41 pages • 1 hour read
Jim Dwyer, Kevin Flynn102 Minutes
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Titanic Mentality
The idea that the World Trade Center towers were indestructible, and that they could withstand both a bombing—as they did in 1993—and the impact of a jetliner smashing into one of them, is amisconception that is a major theme in 102 Minutes.
When engineers and architects conceived of the towers, they believed it signaled a new dawn in high-rise building construction, one that was supported by technological advances that made safety requirements in older buildings obsolete. Developers constructed the towers envisioning changes to the old 1938 city building code. However, because the Port Authority, which owned the trade centers and had interests in New York and New Jersey, and therefore was not legally subjected to New York City Code, developers promised the towers would comply with the newer 1968 code. This required half as many stairways, with less distance between them, and no longer required separate fire shafts that smoke could not penetrate. The code also eased fireproofing requirementsand allowed for far less masonry work and brick. The new towers, bolted seven stories beneath the ground, with fifteen miles of elevator shafts, stood as modern marvels.
“I believe the building probably could sustain multiple impacts of jetliners because this structure is like the mosquito netting on your screen door, this intense grid,” said Frank DeMartini, construction manager with the Port Authority in a January 2001 documentary about the towers, “[a]nd the jet plane is just a pencil puncturing the screen netting. It really does nothing to the screen netting” (137).
De Martini’s statement represents what many others who worked in the towers felt about their strength and fortitude. Fire and police officers felt similarly. The Titanic mentality explains why so many workers remained in the south tower, when the north tower was burning, and why some in the north tower believed they would be saved. This mentality proved fatal for hundreds of firefighters, who believed they had hours more to conduct rescue operations. This mentality also defined the fire department’s high-rise strategy of telling people to stay put until help arrived. The building was supposed to protect itself, and was designed so fires stayed contained to one or two floors. Further, this mentality explained why so many safety restrictions were eased, which also created more rentable space, and, in turn, created a more profitable building. Just as the Titanic’s owners considered the boat unsinkable, the towers were considered indestructible.
The Inability to Communicate Effectively
In 102 Minutes,the theme of the inability to communicate effectively is a near-constant. Dwyer and Flynn make it clear that a lack of clear information, coupled with inadequate escape plans and confusion among the rescue agencies, the fire and police departments, and the Port Authority, contributes not only to complicating escape efforts of those in the towers, but hampering rescue efforts.
From minutes after United Airlines Flight 11 strikes the north tower, when people calling Trade Center security officials receive different information as to whether or not to evacuate, until the minutes after the south tower collapses and the north tower follows, there is confusion and improper communication between safety agencies. When Chief Pfiefer radios his men to evacuate the north tower, after the south tower falls, there is no response. This is because thefire department does not have adequate technology, and their newer walkie-talkies remained unused. Meanwhile, an hour before either tower falls, police helicopters radio into leadership about the devastating situation in both towers. If the fire department also received this information, or had there been a firefighter riding along, many deaths could have been avoided, and rescue efforts could have been more precise. But longtime political squabbles and cultural tensions between firefighters and police create a situation where neither agency works with other. In addition to poor communication that morning, a lack of proper planning further devastated evacuation and rescue efforts, with the authors citing that “[t]he city did not organize a single joint drill involving all the emergency responders at the trade center in the eight years after the 1993 attack” (47). Agencies only worked together during a 1982 drill because an Argentine airliner came with ninety seconds of smashing into the World Trade Center due to trouble communicating with air traffic controllers.
The communication confusion ranged from the lobby floor of the World Trade Center to the top level of United States government. Due to poor communication, that morning fighter jet pilots never received Vice President Dick Cheney’s order to shoot down any planes approaching New York City’s airspace. Despite knowing how chaotic evacuation efforts proved during the 1993 bombing, confusion and poor communication hampered rescue efforts the morning of September 11th.
Improvisation and the Bravery of Ordinary People
In addition to the well-publicized heroic efforts of firefighters, police officers, and other emergency workers on 9/11, Dwyer and Flynn’s documentation of rescue efforts performed by everyday trade center workers is another major theme in the book. Couple with this theme are the improvisations used by these workers.
With elevators out of service, stairways steaming with smoke and flames, and communication channels either knocked out or ineffective, people inside the towers had to improvise. Only when individuals like De Martini and his crew took it upon themselves to forge a path through rubble and stuck doorscould some people go free. There were many others, including the Marriott employees who stayed behind to help direct evacuees through the underground concourse mall, as flaming debris and falling bodies made it too difficult to escape through the lobby. There was the window washer, who helped cut through drywall in a blind elevator shaft with his metal squeegee, after sharpening the squeegee on the wall. There were the Port Authority employees who ripped a glass panel from a tower lobby desk, creating a makeshift gurney to carry out Lauren Smith, who plunged down an elevator shaft. There were attempts to nudge open jammed elevator doors with suitcases, attempts to make it to the roof in hope of aerial rescue. And there were those descending the stairwells who, with no other options, dragged out people confined to wheelchairs or with devastating injuries by their legs.
None of this was in the plan, because there was no plan: “There had been no drills for this. No one had the duty of running such a full scale operation because it was never supposed to take place. In a wave of improvisation, people had gone to these critical spots and saved lives simply by pointing fingers” (156).
