Leaked FEMA/ASCE Draft Report On WTC Collapse

securitas writes "The New York Times obtained a copy of the World Trade Center draft report by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the American Society of Civil Engineers about the engineering failures that caused the towers to collapse. Among the findings: 'Fireproofing, sprinkler systems and the water supply for hoses were all disabled and the fires generated heat equivalent to the energy output of a nuclear power plant' reports the NYT (Yahoo link). Amazingly, if it wasn't for the fire (or another secondary catastrophic force), the towers would have remained standing."

Comments

Rebuild

[circletimessquare]

i worked at 5 WTC until september 11th, and have been mentally grasping with the idea: rebuild? or not?

seriously, what do slashdotters think? I can think of a few pros and cons:

con:
-survivors families want a memorial park.
-who would work in a new building?
-would structural constraints make it impossible economically/ physically?

pro:
-it is downtown manhattan after all, one of the engines of the world economy.
-this fema analysis seems to suggest just making some improvements in the firecode is all that is needed to ensure future safety.
-it was a failure of intelligence that caused september 11th primarily (the phillipines warned us about arab terrorists training to crash planes into buildings 7 years before september 11th, for one). i mean seriously, is another september 11th even possible in today's climate? what group of airplane passengers would stay in their seats for a repeat occurence? september 11th seems like a one-time deal to me.

seriously, to rebuild or not seems a pretty tough decision. what does everyone think?