The World Trade Center Bombing: Injury Prevention Strategies for High‐rise Building Fires

Abstract

The WTC disaster provided an opportunity to look for ways to prevent morbidity among occupants of high-rise buildings during fires. This paper first describes the overall morbidity resulting from the explosion and fire, and second, presents the results of a case-control study carried out to identify risk factors for smoke-related morbidity. The main ones include: increased age, presence of a pre-existing cardio-pulmonary condition, entrapment in a lift and prolonged evacuation time. Study results point to the importance of the following safety systems during high-rise building fires: smoke-control systems with separate emergency power sources; lift-cars, lift-car position-monitoring systems, and lift-car communication systems with separate emergency power sources; two-way emergency communication systems on all floors and in stairwells; stairwells with emergency lighting and designed for the rapid egress of crowds; evacuation systems/equipment to assist in the evacuation of vulnerable people (elderly, infirm). Also important are evacuation plans that include regularly scheduled safety training and evacuation drills.

The Prevalence of Trauma Injuries From Neighboring Countries Transferred to Iran

“…Smoke inhalation injuries are not prevalent in bombings (except for confined-space bombings). 21 The prevalence of burn injuries in the current study was not high either. Pulmonary blast injury (PBI) is very common in terrorist bombings, but most of these victims die at the scene due to the severity of their injuries.…”

Civilian Preparedness and Counter-terrorism: Conventional Weapons

“…Peak arrival time to the ED is reported to occur 30 to 60 minutes after the event; but there has been great variability. In the 1993 WTC bombing, only 50% of injured had been transported to EDs within 3.5 hours, and injured personnel were still arriving at EDs 24 hours later [14,28,37]. Most injured survivors extricate themselves or are extricated by bystanders.…”

“…The highest rate of inhalation injury reported was 93% in the 1993 World Trade Center (WTC) bombing where structural fire occurred and delayed evacuation led to prolonged smoke exposure [28]. Fifty-two percent of immediate survivors of the 2001 WTC bombing sought emergency care for inhalation injury because of structural fire or dust from structural collapse [14].…”

Selection and evaluation of fire related scenarios in multifunctional buildings considering antagonistic attacks

“…As an example the bombing of the World Trade Center (WTC), 1993, can be mentioned, where the fire alarm communication system (control center) was lost so that occupants did not get evacuation information, and masonry fire walls and fire doors were voided by the force of the explosion (Isner and Klem 1993). Normal and emergency electrical power was lost affecting sprinkler system as well as emergency lighting (Isner and Klem 1993) and the smoke management system was damaged (Quenemoen et al 1996). The situation where a single failure (in this case electricity) is disabling several protection systems is often referred to as common-cause failure (CCF) and will be discussed further in the following sections.…”