Risk news

British researchers are planning to interview more than 2,000 World Trade Centre (WTC) survivors to help engineers and architects design safer skyscrapers, it has emerged.

The ¿1.6 million study will be the biggest ever involving people caught up in the terrorist attack on New York's twin towers on September 11, 2001.

A team from three British universities will aim to find out which elements in the towers' design helped or hindered their escape.

While several studies are already underway into structural issues, less attention has been paid to the way the buildings were evacuated.

The chief researcher, Professor Ed Galea, from the Fire Safety Engineering Group at the University of Greenwich in London, believes that a better staircase design could have saved more than 1,000 lives.

Around 1,400 people were trapped above the 91st floor of the centre's north tower after the jet smashed all three emergency stairways which were located close together at the core of the building.

Professor Galea has already shown that if even one staircase had survived there would have been time to get most people out before the tower collapsed.

Trying to learn lessons
The new three-year project, called Heed (High-rise Evacuation Evaluation Database), will bring together engineers and psychologists.

The latter will play a crucial role in obtaining useful information from the survivors, many of whom are still likely to be traumatised by their experience.

Face-to-face interviews will be conducted in an attempt to build up a detailed picture of what happened inside the stricken towers, The Engineer magazine reported.

Professor Galea said: "We are trying to learn lessons that will be highly relevant to building codes and standards, high-rise building design, and evacuation procedures.

"Among other things, we will be looking for an indication of how quickly people responded. Did they try to obtain additional information about the emergency? Did they try to use the elevators? Did they move in groups or alone? How did disabled people in the buildings respond?"

Researchers from Greenwich, Ulster University's Faculty of Engineering, and the Centre for Investigative Psychology at Liverpool University are taking part in the investigation.

Heed is funded by a ¿1.6 million grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

Max Herd