Environment, Energy and Transportation Program
Recommendations Made for Improving New York City Building Code for High Rises
Summarized by Cheryl Runyon, NCSL Senior Fellow
August 2002
The New York City World Trade Center Building Codes Task Force is reviewing building design, construction and operating requirements to determine what changes are needed in high-rise building codes. The task force will make its findings by December 2002.
Recommendations made to the 11-member committee include wider emergency stairways and stricter protections against collapse and heavy fires. Some experts testified that the current building code is 30 years or 40 years out of date. Jake Pauls, a consultant, pointed out that the current requirement of 44-inches for stairwells is outdated when applied to evacuating large crowds and should be increase by 12-inches. Ramon Gilsanz, a structural engineer, recommended that a new building code require planners to consider the effects of a catastrophic fire in the same manner that they plan for earthquakes and strong winds.
A federal report found that the World Trade Center survived the initial impact of the two hijacked planes but succumbed to the high-temperature fire from the leaking jet fuel; the fire weakened the buildings steel framework. Gilsanz also recommended that the building code be strengthened to prevent progressive collapses--where a falling floor leads to a pancaking of lower floors, as occurred at the World Trade Center. The problem, according to Gilsanz, can be improved through the construction of connections between side columns and floor beams.
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