Two decades have passed since the 9/11 terrorism attack. How are we doing now?
This is Not a Fiction. This is Real.
In the fictional world, whether in a movie or a book, the more ambitiously precarious the main idea the author brings, the more excited the audience becomes. From man-slaughtering dinosaurs coming back to life to zombies filling every corner of the street, there is no limit to how much you can extend your imagination. We do not worry about the damage to humanity because we know that in the end, though through lots of tumblings, we will eventually win anyway.
Another common characteristic of those disastrous stories is that there are usually a number of omens drawing long shadows in the beginning. They are, however, always overlooked by the majority except for the very few. Serious conflict erupts from things ignored by many.
What if two hijacked commercial planes crashing into the Twin Towers in broad daylight was a mere synopsis of a movie? Interesting idea, but probably not that outstanding. I wonder if the movie would only be a mediocre one, if not a lame one. Let me guess how the storyline would unfold. Those hijacked commercial planes are tracked and soon get shot down by some highly intelligent and courageous soldiers. People trapped in the top floors bravely hold onto hope and eventually get safely rescued before the building collapses. We just barged into the promising 21st century where technology is rapidly becoming our second skin. Of course our buildings are too strong to be destroyed by terrorists. Of course our rescuing technology is too smart to miss any people signalling SOS. In short, we are just too strong and too invincible.
In the hard reality, however, things are not as simple - so to speak - as we would imagine. Different elements and parts of our everyday life are very much complicatedly tangled up as well as very vulnerable. Some aspects, in reality, are not as advanced as we would expect them to be. Or things we firmly associate with particular guaranteed outcomes often turn out to be incapable and ineffective.
It was the Fall of the First Year of the 21st Century
When I watched the Twin Towers crumble down to ashes on TV 20 years ago, I undoubtedly thought I was watching a segment of a movie. Only when I realized the tv screen had not changed for the last few minutes and I was hearing a reporter’s painful scream as I increased the volume, I snapped out of my assumption to reality.
Then I realized I had just observed the world flip upside down.
Soon, front counters of bookstores got filled with books reflecting this tragedy. Terrorist attacks by annihilating the Twin Towers, a long-time landmark and tourist spot of Manhattan, certainly convey ghastly serious significances. The deadliest terrorist attack in the entire human history, many people feel they have been thrown into a deep dark hole. What political and diplomatic impacts does this event would carry? Scholars came up with their views and interpretations then more views and interpretations that either agreed or disagreed with them followed. At some point, my ears got filled with never-ending opinions, interpretations, and newly formed arguments that while I was moaning for the lives lost by this terrible tragedy, I found myself avoiding all the related topics.
102 Minutes Lingering in between Life and Death
102 Minutes by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn solely focuses on real stories of real people who were inside the Twin Towers when the planes hit them. And its stubborn focus never digresses from its path till the last page of the book. The title represents the combined elapsed time between when each tower was hit by the plan and it fell to the ground: The north tower was hit at 8:46:31 and collapsed at 10:28:25 and the south tower was hit at 9:02:59 and collapsed at 9:58:59.
For 102 minutes, approximately 14,000 people desperately and courageously fought for life at the World Trade Centre. Out of them, it is estimated that at least 1,500 people survived the initial plane crashes but died later due to the inability to escape the buildings successfully.
This book never once mentions the name of any terrorists nor any political, diplomatic implications. As it is clearly written in the Authors’ Note, the evilness and culpability of the attackers cannot be abated, not even one iota. That clearly stated, we also need to take a hard look at the safety measures installed (or we believed had been installed) in the buildings. The truth is, many promises that the Twin Towers had long held with its security turned out erroneous, including its fireproofing measures and escape routes.
Imagine you hold two different lenses as you walk through this book: One magnifying glass and one wide-angle lens. The magnifying glass is for watching each individual inside the building in detail. Through journalists’ attentiveness, each one’s brief introduction (including where his or her job and office was), whereabouts when the plane crashed into the buildings, and action is carefully illustrated. Through the wide-angle lens, the authors investigate the overall structure of the buildings and their critical flaws.
Untold Secrets of the Twin Towers: Were They Safe before the 9/11 Attack?
One accident repeatedly comes up throughout the book: the 1993 Bombing of the North Tower. On February 26th, 1993, a group of terrorists detonated approximately 1,200 pounds of explosives in a rental van in the underground parking garage at the North World Trade Center. The explosion created a five-story, 150-feet-wide crater and all the people inside the building got immediately ordered to evacuate. This incident that took the lives of 6 people in total brought forth a number of critical pitfalls. The design of the buildings carried critical pitfalls including not enough escape routes for their entire tenants. The failure of successful coordination, command, and communication was very serious. These issues, however, were not properly rectified in the intervening years.
We have now obtained many records documenting the emergency response that both the City of New York and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey have tried to keep secret. These records show that for all the aggressiveness of the response, emergency workers suffered the same failures of communication, coordination, and command that they had experienced on February 26, 1993, when terrorists first tried to knock down the trade centre. This time, those failures came at terrible cost. Indeed, for 102 minutes, success and failure, life and death, ran parallel courses - as did effort and selflessness, infighting and shortsightedness. (Authors’ Note)
When we enter a building, we naturally assume that this building has all the adequate safety measures that will protect me (or try its best to protect me, to be more accurate) when an unexpected accident happens. This is the unspoken “ought-to” we always carry with us. The integrity we consistently expect from one another. The physical architectural structure of the Twin Towers utterly defied them.
What is interesting is that when the Twin Towers were planned the consequences of a plane striking them had actually been envisioned. When the Twin Towers were built, they were advertised for their distinctive toughness: its durability was compared to a mesh that even if the biggest jet, compared to a pencil, pokes through it, the building will still remain intact and strong. In fact, the mass of each tower was approximately 1,000 times greater than the jet. The bulk of the towers made it possible to stand for a while after the plane hit while their failing fireproofing systems ultimately led to the fatal collapse.
But wait a minute. If the architects of the Twin Towers imagined and considered a possibility of a plane crash and took this in their design, wouldn’t the towers have had to come with adequate evacuation routes? The fact that there weren’t in the beginning utterly irritated me. They decided to minimize the stairways so that they could maximize the rentable space.
...the World Trade Centre was not built for total evacuation. Few modern American high-rise towers are. There would never be a need for everyone to leave at the same time. A fire or emergency would be contained on its floor by sprinklers and the fire-resistant materials. So the escape structures in the buildings - the number of staircases, their placement, their width - reflected the view that in the event of a fire, the building would be able to put the fire out itself, or certainly contain it. (p.65)
Another agenda, less spoken but just as important to the economics of building, was to reduce the amount of space demanded for escape-ways. If real estate in the tight confines of Manhattan Island had a soul, it certainly was vertical in shape; there simply was not enough land to spread out, only up. To turn over some of that previous floor space to outsize-seeming safety requirements surely was an imprudent and uneconomical regulation of business. The new code would quietly turn back some of that real estate lost to evacuation routes to the moneymaking side of the ledger. (p.105)
While the foundation of the trade center was being wrapped in a stupendous girdle of concrete, to stand against time and tide … the stairways in the sky would be clad in a few inches of lightweight drywall. These stairways, bunched together, built for only a few hundred people at a time to walk three or four stories, would now have to carry out of the buildings the 12,00 people beneath the airplane impacts on September 11, 2001. (p.112)
The buildings were not in great shape, but the frontline workers - the police and the firefighters - unquestionably did their very best. Firefighters’ basic load was fifty-six and a half pounds and this often got easily exceeded with additional equipment such as bulky roll-ups (hose with aluminum fittings on each end). Their heroic acts were beyond outstanding: In fact, many firefighters and policemen joined the rescue operation even if they were officially off on that day.
You CAN'T Say You Can't Hear Me!
Each and every police and firefighter certainly put out their best effort but disastrously they were not effectively orchestrated. Firefighters struggled with their radio signals because they did not have amplifiers. In addition, these two front forces did not and could not cooperate effectively. As a result, numerous aspects of the rescue operation went missing, duplicated, or done haphazardly.
The Finest, as the police were called, and the Bravest, the nickname for the firefighters, did not like each other … To be completely effective, firefighters and police officers needed to share information, to act in concert, to anticipate what the other force might do as a disaster evolved. The decisions that commanders made were influenced by how quickly and accurately they sized up a situation based on what they learned both from their troops and their putative allies. But these two agencies didn’t train together often or well. They couldn’t talk to each other by radio because their frequencies did not match. And they didn’t share equipment. (p.57)
Official statistics show that 412 emergency workers lost their lives on that day. We can never overstate the courage it takes to rush into a burning building. They saved a huge number of people from the jaws of death. However, we must note that their bravery was never of any suicidal action. The lack of communication and effective leadership resulted in tragic fatalities.
Throughout the book 102 Minutes by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn, I appreciate the authors' audacity of keeping their neutral, objective reportorial tone, whether it is a story of a survivor or a victim, or of miracle or calamity. I recall the story of Brain Clark, one of four people who were above the plane crash site and still survived. He recounted meeting with people as he was descending the building who rushed back to the upper floors to help their colleagues and tend to the injured. Clark clearly noted that those who decided to go back to the burning building did make a good decision: they put others in front of their own sake although doing so could risk their lives.
A page-turner, this book can serve as a wonderful historical document. This book helps us correct our views that might have been skewed due to the instant emotional responses to this tragedy. This book also reminds us of the utmost, incomparable value of life. Building structures and frontline workers’ communication must be improved. When we are unexpectedly hit on our blind spots, however, it is not a mere system that saves people. It is people that save other people.
I remember visiting the 9/11 Memorial Site a few years back. I can still vividly remember the sight that took me aback immediately. Countless names (2,983 names to be exact, 2,977 victims killed in September 11 attacks, and 6 victims killed in the 1993 Bombing.) were inscribed on the bronze parapets surrounding the memorial pools. Hearing the total number of the victims and seeing their names were absolutely two very different things.
I heard that a lot of people are suffering from the after-effects of the 9/11 attack, not only emotionally but also physically. Before I go to bed tonight, I shall say a special prayer for healing over every soul affected by this tragedy.
Review written on September 11, 2021
Book Information
Title: 102 Minutes
Originally published: January 2005
Authors: Kevin Flynn, Jim Dwyer
My rating: ★★★★