Lessons from 9/11

摘要

The collapse of the World Trade Centre (WTC) towers in New York highlighted a disciplinary divide in engineering that remains to this day, according to Dr Jonathan Barnett, an expert in fire safety engineering. "All design professionals should be responsible for fire safety, not just the fire safety engineer," he said. "Architects, structural engineers, mechanical engineers, everyone should be involved." This requires cross-discipline training, he said, although Australia and the US are still lacking in this regard. In Structural and Fire Safety Engineering: The World Trade Centre Collapse, a new e-learning video series released by Engineering OnLine (EOL), Barnett provides a professional engineer's insight into the collapse of the towers after the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. The series is replete with interesting observations, including analysis of the fates of the lesser known WTC 5 and 6, which showed those buildings also suffered collapses despite being rated for a fire resistance level higher than the temperatures to which they were ultimately exposed.