Questions About WTC Towers?

Ive done a lot of investigating of my own when it comes to the attacks of 9/11. Ive ran across a lot of topics while researching the days events. The one thing I haven't heard anything about (or if I have I over looked it) is the fire suppression systems in place at the W.T.C. towers. Were they working that day? Were there even any in place? If not, any clues as to why? Any video/eyewitnesses evidence of them working or not working? This is my first post so don't hang me if this has been discussed before. SORRY if it has.

Welcome to ATS... here's a link to the 9/11 Commission report chapter that might have the answer to your question:

www.9-11commission.gov...

Thanks for your help!

After reading the commissions report it seems a lot of money was spent to upgrade the towers, yet theres no mention of any fire sprinklers, extinguishers etc. being installed or even being used that day that I could find.

Key Points:
I'm just wondering if the fires could have been put out if there was some kind of system in place. I also remember that firefighters ran up the towers with hoses. I also don't remember anyone that did make it out talking about getting wet or seeing water of any kind. A lot of people that came out (at least the ones Ive seen) were mainly covered in dust and debris.

Thats really why I asked my original question was because those key points have made me wonder if there was anything deliberately done to the fire system?

This is just a guess (and I think I read something about this before)...

The initial damage caused by the planes might have wiped out the water lines that could have fed the sprinkler system.

But you raise an interesting point. I'm not sure why there weren't sprinklers taking care of the fires, especially in WTC7.

They were covered in the NIST report which is where they should be covered anyways, not the 9/11 commission report. And it was determined that the sprinklers as well as the fireproofing was knocked out by the damage caused by the impact. Which makes sense seeing as it took out floors of the building and cut elevator cables, it's gonna damage the sprinkler systems.

It's a pretty well educated guess that the fireproofing was blasted out because it would have no way of being able to stay on from a blast like that. Not something that can really be reproduced but it's pretty certain and well accepted in the scientific community. It is however used by some CTers (or whatever word is preferred) that the lack of evidence for the removal of the fireproofing is evidence of a cover up. But again, there's no real way to recreate that. At the bottom line, it's far beyond plausible.

Well what you have said also poses another question. If the pipes carrying the water were severed, wouldn't someone have noticed? Say the firefighters? Don't they monitor a buildings water pressure if there is a fire? From my experience when I was an assistant manager we had a fire system that would alert us at the slightest instance of a loss of pressure in the sprinkler system. Since I live in Indiana, our state law mandates that in the event of a fire, the first thing that should be checked is the pressure of the sprinkler system, which is located at a central location and can be read by any average joe. It would simply tell you where and when the loss of pressure had occurred, which brings me back to my main question. If the fires in the buildings could not be contained, why has nothing ever been mentioned about this system? There has to be one in place since a lot of "upgrades" were made to the building before the attacks. I haven't heard any firefighters talk about checking that system (if there was one in place) and also who determined that the fire system had been knocked out? From what I know, this wasn't determined until the commissions report came out. Were the hoses used because this system was knocked out?

If a pipe ran from the bottom to the top and was then severed at the top, would water still push out the sprinkler system on the lower floors?

And I'm not an expert but wouldn't carrying a fire hose up 70 some floors make it lose some pressure as well? Several firefighters have said that they carried hoses up that high.

Again, I'm not an expert but this is just something I haven't heard being talked about either in the media other than the NIST report.

Here's an excerpt from NIST:

Both the NIST calculations and interviews with survivors and firefighters indicated that the aircraft impacts severed the water pipes that carried the water to the sprinkler systems. The sprinklers were not operating on the principal fire floors.

However, there were ample sources of the water in the stairwells. The water pipes ran vertically within the stairwells. Moreover, there would have been copious water from the broken restroom supply lines and from the water tanks that supplied the initial water for the sprinklers. Thus, it is not surprising that evacuating occupants encountered a lot of water.

Even if the automatic sprinklers had been operational, the sprinkler systems—which were installed in accordance with the prevailing fire safety code—were designed to suppress a fire that covered as much as 1,500 square feet on a given floor. This amount of coverage is capable of controlling almost all fires that are likely to occur in an office building. On Sept. 11, 2001, the jet-fuel ignited fires quickly spread over most of the 40,000 square feet on several floors in each tower. This created infernos that could not have been suppressed even by an undamaged sprinkler system, much less one that had been appreciably degraded.


(mod edit to remove unnecessary complete quote of preceding post)


[edit on 10-6-2007 by pantha]

Originally posted by snoopy
This amount of coverage is capable of controlling almost all fires that are likely to occur in an office building. On Sept. 11, 2001, the jet-fuel ignited fires quickly spread over most of the 40,000 square feet on several floors in each tower. This created infernos that could not have been suppressed even by an undamaged sprinkler system, much less one that had been appreciably degraded.

This explains WTC1 and WTC2. There was no jet fuel in WTC7. Did the NIST report have any explanation for why the sprinklers didn't help contain the fires in WTC7?

The report isn't done on that one. But they said there wasn't enough pressure for them to work. Basically they failed. But again, because the report isn't out yet, there aren't any specific details.

Where would the controls for the water sprinkler be in a typical high rise building or any building for that matter? It would seem to me that they would be in the basement areas since the water would be coming in from lines along the street, since the planes impacted WTC 1&2 much higher up, the water should have worked until it reached the impact zones.

This idea that the two buildings being damaged high up and due to this damage high up, completely shutting down the whole system, does not make sense to me, sure the floors that were hit and the ones above would be impacted, but until the water reached those floors the water sprinkler system should have worked.

Think of it this way, if you turn on a garden hose the water flows normally, poke a hole in it and the water will flow out of the hole, but until it reaches that hole in the hose there should be no problem. If the water comes in at street level, it should have worked properly until it reached the impact zone. Any experts here on water sprinkler systems or plumbers? Any mention in those reports what type of damage was done to the sprinkler system to completely shut down the system?

As for WTC 7 there was no impact zone and the sprinklers should have worked. Now if they are saying the impact damaged the whole water system around that area and thats why the water system was shut down and did not work in WTC 7, then how did the firemen manage to hook up their hoses and water down the area for days. Some of you may recall immediately after the impact, there was talk of survivors in the rubble, and there was a fear that many would drown from the large amount of water being used on the debris to put the fires out.



[edit on 10-6-2007 by goose]

Originally posted by goose
This idea that the two buildings being damaged high up and due to this damage high up, completely shutting down the whole system, does not make sense to me, sure the floors that were hit and the ones above would be impacted, but until the water reached those floors the water sprinkler system should have worked.

Yes, but the problem was that the fires were predominantly at or above the floors that were hit, so whether the sprinklers were working up to that point is a bit of a moot one.

And with WTC 7, no one really knows about it yet, but are there any pictures of it's damage from where the towers stood? If there are it would show a lot of the reasons why it collapsed.

Sprinkler Systems rely on pressure:

Wet System : water pressure
Dry System : air pressure

If there is a slight deviation in either, there is a back up pump called a "jockey pump". This pump maintains the pressure that is lossed due to an air pocket or a slight problem with the city water supply. If the pressure loss is far to great for the jockey pump to maintain, the Fire Pump will turn on that allows water to flow to the effected sprinkler heads, and or severed lines. Checking the pressure at a Fire Pump at the time of incident is irrelivent. Water will flow out to the effect areas only. Often you see movies where someone will light a fire under a sprinkler head and the entire office or school gets wet. This is not the case. ONLY the effected sprinker will allow the flow of water.

With WTC 1 & 2 the water flowed to unncessary areas. After the collapse of 1&2, water lines were severed in several areas. I believe that there was zero water in WTC7 and water in the vacinity was minimal. Firefighters were quoted as saying they were fighting the fire from 100's of feet away.

I also believe that after the first collapse that no longer where the firefighters in firefighting mode. It was a rescue and evacuation mode.

Yes, indeed. Which goes to show how dishonest was Silverstein's public statement on September 9, 2005
usinfo.state.gov...
that he had meant 'withdraw fire fighters' in the afternoon, not 'demolish' WTC 7, when he used his infamous phrase 'pull it.' There were no fire fighters to remove from the building! After the collapse of the twin towers had caused water main pipes to burst, there was no water to use to put out the fires in WTC 7 and we have three different public sources that state that all fighting of the fires stopped by mid-day.

Originally posted by micpsi
Yes, indeed. Which goes to show how dishonest was Silverstein's public statement on September 9, 2005
that he had meant 'withdraw fire fighters' in the afternoon, not 'demolish' WTC 7, when he used his infamous phrase 'pull it.' There were no fire fighters to remove from the building! After the collapse of the twin towers had caused water main pipes to burst, there was no water to use to put out the fires in WTC 7 and we have three different public sources that state that all fighting of the fires stopped by mid-day.

There were still firefighters around the area, it's not like there was NOTHING going on. The firefighters had establish a collapse zone and had to stop in their search and rescue in the debris for several hours.

I thought this Silverstein Strawman was done with...for two reasons:

1. Chief of Fire Department Can Not Orchestrate a controlled Demolition

2. Skyscraper owners can not tell fire fighters how to fight a fire.

Who determined that the fire system was damaged and then to start using hoses? Also, will fire hoses work all the way up to the impact zone? It seems to me that a fire hose will lose pressure once you go so high.

Someone mentioned that the pumps for the sprinkler would be in the basement so the impact couldn't have taken the whole system out. But I don't think anyone has claimed that the whole sprinkler system in 1& 2 went out, just in the areas that the impact occurred, and this is where the collapse began. I would imagine the sprinklers were working just fine in the rest of the building, but that is meaningless to the collapse itself which started at th point of impact.

Originally posted by nick7261
This explains WTC1 and WTC2. There was no jet fuel in WTC7. Did the NIST report have any explanation for why the sprinklers didn't help contain the fires in WTC7?

This is from NIST's June 2004 Progress Report. Another 9/11 coincidence.

Finding 2.23: In WTC 1, 2, and 7, primary and secondary water supplies, fire pump size and locations, water storage tanks, and fire department connections provided multiple points of water supply redundancy. The potential for single point failure of the water supply to the fire sprinklers existed at each floor due to lack of redundancy in the sprinkler riser system that provided only one supply connection on each floor. As a result, the water supply to the sprinkler systems or a standpipe serving pre-connected hoses could be interrupted by routine maintenance needs (i.e., shutdown of the riser or standpipe) or by impairment due to deliberate acts to damage the sprinkler riser or standpipe systems. While this lack of redundancy may not have had an impact on September 11, 2001 because the sprinkler system was damaged by aircraft impact, it could have made a difference in other building emergencies.

Finding 2.24 makes no reference to WTC 7.

Finding 2.25: The fire alarm system that was monitoring WTC 7 sent to the monitoring company only one signal (at 10:00:52 a.m. shortly after the collapse of WTC 2) indicating a fire condition in the building on September 11, 2001. This signal did not contain any specific information about the location of the fire within the building. From the alarm system monitor service view, the building had only one zone, “AREA 1.” The building fire alarm system was placed on TEST for a period of 8 h beginning at 6:47:03 a.m. on September 11, 2001. Ordinarily, this is requested when maintenance or other testing is being performed on the system, so that any alarms that are received from the system are considered the result of the maintenance or testing and are ignored. NIST was told by the monitoring company that for systems placed in the TEST condition, alarm signals are not shown on the operator’s display, but records of the alarm are recorded into the history file.

Thats exactly what I've been trying to find. Its rather odd that the system was (for a lack of a better term) "shut off" the day of the attacks. Weird to that maintenance was being performed that day for a period of 8 hours. It kinda makes you wonder and it further adds another whole into the governments version of events that day.

Did any other buildings in the surrounding area have their alarm systems also placed on standby? The Marriott etc.

What about the towers? Was a record kept of those buildings alarms too?

Thanks!

Not very meaningful though. The only thing affected was an alarm warning going to the monitoring company, not the alarms being recorded. And at that point you have planes hitting the towers and towers collapsing. An alarm at that point is not going to bring any more attention to the scene at the time. The whole point being the monitoring company can call the fire department and they can evacuate people.

Originally posted by micpsi
that he had meant 'withdraw fire fighters' in the afternoon, not 'demolish' WTC 7, when he used his infamous phrase 'pull it.' There were no fire fighters to remove from the building! After the collapse of the twin towers had caused water main pipes to burst, there was no water to use to put out the fires in WTC 7 and we have three different public sources that state that all fighting of the fires stopped by mid-day.

But I have seen photos of firefighters spraying WTC 4, 5 & 6. Why couldn't they just turn around and try and save WTC 7 as oppossed to 4, 5 & 6 which were more severly damaged and had massive fires? My reasoning is that 4, 5 & 6 were pretty much goners from the begininning. 7 wasn't. Why wouldn't they try and save a 40 some story building that houses all those government agencies as oppossed to 10 story or less buildings that have already been dessimated? Doesn't make sense to me, but I'm not a firefighter nor was I there.