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2024.0728.0002...
July 28, 1945
How did Betty Lou Oliver end up evading death after the subsequent 75 story fall? A number of conditions slowed and softened her fall. Had anything been even slightly different, Oliver likely would not have survived the impact. As the car fell, pressure built up in the elevator shaft. This provided some extra cushioning below the elevator. Several feet of secondary cables fell to the bottom of the elevator shaft, further softening the impact. There was also a hydraulic plunger in the sub-basement of the Empire State Building, meant to act as a shock absorber, that ended up slowing the car down as it fell. This all resulted in the lighter impact that spared Oliver's life.
For many more fascinating images... SOURCE
To read about how this happened... SOURCE
I've always found the story of the Empire State building crash simply fascinating. Obviously this was a tragedy for those that lost their lives, but what strikes me is the unintentional sheer brilliance and feats of architecture and engineering that allowed the building to weather such a major collision.
ReplyDeleteA very good example that newer is not always better! I doubt there are very few buildings today that could withstand a similar strike without partial or complete collapse. Sometimes eschewing classic design for more real estate or a certain aesthetic is not the best path forward.
And Betty, god love ya! I realize her plunge was probably only 20 seconds or so, but I would have died of a heart attack 700 times over as it occurred... :)
RBS
RBS - I would have had a heart attack too!
ReplyDeleteBy modern standards, many of the older buildings built in the earlier 1900s were "very over-built", as to their base structure. The most recent illustration of this is the natural gas explosion in the street-level areas of The Sandman Hotel in Fort Worth, TX. Too out the basement and street level shops, but the structure did not collapse. One of the first buildings built with a steel structure rather than the prior wood structure which was common of the time.
ReplyDeleteOn the other side of things, I suspect that prop-driven airplane waw travelling at a slower speed that the jet which hit the WTC. BTAIM
@Cdadbr Absolutely agree with you - The Empire State was also steel structure - but I think the biggest difference between the hotel, the Empire State and WTC was the architecture and engineering - steel framing of the hotel and Empire State ran the perimeter and interior columns; that, combined with heavy brick, stone and reinforced concrete made them massive piles of rock and steel. Overbuilt? Probably... my house is 121 years old and considered "overbuilt" by today's standards.
ReplyDeleteIn contrast, WTC (albeit steel framed) only had steel reinforcement on the inner cores; the outer shells were just glass and a steel aluminum composite cladding. This made the structure lighter, allowed open floor plans without interior columns and gave the capability of greater height and more real-estate per floor. Great for business and aesthetics, bad for strength in extreme circumstances.
Granted, the planes that hit the WTC were larger and going almost twice as fast (close to 600mph) as the bomber (at 200mph), but with the differences in architecture a larger portion of the WTC buildings failed due to heat weakening the critical structure support points and cladding.
That's why I doubt a modern building today would survive a collision comparable to that bomber... while the footprint of damage may be smaller, the resulting fire and temperatures may doom them just as they did the WTC.
As a side note, I do find it interesting that during the original planning and architectural sessions of WTC, the possibility of a plane hitting one of the towers was brought up as a possibility because of what happened to the Empire State Building.. but while at the time they accommodated for it, they did so to only engineer the towers so that they could withstand a 707 at landing speed (about the same speed as the bomber). I'm not sure why they chose the 707 as there were much larger plans and faster planes (the 747 and DC-10s were in service as they broke ground on the towers) but obviously it was a fateful decision with disastrous consequences.
This story was new news to me. I never saw any news covering the correlation and/or similarities to the World Trade Center disaster. Thank you for bring this to my attention and the comments are interesting as well.
ReplyDeleteThanks Rick! I too have always been fascinated by this story and Betty's harrowing tale in particular. WoW!
ReplyDelete--Jimbo
Thanks for the informative comments everyone!
ReplyDelete