Inside the evacuation of the World Trade Center
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Photos by U.S. Navy Chief Photographer’s Mate Eric J. Tilford
When they were completed in the early 1970s, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center complex in New York City were seen as jewels of commerce. For a short while the tallest buildings in the world at 110 storeys each, had 3.8 million square feet each of office space and on a typical workday, accommodated 50,000 employees and another 200,000 visitors.
On September 11, 2001, that changed. At 8:46 AM, a 767 jet hijacked by terrorists hit the North Tower – Tower 1 – impacting between the 93rd and 99th floors. About 17 minutes later, another hijacked 767 hit the South Tower – Tower 2 – between the 77th and 85th floors. More than 17,000 people were in Towers 1 and 2 at the time the attacks occurred, and more than 14,000 people were estimated to have successfully evacuated the buildings.
Dr. Martin Sherman, Professor of Psychology at Loyola University Maryland, has studied the evacuation process from that morning through research with survivors. He tells ILSTV about what happened on the morning of September 11, 2001.
Dr. Martin Sherman: It took the average person in their evacuation about 60 seconds per floor in Tower 1 and in Tower 2, it took about 32 to 33 seconds on average, per floor. There were basically two different things that were happening in Tower 1 and Tower 2. Tower 1, they were hit and clearly that was very different than in Tower 2 which was, it was 17 minutes later before they were hit. In those 17 minutes, about 90 percent of the people in Tower 2 had already decided to evacuate before the second hitting occurred even though there was an announcement coming across Tower 2 that they were okay and secure, stay in your places, people had already decided to evacuate. So in Tower 1, you had a lot of individuals in the stairwells, you had first responders that were coming up, you had debris, you had water, you had smoke … all kinds of things were in the stairwells.
One of the biggest things was that many of the people had never … they had some fire drills in the Towers and people had experienced that, but they never left their floor. They never went into the stairwells. Number one, many people couldn’t locate where the stairwells were in the building, on their floor because they’d never been in them – they’d always been in the elevators. They did not know where to get into the stairwells from their floor and once there is a stairwell, many of them did not realize that some of the doors were locked for security purposes, that there were sky lobbies where you could have a switch from one stairwell to another stairwell – and they didn’t know that. There’s a lot of lack of awareness of the building and what one had to do in the event of an emergency.
Narrator: In “To Leave an Area After Disaster: How Evacuees from the WTC buildings Left the WTC Area Following the Attacks,” a report Dr. Sherman co-wrote, many evacuees reported that they waited for permission to evacuate before actually starting the process.
Dr. Martin Sherman: Many people were hesitant to leave because they were afraid that their supervisor would disapprove, they might lose their job. That is, their level of perceived risk wasn’t very high. Those individuals who perceived a high level of risk were more likely to make the decision to leave. The average amount of time that it took a person to make the decision, once they realized that something unusual was happening to the point of physically beginning to leave their floor, was about six minutes. When I think about back in 1993 when they had the first bombing in the basement of the Trade Tower, after the first responders went through the building, they still found people in the building up to six hours later. There were people who never evacuated. In this particular case it was sort of like they didn’t realize how serious it was. “If it’s not that serious, then why should I evacuate? And if I evacuate, then I might lose my job.”
Narrator: Dr. Sherman says the more people are aware of risks, the better they will likely be should they ever have to evacuate a high rise. While the 9/11 Commission said the evacuation of the Twin Towers was successful for those who were below the impact zone, Dr. Sherman says there’s a lot that can be learned from this experience, especially as office towers around the world continue to get higher and higher.
Dr. Martin Sherman: Getting to the point of recommendations is that there has to be a culture developed within an organization to convey to the employees the importance of safety and the organizations themselves are going to lead that and provide their employees with plans, action plans and what have you. If there is a pervasive sort of norm within the entire building, with all of the organizations in terms of making safety a priority and providing signs about safety and preparing individuals and going through evacuating not just one building, but having three or four buildings on the same block being evacuated at the exact same time and having people get into the streets and to experience that, I think with more experience like that, people will reduce the amount of time it takes them to realize if the situation is serious and will also basically teach them exactly what they have to do. That’s going to be something difficult to convince organizations to take time out from their work schedule and have people do this. But if we’re serious about this, it can be done. I think it typically has to be out there, people have to be informed that we need to do this. We need to prepare people for this because we never know where and when this might happen.
More lessons learned from the evacuation of the World Trade Center Towers:
- Be mindful of your footwear. “We found that one of the predictors in terms of getting an injury or not was whether or not you wore high heels,” said Dr. Sherman. “Women who had high heels had to take off their shoes in the stairwell and in bare feet were more likely to be bruised and have difficulty going down the stairwell.” One of the recommendations would be is make certain that if you are in a high rise that you have shoes that are appropriate in an evacuation process.
- Know your history. One of the predictors for psychological outcomes of 9-11 evacuees was their own medical history. “People who had a pre-existing psychological issue were more likely to end up with a long-term diagnosis of PTSD,” said Dr. Sherman. “If you do have a pre-existing condition, then having knowledge of an evacuation and how it’s done and going through that process is crucial and needs to be done.”
- Get training. “People who had emergency and preparedness training, they were able to make up their minds that they were in danger in a much quicker fashion and were less likely to be injured,” said Dr. Sherman. Training is also less likely to lead to a negative psychological outcome. “Those people who weren’t prepared were more likely to have a diagnosis of PTSD, depression, anxiety or a sleep disorder.”
Other titles in this series:
Canadian working in New York remembers September 11
US economy still paying terrorism’s toll a decade after 9-11 attack spurred costly wars
