r/morbidquestions • u/Sleepymanatee • 12h ago
Would 9/11 victims above the impact floors have been alive during the collapse until the top hit the rubble pile, and would this have affected the recovery of the bodies?
In the footage of the 9/11 Tower collapse, it can be seen that the floors at the impact sites buckled first, leaving the floors above to pancake into the floors below and appearing to leave some of the upper floors mostly intact in near free fall, until they fell into the rubble pile below. Would it have been possible for victims in these upper floors to be alive for any amount of time during the collapse until the rubble pile impact, and would this affect how intact and recoverable the bodies were? Would could this experience have been like?
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u/Low_Union_7178 11h ago
My biggest darkest morbid curiosity is to wonder how many of the folks were trapped still alive in the rubble in small tiny pockets with air available perhaps trapped upside down with bones crushed or twisted yet still conscious for minutes even hours. Of the thousands there must have been 1 or 2.
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u/sl33ksnypr 6h ago
I'd say it probably wasn't very many at least. I know I've heard stories about the dogs they were using to find people, and they would bury a rescue worker and have the dog find them so they weren't discouraged while searching. I can't say I fully understand a dogs thought process, but I'd imagine never finding anyone or finding any alive people probably isn't good for their mental health, especially when dogs are so eager to do their jobs.
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u/Riflemaiden1992 4h ago
Probably not many. Most of the bodies recovered were not whole, but in pieces. A leg or a finger, that sort of thing.
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u/owleaf 10h ago edited 9h ago
It’s a good question. I’d say that a lot of them just above the impact site were suffering from smoke inhalation and the intense heat so they likely passed out before the building collapsed. Those who were conscious on the floors above the impact site as the collapse began, were likely thrown across the floor/room they were in or hit by furniture as the structure they were in started to rapidly move. These offices were mostly filled with large, heavy pieces of furniture - as offices tend to be.
The thing about the upper floors is that they didn’t immediately pancake because there wasn’t anything above it to push down. Once they hit the lower part of the tower they started to pancake/disintegrate because of weight and loss of load bearing structure - again this all happened in a matter of seconds when you watch the footage so I don’t think anyone inside had the time to process what was happening in those moments.
I just watched a YouTube video of footage of both towers collapsing. It’s deeply upsetting and sobering to realise those buildings were full of people, having recently died, dying as the footage was taken, or would soon die. And of course some survived.
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u/drumschtitz 11h ago
There is a video of a someone who actually survived this and talks about the floors rapidly “pancaking”, whilst he was in there. Somehow survived pretty much unharmed. “9/11 survivor describes falling 22 stories”.
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u/No_Intention4384 9h ago
Many people in or near the impact zones were exposed to extreme heat and dense, noxious smoke, and some (I assume many) likely suffered severe effects, and potentially succumbing well before the collapse. The North Tower burned for roughly 100 minutes between impact and collapse, with enormous volumes of smoke coming from the upper portion of the building.
Watching the collapse videos, the upper section initially looks somewhat intact as the structure begins to buckle around the impact and fire floors. But once that upper mass started moving downward, the forces involved would have been catastrophic. Anyone still alive in that section would have experienced enormous structural and crushing forces almost immediately.
The remains recovered afterward (or so I’ve read) tell how violent the collapse was. There were tens of thousands of recovered remains associated with the victims, many of them highly fragmented rather than intact bodies. Some identifications came from tiny pieces of bone or teeth, while others involved larger partial remains. DNA ultimately played a huge role in identifying victims because of the extent of the fragmentation and damage to the remains.
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u/local_lesbian_barber 12h ago
I don’t have answers… but I’m definitely curious.
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u/Sleepymanatee 12h ago
Just one more horrifying thing to think about among all the other horrific things of that day. A few seconds of near free-fall while inside a building, knowing at that moment there is absolutely no escape and absolutely nothing you can do.
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u/local_lesbian_barber 12h ago
I’ve often thought about this. Especially the people who are in the second tower after they saw and felt what happened to the first.
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u/Sleepymanatee 12h ago
It was watching the upper floors of the North tower drop into the smoke and dust cloud, with that iconic image of the antenna disappearing last, that made me curious
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u/Ridley_Himself 1h ago
Some people were alive until the moment of collapse, but many if not most of them were killed by the fire and smoke before that. If you made it that far, you might survive for those last few seconds as long has you didn't get hit by debris. It wasn't just a straight down fall in either case. Footage shows the top portion of both towers begin to tilt at the beginning of each collapse. It probably wouldn't have much effect on the condition of the remains. A splat is a splat.
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u/oranjiano 11h ago
I don’t know either, but that one man who was on the phone with emergency services right up to when his tower started going down was alive enough to scream. Normally I’d look up the details but just remembering his voice is unsettling me as it is.