ERDC Research Saved Hundreds of Lives on 9/11
U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC)
Discovering, developing and delivering new ways to make the world safer and better every day
The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks marked one of the darkest days in U.S. history.
However, amidst the devastation, technologies developed by the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) also saved hundreds of lives on that day.
When terrorists hijacked and crashed a commercial airliner into the Pentagon, it struck near a newly renovated wing of the building that incorporated blast-resistant designs developed through nearly 20 years of ERDC research. These ERDC-developed retrofits captured limestone fragments, prevented windows from exploding, and held up the third through fifth floors before the heat weakened the steel and caused their collapse.
By enabling offices right next to the impact site to withstand shattering debris and collapse for 35 minutes, these technologies allowed hundreds of people to escape, while personnel in areas of the building where the retrofits had not yet been implemented were critically injured or perished.
For example, stress from the crash caused severe damage to unprotected parts of the building 90 meters away from the impact area, while protected portions of the building only 17 meters away appeared relatively untouched.
“It’s a testament to the work the people in the renovation did and the engineers,” John Yates, a civilian security manager at the Pentagon who narrowly escaped the blast, said in a 60 Minutes interview about ERDC’s retrofit technologies. “If it hadn’t been done, if there hadn’t been the strengthening and hardening, I can’t imagine what the death and destruction would have been. It would have been more catastrophic than it was – 10 times, 100 times worse.”
Those technologies resulted from forensic analyses of terrorist attacks dating back to the early 1980s. Given ERDC’s expertise on structures, as well as its Cold War research into nuclear weapons effects and below-ground protective structures, ERDC experts were among the first on the scene after a 1983 terrorist bombing of a U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. They were again called upon in subsequent anti-terror investigations following attacks on the World Trade Center (1993), the Oklahoma City federal building (1995), Khobar Towers (1996) and the U.S. Embassy in Africa (1998).
Knowledge gained from these analyses was used to design and test retrofit technologies that could provide greater protection of critical U.S. infrastructure, leading to their incorporation in the Pentagon renovation that had begun shortly before the 9/11 attacks.
ERDC has continued to build upon this expertise, including new knowledge gained from forensic analysis of the Sept. 11 attacks and subsequent events, and its technologies continue to be used to protect critical U.S. and Allied infrastructure around the world today.
Watch the video below to hear ERDC Director Dr. David Pittman speak more about the impact ERDC research had on that fateful day.
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Red Cross volunteer at Fort Belvoir Community Hospital
19 小时前This picture brought many memories. Thanks to the team from Dr. Moser, I survived to tell the story of AT/FP construction standards. I was a survivor of 9/11 as one of hundreds of lives saved. A decade after this life-changing event, I've been challenged by audits on the DoD's AT/FP practices for return on investments. Without hesitation, I say to the auditors -- here I am, I would not exist talking to you now without the protection afforded me on this newly renovated section of the Pentagon. Let me show you....follow me!