Fireproofing has been blamed for the World Trade Center (WTC) buildings collapse after the two airplanes - American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines 175 - struck the north and the south tower within minutes of each other killing 2,749 people, including those on the two jets.
The 10,000-page report prepared by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), out of which 3,400 pages were made public Tuesday, stated that the hijacked airplanes had struck the WTC buildings with such great impact (the first plane hitting at 443 miles per hour and the second plane hitting at 542 miles per hour) that it tore off the fireproofing from the steel columns resulting in heat buildup and weakening the structural core that lead to towers crumbling like a pack of cards.
“Even with the airplane impact and jet-fuel-ignited multi-floor fires, which are not normal building fires, the buildings would likely not have collapsed had it not been for the fireproofing that had been dislodged,” said Shyam Sunder, who led NIST’s fire and safety investigation.
NIST also said that survivors took a more than twice the time to make through the emergency stairwells and that better communications service between the rescuers could certainly have saved a large number of lives.
According to the report, it took 48 seconds for a survivor to make through the stairwells in Tower 1, which is almost double time taken for evacuation keeping in with a current fire safety handbook.
The reason for delay in taking the staircase, as stated in the report, was people were deliberating about what next to do, or how to get to the stairwell.
The report however did not blame the designers or builders for the WTC collapse, but said that fireproofing adhered to steel.
The report also found that information sharing was quite poor at the time of the attack and insufficient communications capabilities contributed to rescuers lives. "If communications were better, more firefighters would have lived," an unnamed firefighter who told the investigators.
