Fwd: JYA's New York Report

Delivered-To: bill.stewart@pobox.com X-Sender: jya@pop.pipeline.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0 Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001 11:14:39 -0700 Reply-To: Law & Policy of Computer Communications Sender: Law & Policy of Computer Communications From: John Young Subject: New York Report To: CYBERIA-L@LISTSERV.AOL.COM

E-mail in Upper West Side of Manhattan is okay, local and national TV too. Radio is out due to loss of transmitters on the collapsed WTC towers. Our wire and wireless phones are on and off. Subways are partly out. We cannot see the WTC area from the roof of our building, so TV and Internet are all we got. I was about to leave for a meeting in the WTC area when the news broke.

Trying to locate a daughter who has a dot.com job near the WTC. Many friends nearby too.

A word on the structure of the WTC towers:

The WTC towers had a distinctive structural system which utilized the exterior wall framing for lateral bracing -- a so-called lattice framework. This allowed minimization of internal lateral bracing and opened up the floor plans. You can see the effect of that when the buildings collapsed, with the lattice framework crumbling and the interior imploding. The lattice works so long as it remains intact as a system: if a part of it goes, then the whole system goes.

The planes punched holes in the lattice, one tower punched on two sides, maybe the other too. Portions of the lattice of the second tower briefly remained standing after the collapse, then fell.

The system was considered daring at the time of construction, for it distributed loads more efficiently than legacy column-and-beam- supported systems. Probably the legacy systems would not have totally collapsed due to damage at upper floors, although floors above the damage would have come down if columns were weakened.

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