Could the WTC have been evacuated?

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Kevin

You've had a good many great answers. I'm going to give you a crash course in history and how radar functions though that will hopefully answer your question better.

First off. Until 9/11 nearly all hijacks ended up with the hijackers forcing the plane to some country or another and holding it hostage for the release of political prisoners, end of government sanctions etc. None had ever been used as weapons before so at the time there was no reason to think those aircraft would be used as weapons. At the time, worst case scenario is negotiations fail and you have to forcibly take over the airplane while it lands to refuel. Sure maybe one or two innocent passengers die (sad as it is) but you aren't expecting a tragedy on THAT scale as we saw on 9/11. Certainly nothing was expected that would justify the shooting down of 3 airliners and killing hundreds.

Secondlyâ€¦the question about did the 3 local airports not notice the problem and issue warnings. Radar works like this. It emits radio waves that hit objects and bounce back. These objects arenâ€™t always airplanes. Birds, clouds (the water vapor) buildings and even cars on the road near radar sites all reflect returns back to the site and get relayed to the controllerâ€™s scope. Once the radar wave hits a building, car, bird, cloud or airplane it bounces back. Radar waves cannot hit a dense cloud, penetrate, hit a building and penetrate again, then finally bounce off of an airplane and get returned to the dish. Even then, radar is imperfect. Is it a flock of birds on the scope (very common) or is it a large commercial airliner? You really canâ€™t know off of radar alone.

The only tool that helps controllers know is called a transponder. Basically a radar signal is sent out along with a beam that asks if there are transponders nearby. If the radar hits a plane equipped with a transponder (not a bird, building or cloud) the transponder sends back a reply saying to the radar dish that yes there is a transponder associated with that return so the controller can be reasonably sure it isnâ€™t a building, bird, cloud or some guy with a bunch of balloons hooked up to a pool chair.

Transponders have four slots for numbers 0 through 7 that the pilot can input. Normally a controller will tell a pilot (lets say Delta flight 1326) to â€œsquawkâ€ (jargon for the number put in the transponder) lets say 1234. The air traffic control computer then associates the transponder return 1234 with the flight plan for Delta 1326. The radar scope will know to tell the controller that Delta 1326 is an MD 80 flying to LAX among other things. When hijacked the transponder takes on a different role. Iâ€™m not going to tell you the code or procedure that was used at that time (it has since changed anyway). Basically though the pilot would squawk a certain code that would tell the controller that this airplane is being hijacked. 99.9% of people in the world did not know this code and did not know that. The 9.11 hijackers did. They shut down the transponders. Now you have airplanes that now look like possible buildings, clouds, cars on a highway or have even disappeared from radar behind buildings and have basically have disappeared from radar heading toward the WTC buildings. To the controllers 2 airplanes have vanished. They arenâ€™t going to know to evacuate two specific buildings in a city.

Let me also add. If a plane crashes in Las Angeles and the controllers at LA Center lose radar track on it should we also evacuate the entire city just incase it has been hijacked? Radar track gets lost all the time, if we evacuated every city every time a departing plane ended up as coast track, we'd be evacing 5 major cities a day.

Hope that helps

Rick

You are suffering from hindsight 20/20 eyetis. Your conclusion is based on the assumption that people knew we were under attack and knew exactly where the â€˜lostâ€™ flights targets were. This is absolutely absurd. Even so how are you going to evacuate a million people in a moments notice all the time NOT knowing where the planes will hit â€“ NY or Jersey or DC or ??? People had NO CLUE it was goiog to Manhattan! I would say you have too much time on your hands. Please stay away from the Michael Moore moves that have nothing to do with IN CONTEXT reality. Give it up already. There is no use in blaming ghosts.

Eric C

First of all, nobody knew WHAT was going on with those planes... nobody had ever even considered the possibility of a hijacker using the plane as a weapon against an urban target like the World Trade Center.

Prior to this, all hijackings have simply diverted the plane to another location & held the passengers hostage - and there was a set of "rules" which everyone worked with to resolve these types of scenarios.

And who would they have warned?? The entire island of Manhattan?? Send millions of people into a panic?? Do you know how much of an effort it would have been to evacuate "the whole Manhattan area" ?? ...there just wasn't time enough to do that.

People were in shock (because this was such an unprecidented attack) - even after the first plane hit the tower people weren't sure what was going on... they were thinking maybe it was an accident... and it wasn't until the second plane hit the other tower that we all knew for sure that it was deliberate.

Shihan

No. They could not. No one even had a clue as to what was going on, until it was too late. I was living in north Jersey at the time. In the community in which I lived, we lost 85 people. In the community in which I worked, we lost 56. My boss did not find out until 12 hours after the planes hit that his brother was somehow miraculously spared from death on the 72nd floor.

Please, I urge to have a care with the questions you post relating to this topic and how they might affect people in the northeastern states (CT, NY, NJ, PA). We have been all over this a million times. It is very touchy, and from my perspective not something that should even be brought up on this forum. Thanks for your consideration.

Icy Gazpacho

Well, in my uninformed opinion, the planes may not have been so far off course that they were noticed... that is perhaps until a couple of minutes prior to impact... do you know if they were noticed?

Anyway... air traffic control would, in those precious few minutes be attemtping to contact the pilots....
in 2001, I am quite certain that there are no logistically reasonable 3 minute evacuation plans to remove 100,000 people... not even in 2007.

As for ground zero, all buildings have evac plans which are specifically required for reasonably anticipated emergencies, such as when a building catches fire, and in those circumstances, the structural integrity of buildings is predictable.... and this accounts for the great many people who were not killed by the collapse. Those who were not saved were unable to escape through safe exits ... these exits lost by reason of the demolition caused by the impact.

To be plausible, a conspiracy theory requires a compelling motive, btw.... and willing participants.

Mr. T's Pretty Cuzzin

They were. Keep in mind that there were supposed to be nearly 60,000 people in the towers and adjacent buildings, yet under 3,000 were killed. That's one hell of an evacuation considering the circumstances.

Everyone in both towers could of been evacuated if they had a good system in place. Many people who survived the collapse had said they were told to stay in their offices so many did not leave just for this reason. I have no idea if the people above the crash impact areas could of been evacuated, but I do know that if the WTC towers had the proper escape plan and they instituted it right after the first hit many more would be alive. Also, the firefighters communication system sucked, this prolonged response times and caused confusion which of course did not help. Other than the people who planned and executed this attack, I tend to blame the airports the most. No locks on doors, no air marshalls, no planning at all for this type of situation. FAA is also too blame for their lack of safety standards. And dont forget about those idiots in the CIA who failed to communicate with other agencies. About seeing the specific planes on radar, this was impossible as most of the planes used in 911 were flying too low at and right before impacts, and how many other planes were in the air at the same time, just too much to deal with. Just another agency that was unprepared.

Ian, der weiÃŸe Hexenmeister

It was a tremendously huge plot. They knew it was going to happen. They needed it to invade Iraq and sell it the highest bidder, very likely to be someone related to Bush and Bin Laden, who must be laughing their heads off right now while working class idiots blow to pieces there.

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