Would a Helicopter Rescue on the roof been possible during 9/11? 

The smoke would have been unreal up there... Maybe if someone could have gotten up to thee north tower's roof and to the northwest corner on or near the window washing machine... But the doors were either locked or jammed.

@@jacoblott1617 like so unreal that you had to hang out of the window 1300 feet up? I mean, the situation was max level bad already. It really surprises me that in case of some sort of emergency those doors couldnt be opened and it does surprise me that nobody ever thought of SOME (no matter how far fetched or ridiculous) rescue plan.

@@Frankje01 maybe with a little more time, but it was only a shake over an hour from the first plane to the first collapse... That's really fast.

@@jacoblott1617 yeah very true, and it is all hindsight of course. But when you really go a bit down the rabbithole, with all the information that was out there regarding terrorism, to completely ignore that in regards to safety protocols is odd to me. I have watched so many docs and videos and I have not seen anybody talk about: Hey, this might be far fetched but what if something happens and there is such a fire that people cant get down. Are they just going to burn to death/jump to their death? It's just very bitter to think about when you hear there were signs of terrorist plans to attack American cities.

@@Frankje01 there's no questions about how obvious it is now that blind eye after blind eye was turned to plenty, whether we are talking about how morbidly inadequate emergency egress was in the wtc and how much was just floating around about imminent dangers from terrorism. You probably know all about the guy in FBI that save for specifics had the 911 imminency all but figured out ahead of time... And they fired him for it, only for him to wind up dying in the towers, as fate does.

I believe there was a photo taken during the final stages of the North Tower still standing, titled 'Impending Doom'. I've often wondered why it was called that and whether it was related to the final moments just after Tower 2 had already collapsed. We even saw footage of it actually. The sight of workers on the floors above the impact zones, leaning out of the windows piled up on top of each other.. Good God the situation on those floors must have been absolutely unimaginable. They must have been truly Hellish. May all their souls truly Rest In Peace. Gone but never forgotten. 😔🙏

Thought about that too.

Not many likely realized exactly what had happened at all, since anyone below the impact site would have been in the stairwells attempting to get down and everyone above the impact site had almost certainly jumped or been taken out by the smoke at that point... Just a terrible day. There is pure evil in this world, never forget that.

@@kilibecherHe’s talking about the people above impact

@@pankowangelclub brother in christ read the 2nd part of his message

Yeah, but this is the type of thing that should be planned for future events. This same type of event can happen and everyone would be doing the same thing, twiddling their thumbs. New safety protocol should be set in place, should this ever happen again. And practiced. But it's not. So if this does ever happen again. Nobody will be prepared.

I agree with you... no one is prepared for a terrible disaster like this.. just like the Tsunami that hit Aceh Indonesia in 2004.. no one knows and is ready for what will happen.. especially in 2001 there were no smartphones and technology wasn't as advanced as it is now.. But anyway yeah, we can learn from mistakes and incidents that have happened..so in the future if something like 9/11 happens... everyone is ready and not surprised by what is happening in front of them..@@bL3dbL4k

@@bL3dbL4kwell the solution now is to prevent the need for this eg, better fire protection, better supports, and more evacuation routes

Actually, from one of the phone calls from Flight 11, they realized what the hijackers were going to do at the last second. Obviously they had to know considering how low they were within the skyline, and I don't think the flight attendants were the only ones who knew this.

​@@DTD110865 yeah because obviously the passengers could just look outside their windows

I’ll never get over 9/11. I am not even American, was about 12 years old when it happened and living in some remote village in Southern Nigeria. We didn’t have a radio or TV but we had newspapers that people sometimes brought with them from the city, and that’s where I saw what happened and even though I was young and hardly knew anything about America, I was saddened and still am today. I have watched practically every documentary made about the event, as well as the movie starring Nicolas Cage. It just breaks my heart thinking of all those people in the towers and the planes, as it breaks my heart seeing what America, that former shining light on the hill, is becoming today both culturally and politically.

There was too much turbulence. They would not have landed on the roof. Why do you think all the roof top helipads were abandoned fifty years ago? Too turbulent. Might want to lay off the Bruce Willis action-adventure movies.

​@@thomasallen6980 why do you think rooftop helipads existed ? Because it's doable. But in the 911 situation idk if it would be possible with the smoke and heat

maybe they could've threw a ladder down. another comment said the doors to the roof were locked or needed another person to open them... so if there was an emergency i guess that wasn't an option

How did you get out of the building

If he was on the 95th floor after the impact of flight 175, he could've used the northwest stairwell, the only of the 3 left in tact after the impact.

You worked at the WTC in 93? You don't look older than 35.

@@sodiumvapor13 hehe I am actually 58 now. This pic is a few years old

@@keyshawnscott12 in 93, There wasn't a lot of smoke in the Stairwells but it was pitch black. We had to walk down in groups of ten, the first in line with flashlight and the remainder with his/her hand on the person's shoulder in front of them. It took us an hour to get down from 95th floor

You beat me to it

late 1999*

@@aintthatright616 point taken it was probably shot in 1999

'He said ppl that were stuck were looking at him and he was looking back not able to do anything.' 😪🙏

Would have needed a rope ladder and a bigger chopper. I've seen sea rescue docos where the choppers don't land on anything, they just hover over it and bring people up via rope.

What a hopeless feeling when you want to help and they are looking at you and you can't do anything.😢

​@@urbanyouthswith all the smoke, too? I suppose fog asea could be comparable, but sans the heat and noxious agents billowing from the stricken structure(s.)

@@PistolP33 In regards to the smoke i think its more about the heat and lack of oxygen required for the jet engines on the heli to run.

watch the documentary called the new pearl harbor. you will see how 911 really happened and who was really responsible. hint. its not what the news told u

Same I get obsessed and then I forget about it

My grandmother was Lithuanian

Thats a great point. Even if the helicopters could have rescued people, it would have been chaos with people fighting eachother to be the first to get rescued. It wouldve been impossible.

Imagine grabbing the ladder as the tower starts collapsing. All your colleagues screaming behind you

Very interesting point. The hovering helicopter would need some kind of emergency release mechanism for the rope/ladder in case an instability occurred due to overload, dropping the rescuees back on the roof. Better than losing the chopper right there too

@@LeafFan1221 I wonder if the roof would have been the safest place in/on the tower to ride the collapse if you were stuck there. In theory, the bottom floors and mass could "cushion" your fall impact once everything gets compacted near the bottom, but it's impossible to predict such a chaotic physics situation.

People were extremely desperate, many people jumped out rather than burning to death. Knowing desperation would make that chopper lose control and crash.

You literally just described my thoughts and experience with this event, to a T. I was just starting high school when it happened… I feel like I was just stunned by it, didn’t really process, and got right into the whole unity, patriotism and let’s go kick butt mentality. Then it faded I graduated and goofed off in my early 20’s and started my life. Had my own heartbreaks and losses, too much else to think about. Fast forward to having my two little boys the last 2 years, and of course the 20th anniversary, and I’m now finally going back and looking at it with different perspectives, finally stating to process. 1) I consider it (and I’ve heard it called this) “the day the 90’s died”. I’ve realized that 9/11, smartphones and social media has essentially murdered the world I came from. My boys will never know what it was like before all of this. They call us the “bridge generation” because we spent half of our childhood before the change, and half after. We are proficient with our current tech, but remember dial up internet and spiral corded rotary phones. So, unlike old timers who get written off for being overly nostalgic thinking their times were better… my generation actually is qualified to say which world was better because we lived in both. And I’m sorry, but pre-9/11 was better. I think 9/11 desensitized us, and smartphones and social media finished us off. Everyone is just downright cold and nasty now. 2) 9/11 to me when it happened, and in the many years after, was a sad, horrible thing that happened. But now, as an adult who went down the rabbit hole looking at things he shouldn’t have online, it’s become to me the most disgusting event that ever happened in human history. There’s been no shortage of horror and barbarism in wars… but 9/11 was unique in that these people didn’t even know they were in a battle, and untold numbers had to end their own lives in a manner that involved unspeakable suffering. The jumpers have traumatized me. The suffering they endured on the way down, thinking of their little children… having time to realize their lives were over and they were going to splatter like watermelons at the bottom. The aftermath photos, the videos… the story I read in a comment section right here on RU-vid about a guy whose neighbor ran out and got sprayed with a person as they hit the ground… replaying that in his head for 20 years before putting a bullet through it to make it stop. The story of the woman who was nothing but chest-up and yelling that she was still alive. The stories of the guys who tried to climb down. The people on the second plane seeing the towers as they got close. The cancer deaths rising today. It’s all just… too much. I want to believe in god, but this has shaken my faith. 3) The state of our country and how that unity went away. And how we had the world on our side after this… but threw it all away and wound up looking like the bad guys because of Iraq. And how we’re now collapsing because we allowed ourselves to fall into the trap of dividing, accepting not being leaders anymore, handing China (a nation that killed more than the Nazis and Soviets COMBINED) the world on a silver platter. It’s just shocking to me that the country I knew before and just after 9/11, is now completely gone. In closing, you mirrored a lot of my thoughts. Now that I’ve started processing this, I actually feel worse. Im saddened more than I ever have been about it. I think this was the day we began losing ourselves. I fear for my boys.

@@30AndHatingIt This is why we still talk about 9/11, even those of us who saw the 2nd plane crash live on TV are still having PTSD over this, and we all remember the climbers/jumpers down to our hearts (edit: even today new pics get shown such as burning feet holy crap so terrible). Thank you for detailing such memories, the whole world was watching and I remember Canada doing their part helping ground all north american airspace. Never forget. You so nailed this, the days we could get in cockpits as kids & just casually walk across the U.S. border for shopping. All gone.

Hey there @jacoblott1617 I can empathise with your perspective. I recall vividly the news reports on that morning being broadcast across the world. I was miles away in Australia but still felt the shock, the disbelief and the horror. Whilst I’ve always been drawn to documentaries on this topic, only this year am I absolutely delving deeply down those rabbit holes, reviewing the newly available videos and enhanced vision- which has only made more explicit the horrors on that day, the desperation of those trapped, my ongoing inability to grasp that those planes actually flew right into those buildings. I always felt they cleaned up the scene really fast- but then I found a video on the salvage, the process of examining each piece of debris and the care and respect given to personal belongings and human remains. I agree that life post 9/11 across the world changed and these changes have been accelerated by social media, internet and the increase of intolerance across the world. It’s hard to remain positive for our kids and grandkids futures. Maybe humans are just a scourge in the earth. Maybe we have run our race. Hopefully not, but how to regain the good parts of humanity? How do we combat hatred, so many nationalist right wing ideas and suspicions between people and understand we are all the same, with the same fears and desires for a happy life. Have a great day ! ☺️

I think it was when the south tower collapsed that the guy shimmying on the north toward fell

I know what you mean. Some things are just too bad to dwell on.

I think you might be right. I just watched some clips from Home Alone 2. The shot of Kevin on top of the South Tower back in 92 didn't show a helipad either. I got to see the Towers for the last time in June 2001 before I moved back to Florida. I was suppose to eat at the Windows on the World but didn't get a chance too. I was planning on going in the summer of 02. You never know what you have until it's gone.

@@itzamia Oh wow you went 1 month after I last went. Something about those towers was mesmerizing. My dad took our family to Windows on the World when I was younger and I’ll never forget how beautiful it was at night. A family friend (Roko Camaj) was the WTC Window Washer. He passed away 9/11. He was above the crash on the North Tower and couldn’t make it out. Was a great guy a very sad story 🇺🇸

​@@BigPete44sorry for your lost 🙏😇.

@@pigramgregory2 Thank You Gregory! 🙏

The air was too turbulant for a rooftop landing pad. The one at the Pan Am building was abandoned pretty quick due to turbulence.

No they knew there was the chance they would or could collapse. Now was it even expected I’d guess no, because honestly steel takes thousands of degrees to even give etc , which also probably until it was to late for dozens of Fd inside before structural engineers actually started informing them that these buildings most definitely have a high chance of collapsing in on themselves especially due to the high temperatures jet fuel burns at also informing them that the buildings design was not “ designed “ like many still this day to endure that type of accident/impact vs swaying with the wind bc of their heights , nor the temperature of the fires mainly due to the jet fuel.

Unlikely, it was pure panic that day.

Another Thing: The connections got destroyed during impact

Well whoever designed that access control software sucks. It should have failed safe and unlocked when it didn't get a heartbeat or upon power loss. We're not talking about fort knox or weapons bunkers here.

you could go even further, what if you dropped firemen through the roof and using fire extinguishers (100s of them put out the fires from the top of the building which would be easier to reach) and prevented the building from collapsing completely and saving almost everyone

@@try2smile4me22 Fire extinguishers? You can't battle such global and large fire with fireextinguishers. It's impossible even with water connection. Such fires are left to burn out on their own, that's it. Firefighters can only battle small local fires while trying to access people.

@@lajoswinkler that's why i said 100s.... theoretically you could do it if you can put the fire out faster than it spreads

@@lajoswinkler obviously it isn't very practical

If a helicopter rescue were possible, they would have attempted it. There were almost 1.5k people trapped above the impact zone in the north tower. All of which would have been in a state of shock, panic, and they would have been desperate to survive. Imagine a scenario where they send a chopper with a rope ladder. Let's say access to the roof was available, or someone from the chopper unlocked this. Things could have easily gotten out of control, people would fight to get on that chopper, the ladder would end up with multiple people attempting to climb up it at the same time, or worse still, the chopper itself become overwhelmed/overcrowded with people. Those helicopters have weight restrictions. Then there's the fact the pilot could become distracted in the panic, or someone else panics and tries to take control of the helicopter to get away from the area, not to mention the impaired visibility due to the sheer amount of smoke coming from the towers. You then have another potential aircraft crash added to the already catastrophic situation. The only other option would've been to have a large, military helicopter attempt such a rescue mission, but the above could still happen. They also likely did not have the time to assemble such aircrafts, followed by the fact they were trying to keep the sky's as clear as possible incase any other planes were attempting to hit other targets in the area. Unfortunately, it would likely have been more of a risk than a benefit. The amount of people they could have rescued would have been just a small fraction of the people trapped on those upper floors.

Thank you for your comment. It was actually my first thought and question when I learned of the tragedy that day: why no attempt of a helicopter rescue? I heard many excuses about why helicopter rescues were not attempted that day, but I had never heard or read a professional answer on whether that would have been possible or not, so your comment is what I had been looking for. I was certain that helicopter rescue would have been possible, had it been decided by the authorities. The locked doors were certainly not the worst thing to overcome that day, either. I remember hearing in one of the 9/11 documentaries how a group of people trapped above the impact zone did try to escape to the rooftop but found the door locked and had told their loved ones about it over the phone.

@@Bellasie1 The PA locked the roof doors for "safety". Not that locked doors ever stop FDNY from getting through them. What is so tragic, and so nightmarish for me is that Helicopter rescues have been used before. Do you remember the horrific fires in San Paolo in the 70s. Hundreds were saved. A Hi-rise fire in New Orleans around that same time used copters. And the MGM Grand in Vegas saved over a hundred from that inferno. Yet after we saw the need and developed a plan for NYC, Koch who no longer liked or wanted the FDNY, (but wanted us cut apart and taken over by PD!!), refused to give us any funding. Dinkins wanted the same, so NO funding. Thus our plan was locked into using PD copters. The catch was we could not order them to do anything. And we had to wait for it and a PD crew to show up and land first. Not sure why Rudy never stepped up. At the 1993 bombing our guys had to walk up 110 stories to search and save all. That day was our greatest, as the only ones who died were caught in the explosion!! 50,000 were rescued/removed. Yet still NO copters. After 9/11 myself and a few others wrote scathing reports demanding we use Coast Guard as they had the winches too. (To save people at the windows). Still NO FUNDING. If you ever want a detailed look at FDNY see my first book ; MY TURN ON THE FIRELINES. For a look at the Historical Web of 9/11 see my series; FATAL FLAWS 1-3. B&N is the best site. Amazo has knockoffs Stay Well R

Lol. You have no idea what your talking about. Nobody is just handed a parachute and told to jump without hundreds of hours of training

​@@rodonis88would you rather be given a parachute not knowing how to use it and have the chance of being able to save yourself or just be guaranteed to die? Any person with a will to live would have taken the chance with a parachute

@@repoman2115how exactly would they have been given the parachutes?

Really good point!

​@@rodonis88😂😂

Great Doco btw

Big hero talk. You cant land a copter on a platform in the middle of a bon fire. Too much turbulance.

@@thomasallen6980 ever heard of a rope ladder? Don't need to land to save anyone who made it to the roof.

Those poor people

The best book on 911 was written by Peter Lance. " 1,000 Years for Revenge" If you're also really interested in how this could have happened. The are some excellent dvds as well. The National Geographic series, and On Native Soil, is a major eye opener.

They've done rescues out at sea where the helicopter hovers and lowers a rope down, rather than landing on top of an unsafe platform.

That was what I was thinking too. Buckets or modified or enlarged ones where multiple people could just walk onto them as it hover by the people hanging out by the windows.

Also, I imagine so many panicked people would have swarmed the chopper, and made it incredibly hard to even take off. They’d probably be hanging on the runners if they thought that was their only chance of escape.

Yet they landed a helicopter in 1993 WTC Bombing !!! On both towers !!!

Bro i dont think that would of worked

I remember hearing a pilot discuss this. Apparently, it would've taken a few hours to even get sikorsky planes with water to even get there.

If they added multiple tons of water, the towers might've collapsed even faster and people would've blamed the people who decided to pour it

The water would have spread the jet fuel even further down those elevator shafts and stairways not too mention the outside of the buildings. They would have needed a type of flame retardant that's used in fighting forest fires.

@@hooper4011 - Agreed - yes on the fuel and the need for chemicals to counteract the fuel...

@@LucyKosaki - The answer would be to test this idea scientifically and prove that it works or not. It would be a good experiment for a combustion lab to try out to see if such a technology would work for high rise fires.

I would think a thunderstorm would POSSIBLY put out SOME of the fire but not all of it. As per night, I think with the think smoke it would REALLY it all the more difficult.

Or how about a torrential downpour / ridiculously heavy rain?

I have seen houses on fire during heavy thunderstorms and all of the rain had no effect whatsover. Even with the rain it took two fire trucks to put out the fire, but the house was still totaled.

If it happened at night we wouldn’t know about the jumpers

If it happened at night, it would have made the scene incredibly frightening. You could have seen how the fires would spread throughout the towers

its wishful shinking ya its better than jumping to your death or burning alive but you jump out with a parachute gotta open it almost immediately and chance could fly right into another building and die that way. i know guy did it i believe but was no fires and he did it from the observation deck not out of a window

Never would have worked the wind forces into the buildings would have made in impossible. A better options are the long inflatable slides they have developed in China for tall buildings, but even those have limits.

This would have been a terrible alternative. Most people wouldn't know how to use them, and plus, as the video points out, there were thick plumes of smoke at the top of the building, which is a problem in itself. Not to mention the towers held 50 thousand people in them at any given time. It just wouldn't have been practical.

it was stuck.

Same happy someone FINALLY covered the thought in my head.

The smoke and raging heat would prevent landing

there were anti-helicopter obstacles installed on the roof after the bombing of the towers in 1993, they were installed there to prevent terrorists landing on the roof via helicopter.

Could only imagine the backlash on if that happened. think of the youtube comments on that one: " How do we know they would have hit the buildings!? US GOV MURDERED INNOCENT CIVILIANS!" "There's no way untrained pilots would be able to maneuver those jets into buildings!" etc etc

The Fearless Stringfellow Hawke, He Can Do Anything In Airwolf ! ! !

Yes it would have been viable. Towers were a death trap.

Seriously?

@@WeezyJeffersonYo It's actually a reasonable question, since it had the ability to be lowered down to the bottom of the tower. The problem was the electricity was out, so it had no power, and no one could even get to the roof.

@@urbanyouthsalso, the machine was quite slow as well, so even if it did work I’ve seen something where they said it would only be able to make a few trips before the towers collapsed.

If there’s a electricity and they have access to the roof they can break the glass on the below impact zone so they can escape through stair and collect again a couple of people on above impact zone

@@texaschainsawmass good point👍

One thing every one over looked !! If you could of operated the Window Washing machine ! Sitting on the Roof !! You could of Saved some people !!!

Fact : Helicopters were told to stay away !!! So how could they help !! If order to stay away!!

It was raining debris, however some very big nets could had surely helped, the logistics of getting that setup though within an hour were simply impossible, literal raining chaos all over.

@@spikester whether nets or bouncy castles, the emergency services would have had to have already expected jumpers, which we know they didn't. For next time, hoping there isn't, they might be better prepared. I'm surprised I have not seen these proposals in any of the post event investigations.

One of the firemen Orio Palmer who got to the impact zone of The South Tower said it was quite manageable.

Figure how tall each floor would have been and x it by 102 and that's your answer. If they were going from ground level up. They could have used some of the equipment on the middle floors. I still think our government was involved to some extent and no one will convince me otherwise.

They wouldn't stretch hose from the ground up. The FD connects to a riser located on each floor, which was compromised. It takes 2 engine companies to attack a fire in a 5,000 square foot area. The size of one floor in the towers was 50,000 square feet. They were never going to put out that fire.

Wonder if each floor had it’s own fire hose reels?