, 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States: impact on civil protection 
The following article was written in 2002.
The terrorist attacks that occurred on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001 are unprecedented in scale of operation, the boldness and the degree of coordination. It appears that as many as 6 attacks have been planned, of which 3 have hit targets in full, causing the loss of 3000 lives. At the time of writing, not clear if these outrages will be unique in modern history, or they will kick off a new phase of global instability. In any case, the attacks on New York and Washington DC are having a profound impact on civil protection. This article will examine some aspects of the attacks with reference to the organization of emergency planning and emergency response. Although thanks to the media, the events of that terrible day are well known to all, be the first to summarize the sequence events to better understand what elements are important to the future planning of civil protection.
attacks
at 08:45 on 11 September 2001, during a normal commercial flight, a Boeing 767 is hijacked and driven against the upper floors of the north tower of World Trade Center (WTC) in the financial district Peninsula New York in Manhattan. Eighteen minutes later, another 767 hijacked more strikes against the adjacent South Tower. Both towers had 110 floors high. At 10 and 10 minutes a Boeing 757 plunged into the headquarters of the U.S. military, the Pentagon and at the same time another 757 rushes in rural Pennsylvania, apparently mancando il bersaglio che i dirottatori volevano colpire a Washington o nello stato di Maryland. Almeno tre altri aerei con a bordo terroristi armati di coltelli venivano nel frattempo fermati a terra durante il
groundstop , il successivo fermo generale dell’aviazione, sebbene la notizia della loro esistenza veniva resa pubblica soltanto dopo diversi giorni.
La capacità dei serbatoi di carburante dei 767 della Boeing di 90.770 litri, mentre quella dei 757 di 42.680 litri. Tutti i 4 aerei erano decollati con i serbatoi pieni pochi minuti prima di essere dirottati. Le 266 persone a bordo, compreso i 19 dirottatori, muoiono negli scontri e non ci sono superstiti. In tutti i tre edifici colpiti, il carburante dei velivoli alimenta deflagrazioni. Fireballs are injected into both towers of the WTC: the northern fire takes between 95 º and 103 º floor, the south between 82 º and 93 º. The fire at the Pentagon, the largest office building in the world, continues for several hours but was contained by the massive structure of the building, designed to withstand a military attack.
The WTC was built in the 60s, with a structure composed of steel beams covered in concrete. The tower has a strong central column in which there were lifts (198 in all), scales and pipes for the distribution of services. The supporting beams radiating from this central section connecting to the outside with the rest of the casing structure.
impacts and the flames destroy the fire, while the temperature in the upper floors of two buildings rose rapidly to about 800-1100 degrees. Within an hour it became the cement dust or soot. Before the beams deformed by the intense heat and then melts. Sixty minutes after the impact the south tower collapses. That follows the north at 1028, 103 minutes after the brunt of the first plane.
According to the designers, the towers were constructed to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707, the normal airliner in the 60s, and block the development of a fire for about two hours, the time "Project" for the total evacuation of the two tallest towers (the World Trade Center consisted of 7 buildings). It would, however, extremely difficult to design these buildings to withstand the impact, the explosion and the fireballs of premeditated and carefully planned attacks like those of September 11.
The overall figure of the dead is estimated to be 44 units in Pennsylvania, 189 in the Pentagon and World Trade Center in 2765, including hundreds of foreigners in the second case from about 60 countries. A few dozen of the victims were Italian. Given that at times of peak times, the host at 40.000 WTC workers and 80,000 visitors, the mortality rate in New York is reduced by evacuation which had, after all, successful. But dozens of people trapped on upper floors with no possibility of rescue by jumping from windows to avoid dying a slow end in the flames.
Of particular importance for civil protection, the death of 343 firefighters and 78 policemen, who rushed to the WTC just after being warned the fighting and, in many cases they climbed the fire escape with the intention of the towers to save people trapped, or to fight the flames.
The collapse could have been much more devastating impact if the aircraft had taken place, and the resulting fires developed in the lowest points of the towers. Thus, these could fall on the buildings adjacent turning as felled trees, while in reality it fell vertically on a rather narrow. At the beginning of the collapse, the displacement of the load on the upper floors at the lower of about 100,000 tons, and the resulting pile of rubble, which also contains the remains of as many as 3 other buildings (including the WTC-7, a 47-story skyscraper ), weighs about 1,200 million tonnes. The collapse generated seismic waves of earthquakes comparable to a maximum magnitude of 3.2.
Analysis
While almost all the individual elements of the attacks are comparable to some aspects of previous events (eg, the clash of a fighter plane against the Empire State Building), the sum of the effects, and thus the severity of the total impact, has no parallel in the history of terrorism. The magnitude of the attack, the degree of coordination and lack of notice fall outside of any other experience. Therefore, planning before the event could not draw enough inspiration from other events to describe the scenario. Despite this, many lessons can be learned by what happened. Here is a brief reflection on some key issues.
problems in New York
evacuation procedures. For years, the evacuation of tall buildings was the subject of dispute. The skyscrapers are high levels of vulnerability with regard to the risk of fire or structural failure. Some photographs taken during the evacuation of one of the towers of the WTC show narrow stairs (of width less than a meter) and crowded with people trying to get down, pinching the walls to pass the firefighters going up, loads of cylinders oxygen and other tools.
Having received conflicting instructions from colleagues, not all the occupants of the towers were going immediately to the outputs, especially those who were still saw the rain of debris from above and that they felt more secure inside and out. Eventually, many of those who reached the stairs were il buio, il fumo e la presenza di grandi quantità di acqua provenienti dalla rottura dei sistemi di spegnimento degli incendi.
Sebbene una quantità elevata di persone siano riuscite ad evacuare dalle torri (forse il 90%), molte persone hanno impiegato più di un’ora di arrivare al pianterreno dal 70º piano e oltre. Una volta arrivate, il fumo, la polvere e la pioggia di detriti che cadeva continuamente nella piazza del WTC rendeva molto pericoloso il tentativo di uscire. Più positivamente, come avrebbero previsto i sociologi che si occupano dei disastri, il panico sembra essere stato molto limitato: la stragrande maggioranza delle persone si sono comportate in modo calmo e razionale, anche in situazioni apocalittiche.
Scenari di pianificazione per gli edifici alti . Nei giorni successivi, alcuni esperti di ingegneria strutturale comunicano ai mass media la gravità degli incendi (cioè, pochi minuti dopo l’impatto) rendendosi conto che le torri dovevano inevitabilmente crollare. Le implicazioni di tali dichiarazioni per la pianificazione degli interventi di emergenza sono profonde. Sebbene sottostimare il rischio di crollo comprensibile sotto circostanze davvero eccezionali, a New York 248 pompieri e 95 soccorritori partirono da 5 distretti e da 34 compagnie dei Vigili del Fuoco newyorchese e poi morirono. Per di più, molti mezzi dei servizi di soccorso vengono schiacciati nel doppio crollo delle torri.
E’ normale basare contingency plans for catastrophic events more likely and less rather than on almost unthinkable with truly apocalyptic consequences. Yet disaster planning needs to "think the unthinkable": it should get used to the Disaster Manager to adapt its decisions and actions at the very unusual conditions. Taking into account that there is nothing more cruel and deceitful of hindsight, we must rethink, rather deeply, the management of major disasters that hit the tall buildings. As part of the municipal emergency plans, we must formulate detailed scenarios of response to such situations.
In the United States each year 16,000 to 20,000 tall buildings catch fire, killing between 80 and 90 people and wounding 800-900. Obviously, the problem is not restricted USI: for example, Sao Paulo in the 70s was the scene of two famous fires in skyscrapers, where dozens of people died trapped. So it's not a problem so unusual.
The most significant issue is the safety of emergency workers, the need to speed up the evacuations, and the need to protect the evacuees while leaving the building. The first part of the attached table provides a range of theoretical predictions of time to evacuate the WTC calculated using some nonlinear equations developed in a series of evacuation drills carried out on tall buildings in downtown Toronto in Canada in the 70s. The second part shows the real time of evacuation after the terrorist attack on the WTC in 1993 when a bomb caused a series of fires and the general diffusion of smoking in both towers. As the data, the total evacuation of these buildings required more than 2 hours, and maybe more than 3.
emergency management. The emergency management center in the district of Manhattan was to be located in the north tower of the WTC, where the Port Authority of New York-New Jersey had rented a suite of offices on the 2 º, 14 º and 19 º floors. The decision to house the main operations center in the WTC was an act of defiance against terrorism following the bomb in '93, He was also a strategic move, given the central role of the WTC in the area of \u200b\u200bhigh finance in New York. Obviously, under the circumstances become less suitable place overall. From this we can conclude that in complex urban environments as Manhattan would be required that different operational centers located in protected areas and connected in a network. Each of these should have the ability to become the main center if that were destined to be rendered unusable.
Other aspects of emergency management in New York have had more positive outcomes. Since the end of the peninsula of Manhattan surrounded by water on three sides, it was pretty easy to cordon off the affected area and control access. I battelli evacuavano i feriti attraverso il fiume Hudson ad un posto medico avanzato a Jersey City, sulla riva del New Jersey. Malgrado la lentezza del trasporto littorale, era molto più facile e sicuro soccorrere le vittime così, ad una certa distanza dal fumo e dalla confusione di Manhattan. Di 5284 feriti, il 7,9% aveva bisogno di una degenza in ospedale. Il centro traumatologico di primo livello più vicino al sito della sciagura raggiunse la sua quota di pazienti (circa 200) entro 2 ore dall’inizio della catastrofe, e in seguito i feriti sono stati distribuiti tra 83 delle 170 ospedali delle 5 borough e 3 contee della zona metropolitana di New York.
Alle ore 17,00 dell’11 settembre il soccorso medico aveva raggiunto la its full strength, but the second wave of casualties, anxiously awaited by doctors and nurses, there was not. Eight hours after the onset of the disaster there was no more need to practice triage.
Search and Rescue. At the site of the New York disaster billion and 200 million tons of debris had accumulated in a tangle very compact but quite unstable. It was extremely difficult to penetrate this to find people trapped, and most importantly, fires broke out all the time. The voids were filled with dust, mud or fire and the surrounding buildings threatened to collapse at any moment (in fact, the WTC-7, 47 floors collapsed towards 17.20 on the same day of the tragedy). Despite search and rescue operation involving up to 1,200 rescue workers at a time (the maximum number that could work in space available), very few people were found alive, and those only at the beginning of the rescue operation.
The enormous weight of the buildings collapsed, and excessive fragmentation took place during the collapses, meant that the proportion of voids was less than the figure of 15% found in other big collapses of buildings, such as in earthquakes. The scale of the massive accumulation and instability of the site required the use of heavy vehicles of the types that are usually not used in such circumstances for fear of crushing the victims still alive but trapped under the rubble. In addition, the precariousness of the site required a series of interruptions to the work of rescue workers were struggling while desperately to consolidate the walls still standing. However, with the passage of time, work became more regular and, by dividing the site into 4 zones of control, 90,000 tonnes of rubble were removed during the first week.
Problems in Washington, DC
An editorial comment published in authoritative newspaper
The Washington Post a week after the disaster said that "an examination of the events of last Tuesday indicates that the District [Washington DC] was unprepared for emergency and therefore was unable to react and assist the public quickly and effectively. "This statement serious enough to require clarification and explanation.
communications and emergency response . The United States has a system for transmitting emergency messages to the public through radio and television that is regularly put to the test. On the morning of the disaster this tool was not activated in the District of Columbia. Nevertheless, the majority of citizens obtained information on what to do by the same media that would have sent messages from the government, but the interpretations of the situation made and received from journalists are not necessarily the official ones. In fact, in some cases it seems that an official policy of the emergency was not there. For example, the head of the Office of the Mayor, unable to communicate by telephone because of the overhead lines and cellular networks, used the mail to order the evacuation of federal agencies. But four minutes after the Chief of the city sent the countermand, always e-mail. The first message was sent in response to information, proved wrong, that three other planes were to fall on the capital and the second was the result of a decision not to suspend the operation of government during the crisis.
Aside from the obvious conclusion that e-mail is not a good way to spread an evacuation order, but the Internet was slowed down by overloaded and therefore lost its ability to transmit messages in real time. In any case, in fact non-essential workers were returning home on their own, creating smooth road all over the District of Columbia and blocking the movement of emergency vehicles. A system of traffic management (the result of planning "Year 2000", called "Y2K") was activated only after 3 hours and managed to loosen congestion.
According to the forecasts for any emergency, some satellite phones should be placed in key government officials in Washington. Unfortunately, these tools have remained closed in a closet until the next day. In addition, the Local Health District did not have radios capable of monitoring communications between hospitals and ambulances, and then, given the non-functioning of telephones, was not able to participate in the formulation of logistical decisions and to estimate the availability of health services.
emergency plans. The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, which has a workforce of 3800 employees, a plan is not kept or anti-terrorist nor a procedure to inform the police and their commanders on the road where and how to respond to the crisis. The commanders were forced to improvise a plan to the minute. The police was not aware of the decision taken by the federal government to send his employees home, and then was caught by surprise by the influx of traffic on the roads.
Meanwhile, the houses of Parliament were not evacuated. Was it better that way, since deputies and senators were not trained in the evacuation and the plan was not updated regarding the location of emergency exits of the building. Although he feared an attack right at the Capitol.
On the other hand, however, the Metropolitan Washington immediately put in place its emergency plan and continued to function well throughout the crisis. Unfortunately, many commuters took that was not in operation and tried to return home on the roads, so the circulating half-empty trains.
The Arlington County (Virginia), peripheral to the city, launched its emergency plan 10 minutes after the start of the crisis. Luckily, however, that there were not many casualties, because the administration of the city of Washington declared that the Washington Hospital Center, the best trauma center in the area, could not accommodate a large number of victims.
Conclusion. At a time when the Secret Service realized that a third plane was heading to the White House (and then with a sudden change at the Pentagon), did not have a procedure to bring it down and at the fighters would cover 200 km before arriving in Washington. But apart from such a drastic measure as hypothetical and killing, was abundantly clear that the magnitude of a possible terrorist attack on the U.S. capital was widely underestimated in the plans, if there were. The scenarios were too modest, particularly about the likely level of chaos, and the existing plans were neither comprehensive nor sufficiently clear about the likely risks. In fact, an emergency simulation carried out during the month of June 2001 provided for a chemical attack in the open air in front of the Smithsonian National Museum, no damage and few casualties.
addition, the Agency for Civil Protection City of Washington had neither the funds nor the manpower to create and burn in a contingency plan of the size you need. Following the crisis, its parent organization, FEMA, churches (and usually won) $ 250 million a week to carry out relief work: infinitely superior to those amounts that were requested (and obtained) to finance the plan before the attacks.
According to the consensus that prevailed before Sept. 11, the city needed to plan well coded but largely generic, such as the plan "ThreatCon" (
Conditions threatening, that is, threatening conditions) of the U.S. military, which lists what to do a series of alert levels. The ThreatCon worked pretty well during emergencies in New York and Washington, but as a tool to deal with such disasters was not enough.
Conclusion
If the terrorist outrages of 11 September 2001 will remain a rather unique series of events in history, or into a new era of attacks, it is not known yet. The events of that day took place in the middle of town so rich in resources and sources of assistance are not missed. If anything, the opposite of congestion and the reactions of convergence towards the site of the attack were a major problem. As a necessary consequence, measures to quell the confusion were necessarily drastic. In this sense, terrorism leads, inevitably, a more authoritarian than other forms of disaster, with the exception of the war itself. Emergency planners need to better address this issue in order to incorporate a structure of civil protection in response to terrorism dominated by police and military forces.
The medical, psychological, economic and strategic disaster will go on for years, with profound impact not only on the victims' families and the prospects for peace in the world, but also on the community of the American Civil Protection. Hopefully, however, that the events of that terrible day, and all his seguito domestico e internazionale, stimoleranno un miglioramento della pianificazione di emergenza, con "regole di combattimento" più precise e scenari di risposta più dettagliati e accurati. Creare questi strumenti considerato un obbligo da molti operatori nel settore che vogliono rendere omaggio ai coraggiosi soccorritori che hanno perso la vita nel cuore di Manhattan.
Tabella nº 1. Tempi di evacuazione della World Trade Center, New York
Tempi teorici di evacuazione
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Pauls (1980) equazione di flusso medio
10.000 persone per scala = 2 ore 14 minuti per uscire
20.000 persone per scala = 2 ore 41 minuti per uscire
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Pauls e Jones (1980) equazione per il tempo totale di evacuazione
10.000 persone per scala = 1 ore 59 minuti
20.000 persone per scala = 3 ore 56 minuti
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Tempi misurati di evacuazione
Quenemoen et alii (1996) evacuazione in seguito alla bomba e l’incendio del 1993
Tempi di evacuazione per 161 persone:
48% meno di 60 minuti
27% tra 60 e 120 minuti
25% pi di 120 minuti
L’11 settembre 2001, il crollo delle due torri termin le evacuazioni 62 e 103 minuti dopo l’inizio della crisi con circa il 90% delle persone evacuate.
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Opere citate:
Pauls, J.L. 1980. Building evacuation research findings and recommendations. In D. Can(curatore) Fires and Human Behavior. John Wiley & Son, New York.
Pauls, J.L. e B.K. Jones 1980. Building evacuation: research methods and case studies. In D. Canter (curatore) Fires and Human Behavior. John Wiley & Son, New York.
Quenemoen, L.E., Y.M. Davia, J. Malilay, T. Sinks, E.k. Noji and S. Klitzman 1996. The World Trade Center bombing: injury prevention strategies for high-rise buildings. Disasters 20(2): 125-132.
