 
The World Trade buildings were 110 stories tall. Fire department ladder trucks and mobile cranes have a height limit of about 100 feet (10 stories). Helicopter basket rescues can reach about 50 feet (5 stories) down from the roof of a building. Obviously neither method can be used to rescue people from most of the floors of a high rise.Is there any way to evacuate injured people safely from a high-rise building without having firemen climb all the way up to get them? What happens when the rescue people can't get to the trapped people, who can make their way to a window, but can't get down the stairs? When buildings were only a few stories tall, firemen used to hold a net or other similar device, which would allow people trapped at a window by fire to jump, with some reasonable expectation of survival. Late in the twentieth century, high-tech plastics allowed the development of huge air bags, which served the same purpose, allowing survivors to jump fairly safely from much greater heights. Neither of these devices can safely catch people who jump from the 50th floor of a burning apartment building, let alone the upper floors of a 110 floor office building. Rescue helicopters can lift people off the roof of a disabled building in an emergency. But suppose fires prevent people from reaching the roof at all, or from descending to the ground. Is there any way to rescue people from the 50th floor of a burning high-rise if they can't get down the fire escape routes, and can't get past the fire to the roof? Unfortunately, at this time there isn't. |