Title: NIST Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster
Speaker: Dr. William L. Grosshandler
From: National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA
Date: Oct. 22, 2013
CV of the Speaker:
Dr. William L. Grosshandler was the Deputy Director for Building and Fire Research of the Engineering Laboratory (EL) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) up until his retirement in 2012. Dr. Grosshandler was responsible for internal operations of the Laboratory, which deals with construction and materials research, building environment research, and fire research. Dr. Grosshandler led the NIST investigation of The Station nightclub (Warwick, RI) fire and was the associate lead investigator of the National Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster.
Dr. Grosshandler received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to his appointment at NIST, he spent three years as the Director of the Thermal Systems Program of the National Science Foundation. At the same time, he maintained his position as Professor of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Washington State University, where he had been since 1976. He has also held visiting appointments at Factory Mutual Research Corporation (now FM Global) and the University of Poitiers in France.
Dr. Grosshandler has served on the Board of Directors of the Combustion Institute, the editorial advisory board of Progress in Energy and Combustion Science, advisory boards for the Fire Protection Engineering Departments at the University of Maryland and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the Research Advisory Committee of the Fire Protection Research Foundation, and is active in the Heat Transfer Division and a Fellow of ASME. He chaired the International Forum of Fire Research Directors from 2005 to 2011, served on the Fire Council for Underwriters Laboratory, and for ten years was a member of the Science Advisory Committee of the National Association of State Fire Marshals. Dr. Grosshandler is a recipient of two Silver Medals for meritorious achievement and a Gold Medal for distinguished achievement in federal service from the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Abstract:
This presentation, based upon the final reports issued by U.S. National nstitute of Standards and Technology (NIST), describes how on September 11, 2001, after terrorists flew jet-fuel-laden commercial airliners into the buildings, the aircraft impacts and subsequent fires led to the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings (WTC 1, WTC 2, and WTC 7) in New York City.
NIST complemented in-house expertise with private sector technical experts; accumulated copious documents, photographs, and videos of the disaster; established baseline performance of the buildings; performed computer simulations of the behavior of each building; combined the knowledge gained into a probable collapse sequence for each; conducted over a thousand first-person interviews of building occupants and emergency responders; and analyzed the evacuation and emergency response operations in the buildings. The final reports recommend action in the areas of increased structural integrity, enhanced fire endurance of structures, new methods for fire resistant design of structures, enhanced active fire protection, improved building evacuation, improved emergency response, improved procedures and practices, and education and training.
