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Remarks
by Dr. Arden L. Bement, Jr. Thank you, Michael. Welcome
to the National Institute of Standards and TechnologyNISTfor
this formal announcement of the details of our federal building
and fire safety investigation into the World Trade Center disaster.
This
tragic event, the worst building disaster in recorded history, led
to the death of some 2,800 people, including more than 400 fire
and emergency responders. Before
I go into the details of our investigation, I would like to speak
briefly about NIST. As
an agency of the Commerce Department's Technology Administration,
NIST works with the private sector to develop and promote measurement,
standards, and technology to enhance productivity, facilitate trade,
and improve the quality of life. Established in 1901, NIST is the
only federal agency with this mission. Over
the past century, NIST researchers have helped to pave the way for
the innovation, economic growth, and quality of life that have made
the United States the world's most prosperous nation. You would
be hard pressed to think of any aspect of modern-day life that is
not affected, directly or indirectly, by the research, products
and services of NIST. In
times of war or other national emergencies, NIST scientists and
engineers have stepped forward with a vast array of expertise and
knowledge in areas as diverse as radio transmission and forensic
DNA typing. NIST
has more than three decades of experience in investigating fires
and structural failures. Our scientists and engineers are world-renowned
experts in fire science, and in analyzing a structure's failure
and determining the most probable technical cause -- sort of like
forensic structural scientists. Past failure investigations include
the 1981 collapse of a walkway in the Kansas City Hyatt Regency
Hotel, the 1986 Dupont Plaza Hotel fire in San Juan, and the terrorist
bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993 and the Murrah Federal
Building in 1995. NIST
is not a regulatory agency. So, our investigations always focus
on finding facts and deriving lessons learned -- not finding fault.
The findings and recommendations of our investigations are given
serious consideration by the communities we serve and have led to
important changes in practices, standards, and codes. This investigation is one part of a three-part NIST response to the WTC disaster. These concurrentand let me emphasize the word concurrentprograms are:
All three elements of the NIST response program address major recommendations in the report of the building performance assessment teamknown as BPATsponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and led by the American Society of Civil Engineersand build on the endeavors of the National Science Foundation's academic grantees. I commend all of the organizations that were involved in the initial study. NIST
has also identified other critical issues that need study, especially
in areas that impact life safety and engineering practice. Our objectives in the technical investigationwhich will go well beyond the BPAT studyare to determine:
We
will use our existing legislative authority which allows NIST to
initiate and conduct such failure investigations in consultation
with local authorities. The statute prevents the use of any data,
reports, or findings resulting from our investigations in legal
proceedings. NIST
will charter a federal advisory committee to advise me on all aspects
of the investigation and in ensuring its successful completion. We
will maintain active liaison with the professional community, the
general public, and local authorities throughout the investigation
via briefings, meetings, and other means of information exchange. We
have assigned a special liaison to the families of building occupants
and first responders and to organizations representing families
of victims such the Skyscraper Safety Campaign. Led
by Dr. Jack Snell, Director of our Building and Fire Research Laboratory
who has developed and overseen the NIST World Trade Center response
plan, we have consulted extensively with local authorities in New
York about our plans. These organizationswhich have expressed
their desire to cooperate with us in the investigationinclude
the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the Fire Department
of New York, the New York City Department of Buildings, the New
York City Department of Design and Construction, and the New York
City Office of Emergency Management. We
will be asking all of these groupsas well as World Trade Center
occupants, first responders, victims' families, and othersfor
information as we move ahead with our investigation, research, and
outreach efforts. From the investigation we are launching today, we expect to deriveand pass onmany, many lessons in several different areas, including structural fire protection, life safety, and engineering practice. While the investigation portion of our three-part response plan will focus on three World Trade Center buildings, we expect the lessons to be learned can and will be applied much more broadly. We expect the results of the investigation and the companion R&D program to lead to
Let
me repeat those last three words: "Improved public safety."
For us, and the many people and organizations we will be working
with, the bottom line is to make all buildings safer for occupants
and for those who must respond to emergencies in these buildings. Of
course, in typical NIST fashion, we will draw on the capabilities
and expertise of world-class private and public-sector experts and
organizations. That
process has already begun. At the end of June, we held a public
meeting in New York City to gather views on the scope of NIST's
plan for the investigation. We wanted to make certain that our plan
is complete and on track. We
have completed a careful review of all of the written and oral comments
from the public and today are releasing a final investigation plan
that incorporates many of the excellent suggestions that we received.
A
copy of the plan is in your press kits. The plan, and other information,
also is available on our website at http://wtc.nist.gov.
This website also contains highlights of the revisions that were
made to the plan based on the public input. To
carry out the eight component projects detailed in the plan, we
will use teams of NIST and external world-class technical experts.
The
investigation that we are now moving full speed ahead on is a huge
responsibility, and an even bigger challenge. The extensive planning
effort we've already undertaken puts us in a position to move ahead
now. Our folks are eager to begin. Now,
I would like to ask Dr. Shyam Sunder, the lead investigator for
the World Trade Center project, to briefly discuss specific aspects
of the investigation, including our study of the steel that you
see behind me that was recovered from the site of the fallen World
Trade Center buildings. |
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For additional information: WTC Contacts | Building and Fire Research Laboratory | NIST |
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Last updated: 8/20/2002