Yellow Bird: Learning from 9-11

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2002

"The events of the Sept. 11 remembrances have left me almost as emotionally exhausted as the actual attack. This time, however, there are questions beyond the numbers of dead and the attackers.

As I watched the two largest structures ever built crumble, I wondered why this symbol of our wealth and power could disintegrate so quickly. Are all our skyscrapers vulnerable? I am, of course, inexperienced and an unprofessional when it comes to questions about architecture and structure. Yet, it's not naive to wonder if things could have been different if the Trade Center towers had stayed up a little longer. Could more lives have been saved if the victims had a few more hours or even minutes to get to safety?

In my search for answers, I found a Sept. 11 New York Times article by Jim Dwyer titled, "An unimaginable calamity, also unexamined." Dwyer writes that "One year later, the public knows less about the circumstances of 2,801 deaths in Manhattan in broad daylight than people in 1912 knew within weeks about the Titanic, which sank in the middle of an ocean in the dead of night."

Get the Story:
DORREEN YELLOW BIRD COLUMN: Sept. 11 offers important public-safety lessons (The Grand Forks Herald 9/14)