Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Modeling the Evacuation of the World Trade Center Towers on September 11, 2001

Published

Author(s)

Erica D. Kuligowski, Richard D. Peacock, Jason D. Averill

Abstract

This paper provides an analysis of the evacuation of the World Trade Center towers culled from telephone and face-to-face interviews with survivors. A decedent analysis explores where occupants were located when each tower was attacked. Multiple regression models were built to explore the sources of evacuation initiation delay (why people did not immediately start to leave the building), as well as stairwell evacuation time (how long the average occupant spent in the stairwells per floor). Issues identified as contributing to either slowing or aiding the evacuation process were explored.
Citation
Journal of Fire Protection Engineering
Volume
49

Keywords

building fires, egress, egress modeling, emergency communication, evacuation, human behavior, interviews, World Trade Center

Citation

Kuligowski, E. , Peacock, R. and Averill, J. (2013), Modeling the Evacuation of the World Trade Center Towers on September 11, 2001, Journal of Fire Protection Engineering, [online], https://doi.org/10.1007/s10694-011-0240-y (Accessed December 13, 2024)

Issues

If you have any questions about this publication or are having problems accessing it, please contact reflib@nist.gov.

Created January 31, 2013, Updated November 10, 2018