Descriptive
Text of
the Fire Test of the World Trade Center Office Workstation
This video documents
one of a series of fire tests conducted in August 2003
as part of the National Institute of Standards
and Technology’s ongoing federal building and fire
investigation of the World Trade Center disaster. The goal
of this and related tests is to provide input to NIST-developed
fire modeling software so that researchers accurately simulate
the complex burning of the combustibles in a typical WTC
office to determine how the fires on 9-11 contributed to
the collapse of the WTC buildings.
The workstation
mockup seen it the video is the same one used by insurance
broker Marsh & McClennan Companies,
a tenant of the WTC 1. The firm occupied the floors where
the hijacked aircraft hit the tower.
The mockup was an 8 foot by 8 foot, four-sided cubicle that
incorporated:
- A laminated particle board desk surface on three
sides;
- A bookcase holding 70 pounds of paper products;
- A largely
plastic chair;
- A computer system; and
- Nylon-faced carpet tiles.
An additional 65 pounds of paper products were distributed
throughout the office setting.
Four other tests were conducted on similar workstation
mockups. In two of them, jet fuel was intentionally spilled
on the furnishings in order to simulate a unique and potentially
influential contribution to the WTC fires from the fuel-laden
aircraft.
During the fire test, the workstation was subjected to
a 2 megawatt burner adjacent to the outside of one wall panel,
simulating the burning of a neighboring cubicle. A ceiling
9 feet above the floor retained the hot combustion gases
enhancing the reflection of heat back to the exposed surfaces
of the workstation.
The peak heat release rate in this test was 9.9 megawatts,
occurring at 8.5 minutes after the start of the test. The
fire consumed 386 pounds of combustible materials in 33 minutes.
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