Concerning the occupants of the WTC on a certain September day, I wondered

[Valerie5555]

why they obeyed the instructions to return to those buildings when they should have stayed out of them.


I just got the impression that more would have survived had they obeyed their gut intuition rather than PA system instructions.

[XanaDUer]

1. Probably fear of losing their jobs.

and/or panic.

[blondeatlast]

2. I knew people who perished that day, please explain what you mean.

The entire NY branch of my husband's then employer died--75 people.

[Valerie5555]

4. Was NOT blaming the victims, I just read somewhere that some of the

WTC occupants were actually TOLD to return to one of the Twin Towers via PA system instructions that day for they were told the building was SECURE or something like that. If anyone intended to FATALLY mislead them with that info, how sick or :puke: was that????????????????????????????????????

[expatriate]

8. I lost seven friends and family that day in the towers.

What is the OP's point? Are they pointing fingers at these people, as if their deaths were their own fault? Is it to prove a theory that people were deliberately sent back into the buildings?

[lenidog]

3. What are you talking about?

[Valerie5555]

7. Just a bit of information I remembered reading on rense.com

eom.

[lenidog]

11. The reson I asked it because I have never heard of it

[Individualist]

16. The Port Authority announced building 2 was secure

and told evacuating employees they could return. www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wtc/above.html

[lenidog]

17. Thank You

Probably why they did it was they were afraid to have people milling about and causing mass confusion when they were trying to get emergency services there.

[Lex]

5. Let's be careful, because this kind of sounds like blaming them

for what happened.

Hindsight is 20/20.

[Valerie5555]

9. Maybe on second thought no one DID expect that the buildings were going to

COLLAPSE or anything like that.

[mcscajun]

15. I worked in the South Tower. It was InconCEIVABLE

that the towers would collapse, ever. I could not begin to grasp it when it happened. No way.

[undeterred]

18. well, I have to ask

do you believe that the towers fell from the impact of the planes and ensuing fires or do you think that the buildings were demolished?

[mcscajun]

19. I believe that the towers fell from the impact of the planes and the fires

I don't believe the theories on demolition from below. The construction of the towers was like two gigantic tubes...all the supporting structure on the shell, immense concrete slabs across.

The buildings were constructed to withstand the impact of the largest passenger planes in existence when they were designed in the late 60's (erected in the early 70s, the designs had been in the works for some time). Obviously, planes and their fuel tanks got bigger in 30 years.

[expatriate]

20. I do remember the designer of the towers

saying, shortly after 9/11, that the design would not have ever held up to the fuel load the planes were carrying, that they were built to withstand an impact from a typical airliner in the 1960's. The steel support beams began melting and the towers crumpled in what looked like a controlled implosion. The designer went on to say that he attempted to contact people in New York as soon as he heard the tower had been struck by a plane to tell them that the tower would not withstand the impact, that the steel support beams would probably not hold up to the heat of the fuel burning - but he could not get through.

It should also be remembered that at the time the first tower was struck, people in authority thought it had been an accident, which is why they gave the all clear to people in the second tower. I think at that time, no-one would have ever considered the possibility of a second airliner striking the second tower. People also probably didn't expect the first tower to collapse, and advised people to return to what they thought would be a safer place than standing around underneath a skyscraper that had been struck by an airliner (and that had people jumping out of it).

Personally, I doubt that people deliberately sent others to their deaths by telling them to remain in the second tower. I know people who did manage to get out of the towers alive and they said it was absolute chaos with all kinds of contradictory things being said and done.

[CornField]

21. "no-one would have ever considered the possibility"

This is not a personal attack on you, but an attack on that line of thinking. So many times I've heard people say those words: "who could have ever imagined a plane as weapon?" or "no one could have imagined."

Bullshit! The people in authority positions had been running simulations of just a thing happening. Once again - they LIED.

[expatriate]

22. Gotcha - bad word choice for me

Yes, some people knew that planes could and would be used as weapons - I meant that I doubt anyone working in the World Trade Center on September 11 would have considered that a second plane would strike the building. The people who were the victims. So when told what to do by people in authority positions, they did what they were told.

Sorry about that - it's a very hard subject for me to discuss at all, even now. I do know that people in authority, the Bush administration, knew that this could happen and had been warned that it was likely to happen. They lied.

[Swede]

6. The second tower employees were told to go back to work

before the second plane hit. I remember a second tower survivor in an interview saying she was the only employee that didn't listen to the PA and no one else made it out.

[uppityperson]

10. "why do people do what they are told, beyond their better instincts"?

Is this the question?

[Cassandra]

12. Keep in mind that..

the people who issued those instructions mostly died.

[CornField]

13. I watched a show - I think it was on Discovery

Where they showed people in high-stress, (simulated) life-threatening situations.

For instance, in one they had airline flight attendants doing training. Part of the training was a simulated plane crash. These folks who are supposedly trained to help others in that same emergency situation froze up for several seconds before they acted. Many said they didn't expect the smoke to fill the cabin so quickly, etc.

They also spoke with a woman who was in the second tower and made it out on Sept. 11. She said that she and the people working on her floor heard the announcement that their tower was given the "all clear" and that they were to return to their desks. There was some discussion and they decided they were going to leave the building. She got up and headed to the stairs. She said that when she looked back over her shoulder, others just seemed to be walking around in a daze. Some were powering down their computers... others gathering papers or personal items.

In any event, the experts who studied all these situations said that in times of severe emergency, many people find that their brains are overloaded with information -- and they cease to fuction well. They performed studies which showed that the more often people were given 'dry runs' of emergency situations, the better they fared when faced with a real emergency.

[mcscajun]

14. I used to work on the 45th floor, South Tower. There's not a lot...

...of visibility in terms of range of vision, due to the shape, construction and siting of the two buildings. If you can't see exactly what's going on, and somebody's telling you that your building is safe, stay where you are, a lot of people are going to follow instructions.

A great many people who had history in the building; that is, had worked in the building prior to the bombing in '93, didn't listen to the assurances and left the building. They'd already been through an emergency evacuation and knew what to do, and were (mostly) less likely to listen to advice to go back. And even the '93 evacuations weren't the first. I can recall a transformer explosion (it was in the summer of '90 or '91, I can't quite pin it down now) where my coworkers had to hike down 45 floors and more in the middle of the afternoon.

These kind of experiences leave you far more likely to leave a building regardless of what you've been told.

For the record, I'm never going to work above the 7th floor ever again...in my life.

Now...what brought this on, anyway?