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'911 IN RETROSPECT'

 
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Mr. Linsky
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Joined: 16 Apr 2007
Posts: 5071
Location: BRENTWOOD, CA. - WOODMERE, N.Y.

PostPosted: Wed Sep 08, 2010 3:06 pm    Post subject: '911 IN RETROSPECT' Reply with quote

This coming Saturday we will celebrate (and I dislike using that word - it's too happy!) the ninth anniversary of the attacks on New York and Washington.

Each time that date looms, I become more infuriated when I think that nearly 3,000 people including an old friend of mine lost their lives for nothing (I say, for nothing because of our own neglectful acts).

We were certainly asleep at the switch in those days!

The most glaring mistake was made by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in ever permitting pilots the option to shut off the transponders that allow ground controllers the ability to know exactly where a given aircraft is - the first thing the hijackers did when they invaded the cockpits was to shut the devices off leaving authorities helpless in tracking the planes - I'll bet that that has yet to be changed!

And then there were the towers in New York; I'm not saying that they wouldn't have eventually fallen from the impacts and resulting hot fires, but had they been built better to start with maybe people would have had more time to escape.

In an effort to make the offices of the buildings column free (which, by the way, was a chief feature in their original rental advertisements) no upright supports existed between the center core and the perimeter walls, and the flooring was comprised of light concrete over thin corrugated sheets of steel supported by meager tubular framing as shown below.

But that's the least of it!; the three emergency stair wells in each building which should have been encased in eight or twelve inch terracotta or reinforced concrete block were sheathed in 'cardboard' (that's what I dub sheet rock or wall board as being)!

Do you realize how many more people would have been able to safely escape the upper floors had the stairways been more well protected?

And, as far as the Pentagon is concerned; a wooden roof? give me a break!

Now, we're building a new Freedom Tower upwards of 1,800 feet in height at ground zero - I certainly hope we know what we're doing and how to do it right!

Mr. Linsky - Green Bus Lines, Inc., Jamaica, New York



Last edited by Mr. Linsky on Fri Sep 10, 2010 1:17 am; edited 1 time in total
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Hart Bus



Age: 73
Joined: 24 Apr 2007
Posts: 1150

PostPosted: Wed Sep 08, 2010 3:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I too don't like the word "celebrating" the ninth anniversary. I think a better word "Acknowlgement"
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timecruncher



Age: 73
Joined: 23 Dec 2008
Posts: 456
Location: Louisville, Kentucky

PostPosted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 7:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well-said Linsky. The media, such as it is in this country, didn't make much of the building's construction.

An awesome place it was, though.

Went up to the observation deck three times in my life, with the photo below the last time, sometime around 1983 or so with sons #1 and #3. The little guy is a computer engineer now and the older one is here at with us, recovering from his own near-death experience courtesy of another travesty of justice that continues in this country: drunk drivers.



I was out with our bus stop guy that morning in 2001, we were listening to the Bob and Tom Show when the program was interrupted with news of an aircraft flying into the World Trade Center. Thought perhaps it was a small plane (couldn't have imagined the truth!). We were near a big K-Mart out in Fern Creek, so I suggested we go by the appliances and see what the news had about it.

We'll never be the same.

timecruncher
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RailBus63
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Joined: 16 Apr 2007
Posts: 1063

PostPosted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 9:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I visited WTC a few times over the years, but never went to the top. My last visit was in June 2001, when my son and I passed through twice in one day to and from a railfan journey to New Jersey to ride the PCC's in Newark, and we ate lunch at a pizza shop in the underground mall after returning to Manhattan. Sometime after 9/11, I was watching a documentary with a film crew inspecting the ruins and they came across the pizza shop - the napkins were still in the dispensers from that fateful day (most of the shop was not directly crushed in the rubble).

Wasn't the outdoor observation area closed in later years?
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