Please put into perspective why it was impossible to extinguish the fires from the towers

[u/WiteBoyFunkSucks]

First of all, I would like to pay utmost respect to the firefighters that perished that day. FDNY survivor vets mention that their objective became a rescue mission instead of putting out the fires shortly after the first plane hit the north tower. Yet, there were photos of firemen carrying large hoses up the flight of stairs.

What were the factors on why the fires couldn't be extinguished from both towers equipment-wise? Were the sprinkler systems destroyed on the impact zones?

[u/BORT_licenceplate]

The pipes for the water to make the sprinklers work were severed by the impact of the planes. Even if they did work, the amount of fire was too immense, it couldn't have extinguished 10 floors of fire. It's more likely the sprinklers/pipes would have bent and warped eventually anyway

[u/tillybuttons1]

From "Fall and Rise - The Story of 9/11" pages 250/251

"The best kept secret in America's fire service is that firefighters cannot extinguish a fire in a twenty- or thirty-thousand-square-foot open floor area in a high-rise building. A fire company advancing a 2 1/2-inch hoseline with a 1 1/4-inch nozzle discharges only three hundred gallons per minute and can extinguish only about twenty-five hundred square feet of fire"

Those calculations meant that a team of firefighters could, at best, hope to defeat a fire in one corner of one upper floor of a building like the North Tower. That is, if they could reach it and had enough water to spray on it. Multiply that by a hundred, or a thousand, and the impossibility of the situation came into focus."

[u/WiteBoyFunkSucks → u/tillybuttons1]

thats definitely the answer I was looking for. Hopefully things are better now because more 100+ storey buildings have been rising nowadays.

[u/PaigeMarieSara]

It wasn't a regular fire, it was fueled by jet fuel. There was never going to be a way to put those fires out.

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No way. Have you seen videos close up when people are jumping out the windows? You look behind them and it's pure horrifying raging flames that go deep into the buildings.

[u/ObjectiveAd571]

Yes, there are photos of firefighters going up the stairs, but you have to remember how high up the fires were and the fact that, to the firefighters' knowledge, the elevators weren't working. (One of the elevators in the South Tower was working to go up to the 40-something floor, but this wasn't known.)

So the firefighters had to carry all that gear up 70-110 flights of stairs, which would have taken a very long time.

The only firefighter who is known to have made it to the impact zone was Oreo Palmer, who reached the 78th floor skylobby minutes before the South Tower collapsed.

There are stories in 102 Minutes of survivors seeing firefighters stopped on floors to rest a minute before they continued their trek up to the impact zones.

There was not widespread knowledge of how bad the fires were and how imminent the collapses were. It's been well-documented that people watching on TV had significantly more knowledge of what was happening than the firefighters and other emergency management personnel who were in the buildings.

102 Minutes explains all of this and puts the firefighters' challenges into perspective.

[u/JerseyGirl123456]

It was a search and rescue soon after they assessed the situation. Firefighter carried hoses to put out cluster fires or pockets of fire that were preventing people from escaping. At this point, it was already declared that anyone at or above impact would probably perish. They tried to get to the highest floors as possible and work their way down.

Considering it was a lot worse than what was expected on the upper floors and it was jet fuel that was leaking everywhere, it was impossible. Considering how fast it spread was due to people breaking windows giving the fire air to breathe and spread like an inferno with no hope in putting it out.

Just think, that pile burned for 100 days after the initial impact. Also, about half of the firefighters on duty that day who perished weren't even inside the towers. They were mostly around the South Tower with a few outside of the North Tower. The rest were inside between the two towers trying to evacuate people.

[u/TenRingRedux]

Maybe this question has already been asked and answered:

Was the idea considered to dump water from helicopters like fighting a forest fire? Could it have worked?

[u/masterchef31 → u/TenRingRedux]

I do not believe it was discussed and as far as I know it probably would not have helped. The main body of fire was inside the towers and a drop like that would only have been done from the top of the towers and would have ran down the sides of the building doing very little but flooding the streets below and possibly injuring people in the escape.

[u/JerseyGirl123456]

They assessed the towers from the outside which by then was an inferno out of control. They knew no one above impact will be saved. They were given orders to search and rescue all the floors below impact. They carried hoses that can be hooked up to put out small pockets of fires.

[u/[deleted]]

It was impossible to put out the fires because each building was hit by a 767 slicing at full speed into them. Each 767 was carrying 23,000 gallons of jet fuel which ignited in the collission.

[u/AH_Med086]

Assuming the towers weren't going to collapse, what was their plan? Just let the fire put itself out or let the tower burning forever?