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I picked up an old copy of TIME magazine the other day. It was filled with disturbing photos of people jumping from the upper floors of the WTC, on 11Sept.
It occurred to me that a large balloon (dirigible/airship), made from fireproof materials and flat on one side with a propellor or two on the
other, could be carried by specialised fire crews.
Their appliance could be a high speed pump, lighter than air inert gas and a winch. They arrive at the scene, inflate the device and run it up the side of the building. One or more propellors could be used to steer it to a spot where people are awaiting rescue. Smash a window and toss out a gangplank. The rescuees simply walk into the airship, it is winched down to disgorge passengers and floated back up the side of the building, to repeat the task.
Executive Parachutes
http://abcnews.go.c...nterParachutes.html
[theircompetitor, Oct 05 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]
Halfbakery: Everest Airship Rescue Corps
Everest_20Airship_20Rescue_20Corps
More general. [jutta, Feb 27 2006]
Short name, e.g., Bob's Coffee
Destination URL.
E.g., http://www.coffee.com/
Description (displayed with the short name and URL.)
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There was a company that received much exposure -- the link may be them -- for proposing a parachute. |
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Don't if I would have tried it out of my 68th floor window. |
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In many ways, the 9/11 and the 93 attacks are intertwined. I've often said that were it not for 93, practically everyone who was in the building on 9/11 would have been killed -- because the stairwells were not lit until after the renovation post the first attack. |
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In a different way, the same event gave people a false sense of security on 9/11 -- the buildings withstood a huge blast in their basement -- practically no one imagined they might go down. I personally knew one broker who worked on 73 and refused to go downstairs. |
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Of course the people who jumped were above the line of fire and had no hope |
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This would have saved many lives, I think. |
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Of course, if you can't see the point in getting out then there's not much that rescue services can do, is there? |
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A ballon cannot be navigated nor controlled in that manner. |
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Really? It seems to work quite well on airships. I was going to use the term dirigible, but I figured most people would have some idea of what I was on about. |
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A blimp is merely an elongated balloon and it has been proven quite navigable with a couple of propellors and differntial thrust. |
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I think that in the WTC case, at least, the heat & smoke were a considerable problem -- that's why they couldn't come in with helicopters, even though people could make the roofs. They did take people off the roof with helicopters in 93. |
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Making these things out of reflective or heatproof materials would surely alleviate some of those issues? The winch cable would not be in any danger, if it was braided steel. The craft could be navigated onto the face of the building froma safe distance. tethering it to the ground/fire appliance would make that quite simple. |
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I watched in horror, along with half of the world's population, while people leapt to their deaths. I would have given anything to be able to help at the time. |
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I'm not so concerned about the blimp catching fire -- I wonder about maneuverability. |
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Another thing I've wondered about is a massive Halon installation -- we had a computer room on the 68th floor that had it. |
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If every floor had it but it could only be turned on by a human with a code, or by several thousand degree heat, you maybe able to put out a fire. A few people on that floor may be killed if they didn't have oxygen, but many more would have survived. |
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Halon is pretty toxic. You'd want breathing apparatus if it goes off anywhere near you. |
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Manoeuverability isn't a problem. It can't go up against the tether, so it's then down to the propellors to push it back, forward, left & right. These can be controlled by a driver, or RC from the ground. |
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I imagined the vehicle being crewed by two or more rescue staff. |
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I know -- the question is, could it have smothered the fire and let people above it get down eventually, much less preventing the collapse |
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Possibly. The impact would probably have destroyed such a device where it was most needed, I guess. |
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I thought halon was actually amazingly non-toxic, BUT in case of a fire would prevent many of the nasty gases produced by pyrolytic decomposition from burning off. This latter attribute is precisely what makes it useful as a fire extingusiher, but if the nasty gasses don't burn off they'll still be, well, nasty. |
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Hmmm. Halon isn't toxic per se. It does suffocate people, in the same way it does fires. The toxicity comes from its tendency to generate carbon monoxide in certain crcumstances. |
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I'm picturing not just one of these things, but a fleet. Have a special truck with a large tank of helium and about a hundred blimps and spools of cable. Add a directional range finder to each, and have them drive themselves as close as possible to the wall of the building. |
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Why not install them on the roof and every 10th floor or
so, depending on capacity, to be used like inflatable
lifeboats? |
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Ooh, I like that. Have a platform built just for this. Type in your weight and a custom balloon is made for you to slowly drift to the ground. |
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I think this is a great idea. You could use just hot air since storing healium or hydrogen would be too difficult for prolonged periods of time. You could use the fire it self to heat up air or have a heater system in the air compressor. You could have fire proof airducts that carry air through the building and absorb the heat of a fire in the building to fill up multiple balloons. You could have the balloons located throughout the building much like fire extinguishers are. Enough balloons for every soul in the building. "Lets not make a mistake like the Titanic" you would no longer then have to have rescuers to save people. On lower levels of the building there would be no need for the balloons since the people could leave the building easily. |
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You may be on to something there, [JL], but I have a problem with it. It occurred to me to use hot air, but I doubt it would work too well. |
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Hot air balloons rely on the comparative density of surrounding air to remain aloft. If a hot air balloon is suspended in an updraft of hot air then the odds are pretty good that it will fall through the column of hot, thin air until it reaches cooler, denser air. |
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There was a New Scientist article about escape routes from tall buildings recently. One plan (which has been shelved) involved automatically inflating helium balloons on the roof to fly occupants away. Another, which oddly enough seemed to be taken quite seriously, involved electromagnetic shafts at each corner of the building which people could float down after donning ferrometallic belts. |
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With balloons, I think that strings of balloons would be good. I first considered that it should have a long tether still attached to the building but then I realised that it would float above the smoke and drift in the same direction. |
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I think the idea of shafts is quite good, but electromagnetic would mean that the power supply or backup would have to be intact. Also the shaft itself would need to be intact. |
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How about shafts that deploy as needed like the yellow chutes used for construction debris. Each person could ride an upside down mushroom / umbrella shaped device on the air resistance in the tube. A pressure rise of 1 psi would be enough to hold a 450lb man on a 2 foot diameter float (rough calculation). |
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The only complications I see are that you would need some kind of airlock at the bottom to prevent the air escaping. Also each person in the tube would increase the air pressure on the bottom person. However this still means a practical limit of about 15 people at a time increasing the pressure by 1 atmosphere. |
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The problem is that nobody can think of a perfect solution so there is no solution. I think the goal should be to give people at the very least a sporting chance. Executive parachutes are that chance, you have to learn BASE jumping, one of the most dangerous sports in the world, instantly, under duress and possibly in bad wind conditions, but you've got a better chance than without one. |
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