How the World Trade Center was built. Possibility of resisting fire and aircraft hits

IN ORBIT - “GEMINI” However, let’s return from the world of myths, versions and assumptions to what actually happened. And let's see how preparations actually went for one of the most ambitious events in the history of mankind - landing on another

The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center have been a symbol of the financial power of the United States and New York for almost three decades, and as a result, today they are associated with one of the most tragic events in recent history - the September 11 terrorist attacks. However, it would not hurt to look at the undoubtedly unique history that the twin towers had.

The decision that an ultra-modern office complex would be built in an inconspicuous part of Lower Manhattan was made back in the early 60s of the last century. New York was undergoing significant renovation in those years, so it was quite logical that the developer and chairman of the Chase Manhattan bank, David Rockefeller, and his brother, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, came to the conclusion that such a large-scale project was necessary in a rather poor part of the city at that time . In 1962, under the leadership of the Port Authority, planning began for the complex, the author of the project was the famous American architect of Japanese origin, Minoru Yamasaki. His idea to build two huge towers, the likes of which no city in the world knew at that time, caused a lot of controversy. In particular, many noted that they simply disfigured the appearance of the city.

However, construction began in 1966, which lasted 7 years and encountered many difficulties. To begin with, 164 buildings had to be demolished, five streets had to be closed, and 1.2 million cubic yards of earth had to be removed from which Battery Park City would later be formed. At one point, up to 3,500 workers could be working on the construction site. In total, approximately 10,000 people were involved in the construction of the towers, 60 of whom, alas, did not live to see the completion of construction.

The structure of the towers was very atypical for its time - avoiding masonry, the engineers used special steel beams running the entire height of the building. There were 61 such beams on each side. The columns of the towers were clad in aluminum and located only half a meter apart from each other, so that from a distance the twin towers could appear as buildings without any windows. The floors between floors consisted of concrete slabs and corrugated steel and were attached to the external load-bearing walls.

Particular attention was paid to the elevators, which were designed specifically for the towers by Otis. A total of 239 elevators with a lifting capacity of over 4.5 tons were installed. Opened on April 4, 1973, the North and South towers were 417 and 415 meters in height, respectively, and the northern one was also crowned with a huge antenna. In total, the towers had 110 floors, and at the time of construction they were the tallest skyscrapers on the planet.

Act of terrorism

The Twin Towers have had their fair share of challenges. The first truly serious disaster was a fire in 1975, which broke out on the 11th floor and then spread between the 9th and 14th floors.

However, these were still flowers compared to the terrorist attack of 1993, when on February 26 a truck with 680 kilograms of explosives was blown up in the underground parking lot of the North Tower. The result was a 30-meter hole, which “decorated” 5 underground floors at once, and serious smoke in the building, which was felt even on the upper floors. 5 people died, and the perpetrator of the terrorist attack, Ramzi Yusef, managed to escape to Pakistan. However, he was soon caught and extradited to the States, where he faced a life prison sentence.

Alas, after the first terrorist attack, the WTC buildings remained standing for only eight and a half years. It all ended on September 11, 2001, when two terrorist attacks led to the destruction of both towers.

First, at 8:46 a.m., an American Airlines plane hijacked by terrorists, operating flight number 11, collided with the North Tower. Its impact hit the northern façade of the building between the 93rd and 99th floors. At the same time, as a result of this blow, a severe fire broke out, and all possible exits for those who were on the upper floors were blocked, thus over a thousand people were trapped.

Seventeen minutes after the first attack, another United Airlines plane hijacked by terrorists, operating flight number 175, crashed into the South Tower. Moreover, this airliner hit the space between the 77th and 85th floors, that is, noticeably lower than the first, however, due to the fact that The space closer to the corner of the tower was damaged; one flight of stairs remained intact, which saved many lives.

The South Tower was the first to collapse - at 9:59, as its supporting structures were severely damaged by the plane's impact and the fire that broke out afterwards. In the North Tower, the fire lasted 102 minutes, so it collapsed a little later - at 10:28.

Also on September 11, but in the evening, the seventh building of the World Trade Center complex collapsed. As a result, it was necessary to get rid of all the buildings of the World Trade Center as not subject to restoration and further use. The same fate befell the neighboring Marriott Hotel, damaged by the towers' debris, and the Deutsche Bank building, which was subsequently dismantled.

The total number of victims of these terrible terrorist attacks in New York is estimated at 2,752 people - that is how many death certificates were issued by the authorities. However, it is often emphasized that if the attacks had occurred not in the morning, but at the height of the working day, there could have been many times more casualties, since there were usually about 50 thousand people in the towers at the same time during these hours.

After the terrorist attacks, a huge number of stories appeared about how many people, due to various domestic or transport problems, did not have time to work, which ultimately saved their lives. Among all companies, the largest number of victims - 658 - was accounted for by the Cantor Fitzgerald L.P. bank, located on the 101-105 floors of the North Tower. Also, 343 New York firefighters, 84 Port Authority employees and approximately 60 police officers were killed in the terrorist attacks.

In the recent history of both the United States and the whole world, such victims as a result of terrorist attacks are something completely unprecedented and truly terrifying. It is safe to say that September 11 was the first such event in the history of the new millennium, after which we can say that the world has truly changed.

Original taken from mgsupgs in History of the Twin Towers

Original taken from igornasa to the World Trade Center - from foundation to Ground Zero
Story WTC (World Trade Center) started in 1946.

It was the first post-war year - Europe was in ruins, Japan was recovering from the consequences of the atomic bombing, China was on the premonition of civil war. The only country that cost with little blood, with a mighty blow, there was the USA - for a very short time the world became Pax Americana.

Pax americana et sovietica

The dollar was recognized as an international means of payment, the Marshall Plan began to be implemented, the International Monetary Fund, the International Bank and, of course, the UN were created.
The UN headquarters is located in cosmopolitan New York.

In 1946, New York's city fathers, anticipating the rise of international trade in the postwar world, proposed building a "World Trade Center" in Lower Manhattan.

The idea turned out to be premature. The Soviet Union, having the most powerful land army, acquired an atomic bomb. The Soviets lowered the Iron Curtain over Europe, and in Asia, having become forever friends with China, they unleashed the Korean War.

world from Pax americana turned into Pax americana et sovietica (peace the American way and the world the Soviet way)

The Cold War did not really contribute to the flourishing of international trade - the Americans returned to the idea of ​​​​building a World Trade Center only in the late fifties. The word “worldwide” now referred exclusively to the capitalist world.

The center was supposed to be built in Lower Manhattan, which was in deep crisis. After 1929, not a single new skyscraper was built here, and the area itself gradually turned into a ghost town. It was the Rockefeller brothers, David and Nelson, who stopped this process.

Rockefellers. "Baron", philanthropist, politician, banker

(Golden calf)

The brothers belonged to not the latest dynasty in the capitalist world - their grandfather was the same Robber Baron (robber baron) John Rockefeller Sr., who is Standard Oil and whose father is a philanthropist John Rockefeller Jr.(Rockefeller Center).

John Rockefeller Sr.

John Rockefeller Jr. and his sons - David, Nelson, Winthrop, Lawrence and John Rockefeller III, awaiting the arrival of the coffin containing the body of John Rockefeller Sr. (1937)

If the founder of the dynasty, the world's first "dollar" billionaire, forever remained branded as a robber baron, then his heirs became famous as philanthropists and political figures - money has no smell.
The most notable figures of the five brothers were Nelson and David.

Save Lower Manhattan!

Nelson Rockefeller, vice president in the administration of Gerald Ford, served as governor of New York for 14 years.
David Rockefeller Since 1961, he has been president of Chase Manhattan Bank.
It was with the construction of the 60-story Chase Manhattan Bank skyscraper that the revival of Lower Manhattan as a business center began.
In 1960, the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association, led by David Rockefeller, developed a plan to create World Trade Center- a complex of office buildings and hotels. With the support of New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller, the plan began to be implemented.
Such a grandiose project could only be completed Port Authority- a powerful organization responsible for the infrastructure inside a ring with a radius of 40 km and the center - the Statue of Liberty.

Through hardship to the stars

1 - original location for the World Trade Center, 2 - World Trade Center

As a result, the state of New Jersey received modernization of the railway, and the state of New York and the Port Authority received profits from the operation of the terminal of this road, which was planned to be built under the World Trade Center.
The contradictions in the corridors of power were resolved; only the last battle took place on the square - with the owners of small shops located on the site of the future World Trade Center. These were mainly electronics stores - that's what the place was called Radio Row(Radio series).
Businessmen, behind whom loomed the owners of the Empire State Building, who did not want such a competitor to appear, staged demonstrations and tried to act through the courts.

All their efforts were in vain - on March 21, 1966, the first of the red brick Radio Row buildings was demolished.
What did they plan to build under such a loud name - the World Center?
Back in 1962, a little-known architect from Detroit, a 49-year-old American of Japanese descent, won a competition in which architects of the first rank participated Minoru Yamasaki.

Quiet Japanese-American

The biography of Minoru Yamasaki is a classic illustration of American success.
Born in Seattle to a family of Japanese immigrants (his father worked at a local shoe factory, and his mother was a pianist), he early encountered the racism that was then strong in those places. To earn money for college, he traveled to Alaska, where he worked 14 hours a day on fishing boats.

Minoru Yamasaki shows the site of the World Trade Center on a model of Lower Manhattan

Two one hundred and ten

Yamasaki was given the modest task of designing a building with five times more office space than the Empire State Building. After going through dozens of options - a single skyscraper with 150 floors, four skyscrapers, a complex of low buildings and others, the architect settled on two identical parallelepiped skyscrapers with a square cross-section.

Italian influence is evident in the work of the Japanese-American architect.
The shape and location of the skyscrapers are similar to those of the towers of the medieval Italian city of San Gimignano

Twin Towers of San Gimignano

Twin Towers of the World Trade Center

Gothic arches - like those of the Doge's Palace in Venice

Doge's Palace

World Trade Center Plaza

In the original version, the skyscrapers consisted of 80 floors, which made them shorter than the Empire State Building.

Guy Tozzoli, in charge of the project for the organization Port Authority, stated:
Yama, the President is going to put a man on the moon. I want our skyscrapers to be the tallest in the world

Yamasaki added 30 floors. Now, 110-story skyscrapers have surpassed the Empire State Building... and have begun the second high-rise race. As is known, first altitude race ended in 1931, and the winner, the Empire State Building, remained the world's tallest building for 40 years. The second race is still ongoing:

World Trade Center (1973)
Sears Tower (1974)
Petronas Towers (1998)
Taipei 101 (2004)
Shanghai World Financial Center (2008)
New WTC-1 (2013, under construction)
Burj Khalifa (2010)

On August 6, 1966, twenty years after the idea for the complex was born, construction of the World Trade Center began.

Construction of the century

The construction of a skyscraper is an extraordinary task in itself, but the construction of the World Trade Center was unprecedented in scale and difficulty.
The problems started from the foundation. The skyscraper must stand on bedrock(hard rock). It was more than 20 meters away in the place chosen for the Center. Simply digging was dangerous due to the proximity of ocean waters, so before digging began, an underground “wall” was built along the entire perimeter of the future construction site. The design was named bathtub (trough).

Bathtub (indicated by arrows). Tunnels: 1 - to New Jersey, 2 - from New Jersey

What was to be done with so much excavated earth? New York remembered its Dutch roots - the inhabitants of the Netherlands (Lower Lands) were famous for their ability to conquer space from the sea. Dutch colonists brought this know-how to the New World, and the British took advantage of their knowledge - over the centuries of colonization, the outlines of Manhattan changed greatly.

These changes are demonstrated by photographs from the 1930s - elevated metro line passes along the border New Amsterdam

1 - place under the World Trade Center, 2 - area of ​​the future embankment

WTC towers and embankment under construction

Later, a residential complex was built on the embankment Battery Park City And World Financial Center. Four squat skyscrapers of the Financial Center, similar to Teletubbies, delight the eye with a variety of tops - an Egyptian pyramid, a Mayan pyramid, a dome and a mastaba

The blue dots are the outline of Manhattan in the year of its “purchase” from the Indians (1626),
gray area - man-made areas.

Depths bathtub enough for seven underground floors, above which the construction of 110-story towers began.
Cranes imported from Australia were used during construction. Kangaroo, capable of self-expansion

The unusual design of the WTC skyscrapers is demonstrated by a unique photograph in which, like an X-ray, the “skeleton” of the North Tower is visible.

The weight of the skyscraper was carried by two groups of columns - central and external.

Stairs and elevators were located in the center, and the space between the central and outer columns was intended for offices. This design gave future tenants the freedom to redevelop the offices.

Typical skyscrapers of that time had facades entirely made of glass, while Gemini had windows in the back, behind the columns.
At night the windows were perfectly visible

during the day, skyscrapers became blind monoliths

This is what the skyscrapers looked like at the end of construction, in 1970.

The last floor of the North Tower was erected at the end of 1970, the South - in mid-1971. The opening of the Center took place April 4, 1973.
The legs of a huge tuning fork seemed like the Twins upon completion of construction.

The opportunity to see them in full height disappeared after the construction of the World Financial Center in 1988.

The cost of construction was 1.5 billion dollars, 7.5 thousand people built the World Trade Center, 8 people died.

Perpendicular City

As is customary, the United States is divided into areas that are assigned zip codes ( zipcode).

It is unusual to assign an index to an individual building. In New York City, 44 skyscrapers are large enough to have their own zip code. For example, the zip code for the Empire State Building is 10118 , Chrysler Building - 10174 , Seagram Building - 10152 .

The WTC index was the numbers 10048 .

The World Trade Center was a real city - in the buildings of the complex on a weekday there were up to 50 thousand workers and from 50 to 100 thousand visitors. This allowed it to be considered the sixth most populous “city” in New York State.

The World Trade Center is six buildings located on the Plaza (square) of 16 acres, and one building is outside the square.

1 WTC - North Tower
2 WTC - South Tower
3 WTC - Marriott Hotel
4 WTC - commodity and raw materials exchange
5 WTC - Dean Witter Building
6 WTC - US Customs
7 WTC - Salomon Brothers Bank

Often the entire complex was simply called the Twins - the rest of the buildings faded next to the 110-story towers:

The height of the North Tower (without antenna) is 417 meters
The height of the South Tower is 415 meters
Antenna height - 104 meters

The delivery of people and goods was carried out by elevators - there were 103 of them in each tower (97 passenger and 6 freight). Express elevators stopped only on the 44th, 78th and top floors (the so-called skylobbies- heavenly vestibules). For intermediate floors it was necessary to transfer to local elevators.

In the center of the Plaza there was a fountain with a rotating sphere

There was a mall under the plaza, and below the mall there was an underground garage with 2,000 spaces. At the seventh floor level there was a railway tunnel.

Endure - fall in love

The initial reaction of New Yorkers and guests of the capital of the world to Yamasaki’s creation was very cool:

The Twins are the boxes in which the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building were delivered.
(New York folklore)

The most ruthless critics were the professionals:

Ada Huxtable , architectural critic:
The towers are naked technology, the lobbies are maudlin sentimentality, the impact on New York is pure fantasy... The twenty-two inch (56 cm) windows are so narrow that one of the wonderful opportunities provided by high-rise buildings - a breathtaking view from above - is completely absent. ... Towers are great buildings, but they are not great architecture.

Paul Goldberger , architectural critic:
It [the Center] is big. It is larger than any building. He once again showed that a person can adapt to anything... His influence on the city, whether it concerns the skyline, the downtown environment and real estate prices, cannot be overestimated. But the Center's buildings themselves are so boring and banal that they would not be worth erecting even for a bank in Omaha.

Ultimately, the Twins repeated the fate of the Eiffel Tower - they got used to them, then stopped noticing them, then began to be proud of them.
Filmed against the backdrop of the World Trade Center:

Statue of Liberty

Church of St. Nicholas

If someone wanted to see Manhattan without the World Trade Center, they had to climb
to the upper floors of the Twins - the only place from which they could not be seen.

You could see “all of New York”
- from the windows of the Windows on the World restaurant, located on the 106th/107th floors of the North Tower

from the Observation Deck located on the 107th floor of the South Tower

from the platform on the roof of the South Tower (110th floor)

Soon, Gemini began to attract adventurers.
The French tightrope walker's "sky walk" became a sensation.

Philippe Petit's Big Show

When I see three oranges - I must juggle, when I see two towers - I must pass between them
(F.Petit)

At six o'clock in the evening on August 6, 1974, Philippe Petit, a self-taught tightrope walker, entered the roof of the South Tower. He was not alone - several people took part in the “conspiracy”. Pretending to be messengers, they carried the necessary equipment to the roofs of the towers - a steel rope, a collapsible pole, a bow and arrow. It took all night to transfer and secure the rope.

At seven in the morning, Philippe Petit stepped onto a shaky “bridge” stretched at a height of 415 meters, one inch (2.5 cm) wide and 40 meters long.

Far below, people hurrying to work stopped and looked in disbelief at the small human figure walking between the giant towers at an unimaginable height.

The first ten spectators were soon joined by thousands. A few minutes after the “performance” began, police arrived on the roof of the South Tower.

Sergeant Charles Daniels testifies:

When Officer Mayers and I went out onto the roof, we found this “dancer” halfway up the tower - to simply call him a tightrope walker would not be enough. When he saw us, he smiled and started dancing. When he knelt down, we retreated, worried that our presence would affect his concentration. We called everyone to silence. The tightrope walker lay down on the rope, then sat down with his legs dangling - it was incredible...

Getting up, he began to dance again, laughing and approaching us... When he approached the tower, we demanded that he step off the rope onto the roof, but he turned around and walked back... He began to jump, lifting his legs completely off the rope - we are all petrified...

Petit himself recalls:

In 45 minutes I made 8 transitions. During one of them, I lay down on the rope, looked up at the sky and saw a seagull above me. I could see her - she had red eyes. I remembered the myth of Prometheus. The bird circled in the sky and looked at the stranger who had invaded its space - who I was here, at this height...

When Petit returned to the roof, he was immediately arrested.

He was charged with many things: trespassing on private property, disobeying the police, dangerous behavior for others, and even speaking in public without permission.

Of course, later all charges were dropped, Philippe Petit was only required to perform in front of a children's audience in Central Park.
Philippe Petit was followed by representatives of other genres.

Brave heroes of very short stature

If Vladimir Mayakovsky's unemployed threw themselves from the Brooklyn Bridge, then one modern destitute chose the World Trade Center. Without intending to take his own life, he wanted to draw attention to the plight of the unemployed.

He landed safely, becoming one of the forerunners BASE jumping (Building, Antenna, Span, Earth)- an extreme activity in which daredevils parachute from buildings, antennas, bridges and cliffs.
The World Trade Center was conquered not only from above, but also from below.

George Willig, the “fly man,” climbed the South Tower on May 26, 1977, spending 3.5 hours on it. For disturbing the peace, he was fined $1.36 - a penny for every foot he covered.

Various plays were staged on the stage called the World Trade Center.
In 1995, the match for the title of world chess champion (according to the PCA) between Garry Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand took place here.

Hollywood could not neglect such a platform. In the 1976 remake of King Kong, the final scene takes place not on the Empire State Building, but on the roof of the World Trade Center.

The film, as we know, does not end with a happy ending for King Kong - mortally wounded, he falls from the roof of the South Tower onto the plaza of the complex.

First blood

The players of Omar Abdel-Rahman (the Blind Sheikh) hoped that the North Tower would collapse on the South Tower, but the Twins held out.

6 people were killed and about a thousand were wounded. As a result of the explosion, the skyscrapers were de-energized, the elevators stopped working, and the warning system stopped working. Firefighters' portable radios were not functioning well, and the 911 system was overloaded.

The evacuation on foot using the stairs took more than 4 hours. A small group of people were taken by helicopters from the South Tower, and one person was even taken from the inaccessible roof of the North Tower.

Helipad on the roof of the North Tower; police helicopter

These operations gave people false confidence that helicopter rescues from rooftops were part of rescue plans.

The terrorist attack demonstrated the WTC's poor preparedness for such catastrophic events and forced action.
Alas, as the events of 2001 showed, these measures turned out to be half measures.

11 September

The first ramming occurred at 8:46, the second tower collapsed at 10:28.
The World Trade Center, which took seven years to build and stood for thirty years, was destroyed in 102 minutes.

Completely destroyed
1 - 1 WTC
2 - 2 WTC
3 - 7 WTC
4 - North Bridge
5 - Church of St. Nicholas
Partially collapsed
6 - Marriott Hotel
7 - 4 WTC
8 - 5 WTC
9 - 6 WTC
Substantially damaged
10 - building at 30 West Broadway
11 - Verizon telephone company building
12 - 3 World Financial Center
13 - Winter Garden
14 - building at 90 West Street
15 - Bankers Trust building
Facade damaged
16 - One Liberty Plaza
17 - building at 22 Cortlandt Street
18 - Millenium Hilton Hotel
19 - Federal Office Building
20 - 2 World Financial Center
21 - 1 World Financial Center

The next day

When the ruins of the World Trade Center were removed, a virtually intact wall emerged from the ground bathtub

The place was named Ground Zero - this is how, since the times of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they have called a point on the surface of the earth located directly under the center of an airborne nuclear explosion...

World Trade Center (1966-2001)

2 WTC: 415 m.
3 WTC: 73.7 m.
4 and 5 WTC: 36 m.
6 WTC: 32 m.
7 WTC: 186 m.

2 WTC: 411 m.

3 WTC: 22 floors
4 and 5 WTC: 9 floors
6 World Trade Center: 8 floors
7 World Trade Center: 47 floors

4, 5, and 6 WTC: 50,000 m2
7 WTC: 170,000 m2

Emery Roth and Sons

World Trade Center(English) World Trade Center), abbr. The World Trade Center is a complex of seven buildings designed by Minoru Yamasaki, an American architect of Japanese origin, and officially opened on April 4, 1973 in New York (USA). The architectural dominant of the complex were two towers, each with 110 floors - North (417 m high, and taking into account the antenna installed on the roof - 526.3 m) and South (415 m high). On September 11, 2001, the World Trade Center complex was destroyed in a terrorist attack. For some time after the completion of construction, the towers were the tallest skyscrapers in the world (before that, the tallest building was the Empire State Building, which, after the destruction of the World Trade Center, again became the tallest building in New York). Sometimes these towers are called “a symbol of US global dominance.”

History and construction

View of the window of one of the twin towers. It can be seen that the entire outer cladding consists of huge steel rods.

Minoru Yamasaki conceived the World Trade Center project in 1962; in January 1964, the architect, commissioned by the Port Authority, created drawings of the buildings; a little later that year, he presented a 1:130 life-size model for discussion, and two years later (5 August 1966) powerful excavators began to dig a foundation pit.

Before the twins, skyscrapers in New York were built on a natural stone base. Manhattan is truly made of stone, it has stone and granite under a layer of earth, this can be seen when you watch the construction of new houses: pits here are not dug, but cut down, gnawed out with the steel teeth of loggers.

The first problem that the engineers encountered was that there was no footstone in the place where the twins were supposed to stand. Instead, they found artificial, alluvial soil that previously “belonged” to the Hudson River. This soil consisted of a large amount of artificial soil, mixed with layers of cobblestones, sand, gravel, pebbles, even old ships were found in artificial soil. The builders were in despair: additional difficulties, additional costs, additional concrete.

This was not the only problem that beset the architect and engineers. The next problem that befell them was the 164 large and small, narrow and wide buildings, most often made of stone, that stood on the site of the future World Trade Center and had to be demolished. It was not difficult to take them down, but the problem still remained after that. It was much more difficult to leave intact and then move a rich and complex system of underground communications, a fire alarm system, multi-core telephone and electrical cables, gas, heat, pneumatic and water pipes, not to touch the nearby expressway and preserve numerous pedestrian roads and transitions.

Another problem was the station of the Underground Railroad, which begins the underwater route to New Jersey, which carries hundreds of thousands of people to and from work. If the road were closed, New York and the entire United States would face inevitable economic problems. The subway transported people until a new underground station was built in the lower tier of the complex.

This is not to say that the work of the builders was easy. That only 1.2 million cubic meters cost. yards of earth that had to be dug up and hauled away. Instead, under the twins, the so-called Plaza was created - an underground space where there were numerous restaurants and banks, travel agencies, airline ticket offices, shops, a new station of the New Jersey road, much better than the previous one, warehouses, technical workshops for servicing the twins and an underground garage for two thousand cars.

Faced with the challenge of constructing a building of unprecedented height, engineers adopted an innovative structural model: a rigid "hollow tube" of closely spaced steel columns, with floor trusses extending outward toward the center. Along the outer surface of each of the four sides of the building, 61 steel beams ran along the entire height, between which cables were also stretched along the entire height. The columns, clad in silver aluminum alloy, were 476.25mm wide and set just 558.8mm apart, making the towers appear from a distance to have no windows at all. The load-bearing walls were assembled from prefabricated steel blocks, each weighing 22 tons, height 36 feet (4 floors high), width 10 feet. The steel embedded in Gemini weighed two hundred thousand tons in total.

As the twins grew, installers laid interfloor floors from special, pre-prepared corrugated steel and durable concrete slabs. The ceilings were attached to the external load-bearing walls from the outside and to the internal, the only steel columns in the twins with a purely useful function - they were erected to attach internal elevators.

The elevator system used in the buildings was also unique. The Twin Towers were the first supertall buildings designed without masonry. Concerned that the intense air pressure generated by high-speed elevators could bend standard shafts, engineers developed a solution using a "dry wall" system anchored in a reinforced steel base. Elevators with a standard configuration to serve 110 floors could require half the area of ​​the lower rooms to accommodate the shafts. Otis Elevators developed a fast and compact system in which passengers would take turns in "sky lobbies" on the 44th and 78th floors, cutting the number of shafts in half. In total, the World Trade Center complex had 239 elevators and 71 escalators, which were controlled by a computer center from the Port Authority. Each elevator with a lifting capacity of 4536 kilograms could lift 55 people with a lifting speed of about 8.5 meters per second.

Laying the foundation in the dug pit began with the northern tower in August 1968, including by Italian workers, who started work at 8 am and worked until 15:30 with a 40-minute break for lunch at a normal rate, and after half past three worked at a double rate: the foreman received $40 per hour or, respectively, $80 per hour of work in the evening, and overtime was the rule, not the exception. Construction proceeded quickly, despite the difficulties with financing that arose every now and then. New York City Budget 1965−1970 was 6 billion dollars. To raise money to invest in the construction of the Trade Center, the city issued bonds with a guarantee of their repayment. But in 1970, New York suffered a financial crisis. The deadline for paying off the bonds has also arrived. The construction was almost frozen. To save the situation, new, increased taxes in the business sector had to be introduced. Another source of money was found: they began to rent out future Gemini premises for offices. And they were expected to be huge - 100 thousand square meters. m. We finally managed to get out of all the difficulties. The north tower was completed in 1971, the south tower in 1973. The grand opening of the World Trade Center took place on April 4, 1973.

The cross-section of the towers was square, with a side of 65 m. Each tower was 110 floors. The foundations of the structures went 23 m underground. 200 thousand tons of rolled steel were spent on the building frames, and electrical network cables, with a total capacity of 80,000 kilowatts, stretched for 3 thousand miles - half the distance from New York to London, across the Atlantic. The structure of the buildings was simple and reasonable. The facades are made in the form of steel frames and modular aluminum sections mounted on them measuring 3.5x10 m, manufactured by factory stamping. This design is earthquake-resistant and can withstand wind pressure, which is very strong at high altitudes. According to the architects, each World Trade Center tower could withstand collisions with several aircraft, but on September 11, 2001, both WTC towers collapsed to the ground.

Fire February 13, 1975

On February 13, 1975, three fire alarms sounded on the 11th floor of the North Tower. The fire spread through the central empty pipes to the 9th and 14th floors due to the fire of telephone wires in the shaft located vertically between the floors. Those areas where the fire penetrated through the wires were extinguished almost immediately; the fire was contained within a few hours. Most of the damage occurred on the 11th floor, where the fire started in a cabinet filled with paper, printing fluid and other office equipment. Fire-resistant treatment of the steel against melting saved the frame itself, and no structural damage was caused to the tower. In second place in terms of damage caused were the lower floors, which suffered not so much from the fire as from the fire foam. At that time, the World Trade Center did not have a fire suppression system.

Terrorist attack on February 26, 1993

Destruction in the basement

On February 26, 1993, at 12:17 p.m., a truck carrying 680 kg of explosives, driven by Ramzi Yusef, drove into the World Trade Center. It exploded in the underground garage of the North Tower. As a result, the blast wave made a hole with a diameter of 30 m through 5 underground floors, causing the maximum damage to levels B1 and B2 in their entire history and significant damage to level B3. Six people were killed (including during a stampede to exit) and another 50,000 workers and visitors were unable to breathe due to lack of oxygen in the towers' 110 floors. Many people inside the North Tower had to climb down dark stairs, some taking more than two hours.

Yousef fled to Pakistan shortly after the bombing, but was arrested in Islamabad in February 1995 and extradited to the United States to face trial. Sheikh Omar Abdel Raman was accused in 1996 of participating in the bombing and other conspiracies. Yousef and Aid Izmoil were sentenced to life in prison in 1997 for their involvement in the bombing. Four more were also sentenced for their participation in the explosion in May 1994. According to the court, the goal of the conspirators was to completely destabilize the North Tower, followed by the South Tower - that is, the complete destruction of both towers.

After the explosion, it was necessary to restore the damaged floors, especially since they carried structural loads and were supporting. The liquid cement wall was in danger after the explosion, and the metal plates that prevented the pressure of the Hudson's water on the other side were also lost. The cooling plant on sublevel B5, which supplied air to the entire World Trade Center complex, was disabled.

After the attack, port authorities installed photoluminescent signs on the walls. The fire notification system had to be completely replaced due to the original system's wiring and alarm system failing. In memory of the victims, a reflective pond was created with the names of those killed in the explosion. As a result of the September 11 terrorist attack, the memorial was destroyed. A new memorial, common to the victims of the explosion and the terrorist attack, will appear in the new complex being built on the site of the former World Trade Center.

Destruction of September 11, 2001

On September 11, 2001, terrorists hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 and deliberately crashed it into the North Tower at 08:46 (from the north façade, between the 93rd and 99th floors). Seventeen minutes later, a second group of terrorists crashed the same stolen United Airlines Flight 175 into the South Tower (floors 77-85). Due to the destruction caused to the North Tower by the plane's body, all exits from the building above the collision site were completely blocked, resulting in 1,344 people trapped. The impact of the second plane, unlike the first, was closer to the corner of the skyscraper, and one stairwell remained undamaged. However, few people managed to go down it unhindered before the structure collapsed. But still, despite the fact that the plane hit the South Tower below, less than 700 people were trapped between floors or killed at once - much less than in the North. At 9:59 a.m., the South Tower collapsed due to a fire that damaged the steel structure, already weakened by the collision with the aircraft. The north tower collapsed at 10:28 a.m. after a fire that lasted 102 minutes.

At 17:20 on September 11, 2001, the east penthouse of the seventh building of the World Trade Center (WTC-7) collapsed, and at 17:21 the entire building collapsed due to the fact that spontaneous fires irreversibly destroyed its structure. The third building of the World Trade Center, the Marriott Hotel (WTC 3), was hit by the falling Twin Towers. The three remaining buildings in the complex were seriously damaged by falling debris and were eventually demolished because they were beyond repair.
The Deutsche Bank building on the other side of Liberty Street, opposite the World Trade Center complex, was later declared uninhabitable due to the high content of toxic compounds in the premises; This building is now dismantled. Manhattan Community College's Fiterman Hall at 30 West Broadway is also slated for demolition due to extensive damage sustained in the attack.

After the terrorist attack, media reported that tens of thousands of people could have been injured, as there could have been over 50,000 people in the complex during normal working hours. As a result of the 9/11 terrorist attack, 2,752 death certificates were issued, including in the name of Felicia Dunn-Jones, whose death was registered only in May 2007; Dunn-Jones died five months after the attack due to a terrible lung condition caused by clouds of flying dust during the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. Two more victims were later added to the official death toll: doctor Sneha Anne Philip, who was last seen the day before the attack, and Leon Hayward, who died in 2008 from lymphoma caused by breathing dust-laden air. raised during the collapse of the Twin Towers. The investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald L.P., located on floors 101-105 of the World Trade Center, lost 658 employees - more than any other institution, even the Marsh and McLennan Companies, located directly below the bank's premises on floors 93-101 (where the plane crashed). terrorists) and lost 295 people. In third place in terms of human losses (175 people) is Aon Corporation. Another 343 New York City firefighters, 84 employees of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, including 37 employees of the Port Authority Police Department (PAPD) and 23 officers of the New York Police Department, also died. Of all those people who were in the towers at the time of their collapse, only 20 people were extracted alive, including PAPD police officers Will Jimeno and John McLaughlin (the eighteenth and nineteenth survivors).

Consequences

As a result, all seven buildings of the complex were destroyed: the three tallest buildings (North Tower, South Tower and WTC-7) collapsed, the Marriott Hotel was almost completely destroyed by the debris of WTC-1 and WTC-2, the other three buildings suffered such damage that they were deemed unfit for restoration and were later demolished. Also, as a result of the collapse of WTC-2, irreparable damage was caused to the 40-story Deutsche Bank building, which is currently being dismantled.

A memorial complex was erected on the site of the collapsed twin towers.

Buildings of the new complex

• Freedom Tower 1 )
• 200 Greenwich Street (Tower 2 )
• 175 Greenwich Street (Tower 3 )
• 150 Greenwich Street (Tower 4 )
• 130 Liberty Street (Tower 5 )
• World Trade Center Transportation Hub

Notes

1. Builders: World Trade Center towers collapsed due to “pancake effect”
2. 9/11 Commission Report. The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. Archived
3. Dwyer, Jim, Lipton, Eric et al.. 102 Minutes: Last Words at the Trade Center; Fighting to Live as the Towers Die, The New York Times(May 26, 2002). Archived from the original on October 10, 2008. Retrieved May 23, 2008.
4. NIST NCSTAR 1-1 (2005), p. 34; pp. 45-46
5. FEMA 403 -World Trade Center Building Performance Study, Chapter. 5, section 5.5.4 (PDF). Archived from the original on August 27, 2011. Retrieved January 30, 2011.
6. Final Report on the Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 - Draft for Public Comment xxxii. NIST (August 2008). Archived from the original on August 27, 2011.
7. World Trade Center Building Performance Study. FEMA (May 2002). Archived
8. World Trade Center Building Performance Study - Bankers Trust Building. FEMA (May 2002). Archived from the original on August 26, 2011. Retrieved July 12, 2007.
9. The Deutsche Bank Building at 130 Liberty Street Archived from the original on August 26, 2011. Retrieved July 12, 2007.
10. Fiterman Hall - Project Updates. Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center. Archived from the original on August 26, 2011. Retrieved November 19, 2008.
11. DePalma, Anthony. For the First Time, New York Links a Death to 9/11 Dust, The New York Times(May 24, 2007).
12. Official 9/11 Death Toll Climbs By One, CBS News(July 10, 2008). Retrieved August 29, 2010.
13. Foderaro, Lisa W.. 9/11"s Litany of Loss, Joined by Another Name (September 11, 2009). Retrieved August 29, 2010.
14. Siegel, Aaron. Industry honors fallen on 9/11 anniversary, InvestmentNews(September 11, 2007). Retrieved May 20, 2008.
15. Lung Ailments May Force 500 Firefighters Off Job, The New York Times(September 10, 2002). Retrieved May 23, 2008.
16. Post-9/11 report recommends police, fire response changes (August 19, 2002). Retrieved May 23, 2008.
17. Police back on day-to-day beat after 9/11 nightmare, CNN(July 21, 2002). Retrieved May 23, 2008.
18. The premiere of Oliver Stone's film took place in New York. Radio Liberty(August 07, 2006). Retrieved March 5, 2011.

see also

• World Trade Center Memorial
• List of World Trade Centers List of world trade centers )

Links

• Official website (English)
• Genis, Alexander. September 11: Images of Tragedy (about the book: David Friend, Watching the World Change), Radio Liberty(September 13, 2006). Retrieved March 5, 2011.
• Genis, Alexander. September 11: “Day of Gemini”, Radio Liberty(September 08, 2008). Retrieved March 5, 2011.
• Kopeikin, Anatoly. I keep looking somewhere in the sky, as if I was looking for an answer, or Amazing story, Russian thought(June 06-12, 2002). Retrieved March 5, 2011.

In the United States, suicide bombers from the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda hijacked four passenger planes, sending two of them to the symbol of business New York - the World Trade Center towers, and the other two - to the Pentagon and, presumably, to the White House or the Capitol. All aircraft except the last one reached their targets. The fourth hijacked plane crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

New York District Judge George Daniels issued a default judgment ordering Iran to pay $7.5 billion to relatives and other representatives of those killed at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The judge determined that Iranian authorities must pay another three billion to insurers who covered property damage and other material losses. Earlier, Judge Daniels ruled that Tehran could not prove its non-involvement in providing assistance to the organizers of the terrorist attack, and therefore the Iranian authorities bear a share of responsibility for the damage caused during it.

On the site of the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2011, there was the World Trade Center Memorial. It consists of two square fountain pools located right at the bases of the former twin towers, along the inner walls of which streams of water cascade into square holes located at the bottom of each of the pools.

The names of 2,983 terrorist victims (including six who died in the 1993 World Trade Center attack) are carved into bronze slabs that line the parapets of both fountains.

The new World Trade Center complex was opened. It is the fourth tallest skyscraper in the world - its height is 541 meters. Construction began in April 2006 on the corner of a 65,000-square-meter site where the twin towers of a destroyed shopping center previously stood.

Celebrated in the United States as Patriot Day since 2009, after the approval of Act 111-13 of the US General Law, this date is also referred to as the national Day of Service and Remembrance.

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources