CommunityPeopleNews
Insights and lifestyles in Pike County, 
Don  Budge's home town.

Habitat for Humanity Volunteers

Pike County Habitat for Humanity honored its volunteers
and one of its founders, Reverend Niels Nielsen of Holy 
Trinity Lutheran Church, at its Fifth Annual Harvest
Luncheon Dance held at The Waterfront at Ehrhardt's 
Restaurant. From the left were Habitat for Humanity Pike 
County President Jack Dennis, Co-Volunteer of the Year 
Mike Donlon, Event Chairperson Alison Cosham, Co-Volunteer 
of the Year Richard Heck, Sr., and Reverend Niels Nielsen,
pastor of the Holy Trinity Church in Dingmans Ferry.. 

WTC: View from Ground Zero

Photo courtesy of Don Wall
From the left at the World Trade Center rescue effort the 
days following the September 11, 2001 terrorist actions at the 
World Trade Center buildings are Shohola Fire Department 
High-angle Rescue Chief Mike Donovan, New York City 
Emergency Medical Technician Jerome Jewett (Harlem Station 
16), and Shohola Fire Department Chief Don Wall, who 
volunteered to help in the rescue effort beginning 
Wednesday, September 12. Working several stories up on 
sections of steel beams made slippery by ash and dust, 
Wall said that conditions were difficult: the air heavy with the 
smell of smoke and death. Wall fell asleep on the sidewalk the first 
night, but someone came over and put a blanket over him. The
next day, chiropractors helped massage rescue workers' backs 
so that they could work long hours through the week. 
Photo contributed by Don Wall.

WTC Interviews by Ken Baumel
The Engineers' Point of View
Two Pike residents had the opportunity to lend their engineering expertise on the World Trade Center buildings and shared their observations on the events that occurred on September 11. One engineer asked that his name not be used because he did not want to be inundated with calls.

Engineer Bill Borland lived in Pike until the middle 1990s and worked for the Port Authority as a materials engineer on the project during the planning and construction of the World Trade Center tower projects. The buildings were owned and operated by New York and New Jersey Port Authority.

Borland said that the tower design was progressive and creative, built around a central core that held the building up. The elevator shafts were built within the core area that he estimated to be more than 150 feet wide and long with thick steel beams going straight up from the foundation and surrounding the perimeter of the core area.

The buildings, completed in 1973, were each over 1350 feet high. American architect Minoru Yamasaki, who was selected over a dozen other architects, designed the two 110-story towers. The World Trade Center project was part of a complex of seven buildings.

The towers were a state of the art engineering marvel, which included a commercial shopping concourse and business center, with the courtyard modeled on St. Mark's Square in Venice. At the time of completion, the towers were the tallest buildings in the world.

One of the two towers had been the target of a massive bomb in the garage of one of the towers in 1993, designed to destabilize and destroy the building.

The Pike engineers agreed that jet fuel was the undoing of the North Tower, the first to be hit. Jet fuel burns between 1300 at 2200 degrees. Steel melts or deforms beginning at 1100 degrees. It took over an hour for the steel of the central core of the North Tower to weaken because the jet airliner entered on the side of the core.

Once the structural supporting central column was weakened by high heat in the area of the jet entry, the floors above that area collapsed. As the weight of the top section collapsed onto the lower floors, the weight and impact of one floor after another dropping down around the central core destabilized the floor it fell on, causing the floors below to collapse one at a time in quick succession. This process continued until all the floors collapsed.

"The building was supported by the outer wall and the central core. With the core gone, there was no support for the outer wall. The weight of the upper floors fell on the remaining section of the core, which caved in," said Borland.

Since all the floors collapsed around the central core, unlike trees that fall, the building fell straight down, instead of falling on its side. It took four years to build the seven buildings, but fires, within a day, caused all seven World Trade Center buildings, including the two towers, to be destroyed.

The jet hit the central core of the South Tower right away. The heat from the fire took out the central core faster than the North Tower.

The rigid hollow tube concept with a central supporting core design helped make the building more stable and allowed many to escape, but towers were also designed with aesthetic and commercial benefits. The central core allowed a clear space from the core to the outer wall, which lent itself to better and more open office environment and spectacular views 45 miles away from the upper floors. The open space allowed many variations of open office design.

The central core and unusual elevator design that used local and express service allowed 25 percent more commercial space to be available than a conventional building design. Further space savings came from drywall (sheetrock) affixed directly to the steel core rather than on studs.

The building architect was quoted in a book on significant architects, Paul Heyer's "Architects on Architecture: New Directions in America" as saying, 'The World Trade Center should because of its importance, become a living representation of man's belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his belief in the cooperation of men, and through this cooperation his ability to find greatness."

Ironically, the grace and beauty of the buildings and its massive scale quickly made them symbols of the dynamic cultural and economic energy of the downtown business district in Manhattan, which in many ways also symbolized the financial and economic leadership of the nation. The Pentagon represents to many the military power of the nation.

The Pike engineers indicated that the construction of the building gave enough time for many to escape. Jerus said that after the bombing attempt in 1993, the Port Authority improved safety standards, such as installing sprinklers, complying with city code (which is tougher than state codes), some asbestos removed and others encapsulated.

Even with these upgraded standards, asbestos may have been released and toxins from the jet fuel burning plastic and other materials released a tremendous amount of toxins in the air. Fortunately, the wind blew south, away from Manhattan and New Jersey during the morning of the tower collapses, but the next day the wind shifted north.

Air samples have been taken and it rained the next day, which dissipated what could have been an additional disaster.

Only dance halls, stadiums, and rocket bunkers are generally designed to withstand a measure of impact loads, according to Jerus. The towers were designed to withstand hurricane force winds, and smaller impacts, such as a small recreational plane colliding into the building, but not the major force of a jet fuel-laden aircraft.

Jerus said that one of the recommendations of the mayor's committee was to improve the stairwell pressurization, which helped keep smoke out of the stairwells.

Borland said that one lesson of this tragedy in our world today should be that no further massive building projects of this magnitude be undertaken because it was too risky to house so many people in one place.

Survivor's Point of View - Escape from Terror
   Despite the devastation in the lives of World Trade Center victims and the impact on the nation and the world, the tragedy was tempered by the extraordinary number of people who escaped the devastation because the buildings did not collapse right away. Among the survivors were a blind man and his seeing eye dog, but Stanley Praimnath's story was especially unusual because one of the jets came through his office. Praimnath worked as an officer for Fuji Bank in the WTC South Tower. The following is an interview with Praimnath a few days after September 11, 2001.

   Stanley Praimnath recalled that leaving his home on the morning of September 11, 2001 that he had an uncomfortable feeling and felt like he should pray while getting ready to go to work and on the way to work from his home in Long Island. Other than that feeling, the day seemed like any other. He had just arrived at work and began his normal work routine.
   Praimnath worked as a Fuji Bank Loans Division vice president on the 81^st floor of the World Trade Center South Tower. He looked out his window and saw flames shooting out of the World Trade Center North, the building next door to his South Tower building. 
   When he tried to immediately leave the building, security guards told him and his fellow staff members to go back upstairs since the South Tower was secure.
   Praimnath went back upstairs to his office. When he looked out the window he saw a jet airliner coming right at him. "I looked up and it was like eyeball to eyeball with the plane. It was coming right at me.
   "I took out my Bible and put it on the top of his desk. I crawled under the desk just as the plane came through the window. I cried out to Jesus Christ even as the plane came right through my department. I was still alive. I was crying. ‘I said Lord protect me, please. Send someone to protect me and help me.’
   "I saw that the plane had crashed through at an angle on our floor," said Praimnath.
"The wing or a piece of it was hanging out of my office door 20 feet away. It was starting to burn. I started crawling over a piece of the wing to get away. I couldn’t see the rest of the plane. .
   "I was crawling over the rubble, but it was hard to see where I was going because the rubble was so high and it was dark. The rubble was at least four-foot high and in some cases shoulder high. I am five-foot 10 inches tall. It was dark. I was screaming for help. I was praying., ‘Lord please help me. Send someone to help save me.’ Suddenly, a light shown in the distance and I crawled over and through the rubble to reach the light.
   "I continued crying for help. Suddenly, someone answered. The person dangled a flashlight over a hole in the wall separating us. He said his name was Brian Clark, a senior executive who worked on the 86^th floor of another company and had worked his way down to the 81^st floor with half dozen of his employees.
   The debris was so high that the employees decided to go back upstairs, according to Praimnath.
   Clark stayed behind to help Praimnath, who was continuing to scream and cry for help. Clark told Praimnath that if had not been for the screams, Clark would have gone back with the others.
   Said Praimnath, "I reached over the part of the wall that was open and Clark grabbed my hand. He pulled me through. I pushed the wall as well. I felt some supernatural strength come over me. Part of the wall collapsed and we fell onto each other. We prayed together, calling on Jesus’ name. We were near the stairs. There was no door blocking the way. We made our way down.
   "Along the way, on a lower floor, we saw man who had injured his back and was on the floor. We offered to take him down with us, but a security guard said no, they were waiting for help and that the man might be further injured if he tried to move him. We saw firemen going up the stairs.
   "Amazingly, there was no smoke in the stairs. Clark and I talked about God, about Jesus, and we just wanted to go to a church and pray. We made our way out of the building and walked to the nearest church. It was Trinity. We got as far as Trinity on Broadway and I reached over to hold onto the fence. I was bruised and gashed. Clark was not hurt. As I reached over to hold onto the iron fence at Trinity Church, I looked over to the towers and just as I looked, one of the towers collapsed.
   "We stayed for a while at Trinity and then went uptown. I called my wife. At first she did not know who I was. She did not believe that it was me who was calling. She actually thought it was someone else. She thought I had died and that it was impossible to have survived and that someone else had called. She thought someone was playing a terrible practical joke. "Please don’t do this to me," said his wife.
   "I know God had answered my prayers. I grew up as a Catholic, but my wife’s family were in the ministry and I started to attend a full-gospel church years ago. I can’t explain it, but I had a power in my body that I had never felt before in my life right after the plane crashed. It seemed like I just touched a wall and it collapsed. I don’t know where it came from, but that strength must have been God’s power that helped me to survive.
   "Even though I thought Clark saved me, he said I saved him because if I had not asked him to stay, he would have perished with the others in his department. God saved us both."

©2001-2002 Ken Baumel. All Rights Reserved

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