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Subject: NYTimes.com Article: Vast Detail on Towers' Collapse May Be Sealed
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Another reminder that the moral writ of intellectual property is -- and ought to --be more limited than real property. Private money paid for these bits, but expropriation may be fairer for IP than real-P.

Rohit

khare@alumni.caltech.edu


Vast Detail on Towers' Collapse May Be Sealed

September 30, 2002
By JAMES GLANZ and ERIC LIPTON 




 

What is almost certainly the most sophisticated and
complete understanding of exactly how and why the twin
towers of the World Trade Center fell has been compiled as
part of a largely secret proceeding in federal court in
Lower Manhattan. 

Amassed during the initial stages of a complicated
insurance lawsuit involving the trade center, the
confidential material contains data and expert analysis
developed by some of the nation's most respected
engineering minds. It includes computer calculations that
have produced a series of three-dimensional images of the
crumpled insides of the towers after the planes hit,
helping to identify the sequence of failures that led to
the collapses. 

An immense body of documentary evidence, like maps of the
debris piles, rare photos and videos, has also been
accumulated in a collection that far outstrips what
government analysts have been able to put together as they
struggle to answer the scientifically complex and
emotionally charged questions surrounding the deadly
failures of the buildings. 

But everyone from structural engineers to relatives of
victims fear that the closely held information, which
includes the analysis and the possible answers that
families and engineers around the world have craved, may
remain buried in sealed files, or even destroyed. 

Bound by confidentiality agreements with their clients, the
experts cannot disclose their findings publicly as they
wait for the case to play out. Such restrictions are
typical during the discovery phase of litigation. And as it
now stands, the judge in the case - who has agreed that
certain material can remain secret for the time being - has
approved standard legal arrangements that, should the
lawsuit be settled before trial, could cause crucial
material generated by the competing sides to be withheld. 

"We're obviously in favor of releasing the information, but
we can't until we're told what to do," said Matthys Levy,
an engineer and founding partner at Weidlinger Associates,
who is a consultant in the case and the author of "Why
Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail" (Norton, 2nd
edition, 2002). 

"Let's just say we understand the mechanics of the whole
process" of the collapse, Mr. Levy said. 

Monica Gabrielle, who lost her husband, Richard, when the
south tower fell and who is a member of the Skyscraper
Safety Campaign, said the information should be disclosed.
"If they have answers and are not going to share them, I
would be devastated," Mrs. Gabrielle said. "They have a
moral obligation." 

The lawsuit that has generated the information involves
Larry A. Silverstein, whose companies own a lease on the
trade center property, and a consortium of insurance
companies. Mr. Silverstein maintains that each jetliner
that hit the towers constituted a separate terrorist
attack, entitling him to some $7 billion, rather than half
that amount, as the insurance companies say. 

As both sides have prepared their arguments, they have
spent hundreds of thousands of dollars acquiring expert
opinion about exactly what happened to the towers. 

Dean Davison, a spokesman for Industrial Risk Insurers of
Hartford, one of the insurance companies in the suit, said
of the findings, "There are some confidentiality agreements
that are keeping those out of the public domain today." He
conceded that differing opinions among the more than 20
insurers on his side of the case could complicate any
release of the material. 

As for his own company, whose consultants alone have
produced more than 1,700 pages of analysis and thousands of
diagrams and photographs, Mr. Davison said every attempt
would be made to give the material eventually to "public
authorities and investigative teams." 

Still, some of that analysis relies on information like
blueprints and building records from other sources, like
the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which built
and owned the trade center and supports Mr. Silverstein in
the suit. Mr. Davison said he was uncertain how the
differing origins of the material would influence his
company's ability to release information. 

In a statement, the Port Authority said access to documents
would be "decided on a case-by-case basis consistent with
applicable law and policy," adding that it would cooperate
with "federal investigations." 

The fate of the research is particularly critical to
resolve unanswered questions about why the towers fell,
given the dissatisfaction with the first major inquiry into
the buildings' collapse. That investigation, led by the
Federal Emergency Management Agency, was plagued by few
resources, a lack of access to crucial information like
building plans, and infighting among experts and officials.
A new federal investigation intended to remedy those
failings has just begun at the National Institute of
Standards and Technology, or NIST, an agency that has
studied many building disasters. 

Officials with NIST have said it could take years to make
final determinations and recommendations for other
buildings, a process they now acknowledge might be speeded
up with access to the analysis done by the consultants on
the lawsuit. 

Gerald McKelvey, a spokesman for Mr. Silverstein, said of
the real estate executive's own heavily financed
investigative work, "We decline to comment other than to
say that Silverstein is cooperating fully with the NIST
investigation." A spokesman for the agency confirmed it was
in discussions with Mr. Silverstein on the material, but
said no transfer had taken place. 

With no shortage of money or expertise, investigations by
both sides in the legal case have produced a startling body
of science and theory, some of it relevant not only to the
trade center disaster but to other skyscrapers as well. 

"The work should be available to other investigators," said
Ramon Gilsanz, a structural engineer and managing partner
at Gilsanz Murray Steficek, who was a member of the earlier
inquiry. "It could be used to build better buildings in the
future." 

Legal experts say confidentiality arrangements like the one
governing the material can lead to a variety of outcomes,
from full or partial disclosure to destruction of such
information. In some cases, litigants who paid for the
reports may make them public themselves. Or they may ask to
have them sealed forever. 
"It is not unusual for one party or another to try to keep
some of those documents secret for one reason or another,
some legitimate, some not," said Lee Levine, a First
Amendment lawyer at Levine Sullivan & Koch in Washington. 

Mr. Levine said that because of the presumed value of the
information, the court might look favorably on requests to
make it public. But the uncertainty over the fate of the
material is unnerving to many people, especially experts
who believe that only a complete review of the evidence -
not piecemeal disclosures by litigants eager to protect
their own interests - could lead to an advance in the
federal investigation of the trade center. 

"It's important for this to get presented and published and
subjected to some scrutiny," said Dr. John Osteraas,
director of civil engineering practice at Exponent Failure
Analysis in Menlo Park, Calif., and a consultant on the
case, "because then the general engineering community can
sort it out." 

The scope of the investigation behind the scenes is vast by
any measure. Mr. Levy and his colleagues at Weidlinger
Associates, hired by Silverstein Properties, have called
upon powerful computer programs, originally developed with
the Pentagon for classified research, to create a model of
the Sept. 11 attack from beginning to end. 

The result is a compilation of three-dimensional images of
the severed exterior columns, smashed floor and damaged
core of the towers, beginning with the impacts and
proceeding up to the moments of collapse. Those images -
which Mr. Levy is not allowed to release - have helped
pinpoint the structural failures. 

The FEMA investigators did not have access to such computer
modeling. Nor did the FEMA team have unfettered access to
the trade center site, with all its evidence, in the weeks
immediately after the attacks. But no such constraints
hampered engineers at LZA/Thornton-Tomasetti, brought to
the site for emergency work beginning on the afternoon of
Sept. 11. Daniel A. Cuoco, the company president and a
consultant to Silverstein Properties on the case, said he
had assembled detailed maps of the blazing debris at ground
zero in models that perhaps contain further clues about how
the towers fell. 

Though the FEMA team could not determine "where things
actually fell," Mr. Cuoco said, "we've indicated the
specific locations." 

Mr. Cuoco said he could not reveal any additional details
of the findings. Nor would Mr. Osteraas discuss the details
of computer calculations his company has done on the spread
of fires in large buildings like the twin towers. Mr.
Osteraas has also compiled an extensive archive of
photographs and videos of the towers that day, some of
which he believes have not been available to other
investigators. 

And the investigation has not limited itself to computers
and documentary evidence. For months, experiments in wind
tunnels in the United States and Canada have been examining
the aerodynamics that fed the flames that day and stressed
the weakening structures. 

Jack Cermak, president of Cermak Peterka Peterson in Fort
Collins, Colo., was retained by the insurance companies but
had previously performed wind-tunnel studies for the
original design of the twin towers nearly 40 years ago. For
the legal case, Dr. Cermak said, "we've done probably more
detailed measurements than in the original design." 

"The data that have been acquired are very valuable in
themselves for understanding how wind and buildings
interact," Dr. Cermak said. "Some of the information may be
valuable for the litigation," he said, adding, "I think
I've told you all I can."

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/30/nyregion/30TOWE.html?ex=1034388663&ei=1&en=0d3143a997e5e2e1



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