March 12, 2002: Structural Engineer Criticizes Decision to Destroy WTC Steel

A structural engineer who was a member of the team assembled by the American Society of Civil Engineers to investigate the World Trade Center site after 9/11 complains about the decision to rapidly destroy the remaining structural steel from the collapsed WTC buildings. Dr. Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, and specializes in studying structural damage done by earthquakes and terrorist bombings. [Chronicle of Higher Education, 12/7/2001; CBS News, 3/11/2002; Associated Press, 9/6/2002] He had come to New York a week after 9/11 to examine the collapsed towers, hoping to gain an understanding of how they had come down (see September 19-October 2001). [New York Times, 10/2/2001; US Congress. House. Committee on Science, 3/6/2002] However, New York City officials had decided early on to quickly transport the remaining structural steel to scrap yards, to be shipped abroad and melted down for reuse (see Shortly After September 11, 2001). As CBS News now reports, “As a result, Astaneh has almost certainly missed seeing crucial pieces before they were cut up and sent overseas.” Astaneh-Asl complains: “When there is a car accident and two people are killed, you keep the car until the trial is over. If a plane crashes, not only do you keep the plane, but you assemble all the pieces, take it to a hangar, and put it together. That’s only for 200, 300 people, when they die. In this case you had 3,000 people dead.” He says: “My wish was that we had spent whatever it takes, maybe $50 million, $100 million, and maybe two years, get all this steel, carry it to a lot. Instead of recycling it, put it horizontally, and assemble it. You have maybe 200 engineers, not just myself running around trying to figure out what’s going on. After all, this is a crime scene and you have to figure out exactly what happened for this crime, and learn from it.” However, he adds, “My wish is not what happens.” [CBS News, 3/12/2002] Astaneh-Asl previously told the New York Times that the scrap steel from the WTC was “worth only a few million dollars, a tiny fraction of the billions of dollars the cleanup will cost.” Yet the knowledge that could be gained from it “could save lives in a future disaster.” [New York Times, 10/2/2001]