a lot of fire inside the building. The chiefs discussed the situation and the following conditions were identified: - The building had sustained damage from debris falling into the building, and they were not sure about the structural stability of the building. - The building had large fires burning on at least six floors. Any one of these six fires would have been considered a large incident during normal FDNY operations. - There was no water immediately available for fighting the fires. - They didn?t have equipment, hose, standpipe kits, tools, and enough handie talkies for conducting operations inside the building. At approximately, 2:30 p.m., FDNY officers decided to completely abandon WTC 7, and the final order was given to evacuate the site around the building. The order terminated the ongoing rescue operations at WTC 6 and on the rubble pile of WTC 1. Firefighters and other emergency responders were withdrawn from the WTC 7 area, and the building continued to burn. At approximately 5:20 p.m., some three hours after WTC 7 was abandoned the building experienced a catastrophic failure and collapsed. Any use of this material, including any legal action or in any lawsuit, are subject to the provisions as specified in 15 USC 281a; as amended by P.L. 107-231. Any readers are are urged to do their own research and study pursuant to doing "due diligence" on this subject matter or any other matter relating to this matter. Views expressed by this poster are not those of any particular agency or bureau, nor are these views represented to be part of any US, state or local gov't bureau e.g. NIST, PANYNJ, NYC, et cetera, but are soley those of the individual poster. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top Page Up Full Thread Page Down Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 1.
#1. To: _Jim (#0)
A picture is worth a thousand words. How many words would a video be worth.
#2. To: A K A Stone (#1)
A picture is worth a thousand words The 'video' doesn't give the timeline I have spelled out in the post above yours. Something you 'troofers' don't grasp in your limited world - the timeline of events. Are you REALLY so dense that the following never penetrated that invisble reality-brain barrier you guys seem to have? ("reality-brain barrier" - a take-off on the blood-brain barrier located in the brain) He indicated that the stairway was filling with smoke and that there was a lot of fire inside the building. The chiefs discussed the situation and the following conditions were identified: - The building had sustained damage from debris falling into the building, and they were not sure about the structural stability of the building. - The building had large fires burning on at least six floors. Any one of these six fires would have been considered a large incident during normal FDNY operations. - There was no water immediately available for fighting the fires. - They didn't have equipment, hose, standpipe kits, tools, and enough handie talkies for conducting operations inside the building. At approximately, 2:30 p.m., FDNY officers decided to completely abandon WTC 7, and the final order was given to evacuate the site around the building. The order terminated the ongoing rescue operations at WTC 6 and on the rubble pile of WTC 1. Firefighters and other emergency responders were withdrawn from the WTC 7 area, and the building continued to burn. At approximately 5:20 p.m., some three hours after WTC 7 was abandoned the building experienced a catastrophic failure and collapsed. You 'troofers' seem to have zero understanding of materials, zero understanding of metallury, zero understanding of the 'fire rating' of any given type of building, zero understanding of how fires are fought and zero understanding how overwhelmed FDNY was that day ...
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