They tell us that September 11, 2001 was the day on which everything changed.
Eight years later, speaking at a 9/11 memorial, Stephen Harper reminds us that “we are still confronted with the evil that inspired the terrible events of that day”.
And in the wake of a new agreement to allow armed American guards to patrol Canadian waters, Peter Van Loan, Canada’s minister of public safety, is missing no opportunities to let us know that “the threat of homegrown terrorism is still real”.
The message now, as it was eight years ago: Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Yet the most tangible changes we’ve experienced are not a direct result of, but rather the result of our response to this “new” terrorist threat. The most drastic measures have been the wars – Afghanistan and Iraq – both of which are ongoing. One could say that there is really only one war. The war on “terror”, by definition, is all encompassing; it cannot be won and will never end.
The proponents of these measures are aided by a circular argument. They tell us that our world has changed. To counter the terrorist threat they have introduced legislations which curtail our freedoms and launched two wars. This in turn has proven them correct – nothing is quite the same.
Given the extent to which the threat of terrorism has dominated the agendas of our governments in the United States and Canada over the past eight years, it is vital that we put this threat into perspective.
On September 11, 2001, 3000 people, mostly Americans, were killed when the two towers of the World Trade Center were hit by airliners and subsequently collapsed. The death toll will undoubtedly rise as more and more New Yorkers die of black lung disease from breathing the toxic air that lingered for weeks. Their government told them the air was safe to breathe. They knew otherwise, but chose to lie.
As of this writing, 4670 coalition soldiers have died in Iraq. This growing figure ought to be of great interest to the American people, as the number of Americans who have died in the War on Terror far exceeds the number of Americans who died at the hands of foreign terrorists.
Estimates of civilian casualties vary, depending on who you ask. “Justforeignpolicy.org” has arrived a figure of 1.4 million estimated Iraqi deaths. We cannot approach the US military for a reliable figure because no one’s counting.
Regardless: If we conservatively peg the number at more than one million Iraqis killed since the invasion in 2003, then it is safe to say that war kills more people than terrorism. Is it time to launch a global war on war?
While there have not been many high profile terror events on Canadian soil, Canadians also die when terrorists strike. Twenty-four Canadians died when the World Trade Center collapsed – a sixteen year high for death by terrorism (280 Canadians died in 1985, on Air India flight 182). In 2001, 3032 Canadians died in car accidents. 338 died in fires.
Fire kills about 3000 Americans per year.
It can be said, that in both the United States and Canada, fire kills more people than terrorism does. Is it time to launch a global war on fire?
The question is not facetious, for if there is one thing we ought to have learned from September 11, 2001, then surely it is the fact that fire can be very dangerous.
On that day, several massive structures were reduced to rubble. At the time, this singular concurrence of events caused confusion, because the only known way to generate such destruction was through the use of high powered explosives. We have since learned that no explosives were used in the execution of the 9/11 terror operation. The towers collapsed due to fire.
We demand of the places where we live and work, that they perform to certain standards. For this reason we make predictions about how a building will respond in disastrous circumstances. We design buildings to minimize loss of life when disaster strikes – be it earthquake, inferno or plane.
If, prior to these disturbing events, one had asked the architects, the builders or the insurers of the World Trade Center what might happen if a large aircraft, loaded with jet fuel, were to crash into one of the towers he or she would have responded: Not very much. The towers were in fact designed to survive such an occurrence structurally intact and no qualified professional ever saw any reason to challenge this claim.
On September 11, 2001, both towers were struck by aircraft. Both responded in a manner similar to each other, yet strikingly different from what we had been told to expect by the engineers.
To this day, the colossal nature of their failure remains largely unexplored. Where is our natural curiosity, to isolate the flaw and eliminate it from future designs?
Imagine a bus bursting into flames upon hitting a bicycle. An ocean liner that sinks when struck by a whale. A plane the wings of which detach in mid-flight with no explanation given.
Such mysteries would call for immediate attention. Serious study of materials and construction methods would be demanded. Wreckage would be salvaged and painstakingly re-assembled. And one step ahead of this process would be the media, digging for answers. Progress would spur daily updates, with expert analysis and calls for accountability.
What would emerge, in the end, would be more than better design. We would acquire a clearer understanding of our material world. To quote G. W Bush: “In Texas we have a saying. Fool me once. Shame on you. But fool me twice. Can’t get fooled again.”
By refusing to learn from our failure, have we set ourselves up to get fooled again?
In the case of the multiple structural failures at the World Trade Center, no adjustment in how we think about materials engineering is deemed necessary. For example: Several weeks after the attack, liquid metal was still found in the rubble. Would it not have made sense to determine its exact composition, its temperature, and the conditions required to create it? This might have led to further inquiry as to what combination of circumstances could have created such temperatures.
We continue to design and build skyscrapers as before. And we continue to live and work in these buildings without fear that they may suddenly collapse in some previously unforeseen way.
Why is there so much fear of terrorism, and so little fear of fire? Why is so much money and energy devoted to the “war on terror”, and none to the cause of building a structurally sound high-rise?
Unlike terrorism, fire is relatively commonplace. Is there something wrong in the way we perceive danger, and how we allocate resources to combat the threat?
It is hard to pin a dollar figure on all the combined measures that have arisen from 9/11. We know that the war in Iraq alone costs American taxpayers $200 million per day. Therefore, I propose modestly:
If I had access to the tiniest fraction of the budget spent by either nation, on keeping us safe from terrorism, I would build a model of the World Trade Center. If I opted for a scale of 1:60, then my towers would stand seventy-four meters tall.
Next, I would postulate what might happen if a Boeing 767 were to hit this structure. At 1/60 its actual size, the plane would be about one meter long, with a wingspan of 86 cm.
If the original predictions, by designers and engineers, had proven themselves correct, then I should expect very little to happen. The plane would explode in a spectacular fireball and puncture a plane shaped hole in the structure. There might also be an exit wound where debris emerged from the other side.
If I allowed the fire to burn itself out, I should expect it to last for several hours, gutting the upper floors. If their predictions had been correct.
I would fill my towers with combustible material. Inside the aircraft, I would place, amongst other things, a black box and a 4mm by 2mm piece of confetti, representing Ziad Jarrah’s passport.
It would take a little flight training to control a plane of this size. Having mastered the task, I would be ready to pilot the jet into the North Tower.
I would monitor the ensuing fire. If the spectacular events of 9/11 are to be duplicated, the building would collapse after burning less than two hours. The disintegration would be sudden and complete, reducing the structure to a pile of rubble in just 3.87 seconds.
Now I would examine the rubble. How big might the largest pieces be? Would there be sizable sections of twisted metal, or would there be no pieces longer than 11.6 cm? This is the more or less uniform length I should expect, if the singular feat of demolition by airplane is to be duplicated at this scale.
What would happen to the forty-seven load bearing steel columns at the center of the tower? Where would they go?
I would examine the molten steel, if any were to be found. I would search for the black box, and Ziad Jarrah’s passport somewhere under mountains of debris and toxic dust.
While the elaborate experiment just outlined might take us a long way towards isolating the spectacular design flaws of the WTC towers, it would do nothing to solve the greatest mystery to have emerged from September 11, 2001. What happened to building 7?
When discussing the issue, I am often amazed at how many people seem to have forgotten that this large building ever existed. In New York, the forty-seven story office tower was dwarfed by the giants that surrounded it. In an ordinary city, this could have been the tallest building around.
Media coverage of 9/11 has left us with the overwhelming impression that only two buildings collapsed in New York that day – one per airplane. One of the most under-investigated news items of all time is the collapse of the third building, some seven hours later.
Live footage of the collapse was not shown by the major news networks after the first day. This is curious, since WTC 7 continues to be a great mystery. FEMA was mystified, admitting that their best (and only) hypothesis of “fire and impact damage” only had a low probability of being correct. Seven years later, NIST was ready to deliver the final word on WTC 7. NIST scientists have gone to great lengths to outline the conditions that would lead to “catastrophic failure” of the building, but to date, no one is able to explain the mechanics that would allow such a catastrophic collapse to occur.
“Catastrophic collapse” of this nature has never been observed in any other context outside of the events of that day. Where was the much needed coverage of this singular study? Is no one interested?
Why has no one been indicted for the crime of destroying virtually all evidence immediately after the building collapsed? Wouldn’t the debris and twisted steel have helped NIST in their investigation? It is a felony to destroy evidence of a crime, but no one is guilty.
(Note that not all WTC steel was wasted. Seven-and-a-half tons of steel were salvaged and transformed into the bow of a new war ship – the USS New York.)
The official 9/11 commission investigating the disaster considered the demise of WTC 7 irrelevant and failed to include it in its 571 page final report. This fact alone should give one pause to think.
A bigger challenge then, for the aspiring model builder, would be to duplicate the collapse of building 7 using only a few isolated fires and a tank of diesel fuel. A fascinating project that would get top marks at any science fair – if only it could be done.
Now that Khalid Sheik Mohammed has confessed to being the mastermind behind this incredibly successful plot, it would be interesting to ask him how he managed to pull it off. How was he able to wipe three of the world’s largest buildings completely off the map, using only two commercial aircraft?
To those who contend that our world has changed since September 11, 2001 I say this:
We’ve seen nothing yet. Our remaining rights are being stripped away from us daily and escalating warfare is destroying the planet and robbing us of our humanity.
As collectively, we North Americans warm to the joys of living in a police state, I propose a different future:
If I could set the agenda, I would like to honour the victims of September 11, 2001, and their families, by helping to create a safer building. One that won’t collapse due to fire.
NOTE: This article was originally written in 2006, but never found a home.
