911 how many people jumped

There were too few, too close together and with walls too weak to withstand the fire. That nightmare scenario has furiously driven safety experts for the past two decades to push for vital changes to US building safety codes. Up or down, left or right, panicked choices determined the chances of survival for people, unaware the odds were already stacked against them in buildings designed to maximise profit, not safety.

A volunteer New Jersey firefighter, he was driving into the city that morning when he saw the north tower burning and changed directions to get to his firehouse. Time and again, they faced pushback from building industry groups, reluctant to give up valuable floor space.

When the World Trade Centre opened in lower Manhattan in , its twin towers were each storeys high. While they were under construction, New York City's building codes for high rises changed to allow fewer stairwells in the towers, halving the number required from six to three. Keen to maximise open space without columns or other obstructions, the building designers placed the stairwells together in the same central area of the huge, 4,square-metre floors, around 20 metres apart.

When American Airlines Flight 11 struck the north tower at am it sheared through floors 93 to 99 and all three of the building's stairwells in this area were destroyed. Hundreds of people above the impact site were trapped with no way out. They were killed when the tower collapsed. At am, United Airlines Flight crashed into the south tower, through floors 75 to 85, but this tower had a major difference, a 'sky lobby' around floor 78, with space to transfer between elevators and stairwells set further apart.

Here, one stairwell in the south tower survived the impact, and offered a vital means of escape for those on the upper floors. Professor Corbett believes both towers should have held a fourth stairwell, based on building codes for occupancy rates, but the buildings' owner, the New York Port Authority, was exempt from complying with the city's building codes. Port Authority documents showed an engineer's recommendation in that they "take advantage of the more lenient provisions regarding exit stairs".

To this day, Professor Corbett believes that decision "may well have cost lives". Decades before the tragedy of the World Trade Centre, public safety expert Jake Pauls was advocating for wider stairwells in high rise buildings. Nicknamed "a warrior on egress" by fellow safety campaigners, Dr Pauls has more than five decades of experience in public health consulting, with a focus on stairway safety and usability in major evacuations. Now 78, and still shuttling between Canada and the US working on safety committees, Dr Pauls told the ABC the stair width in the twin towers in was based on an antiquated measurement going back to pre-World War I standards.

Building codes dictated that stairs must be at least Pictures taken inside the stairwell show office workers in a devastatingly slow descent, at times stopped and pressed flat against the walls to allow firefighters carrying well over 20 kilos in heavy equipment to get up the stairs. Evacuees included hundreds of people with physical disabilities, some in wheelchairs, being carried down by their co-workers through the narrow stairs. Survivors said even as the descent moved at a snail's pace, people did not push.

Below the points of impact, the stairs saved thousands of people, with about 14, occupants of the lower floors making it out alive. An advertisement for the television show "The Apprentice" hangs at Trump Tower in The show launched in January of that year. In January , the show returned as "Celebrity Apprentice. A inch talking Trump doll is on display at a toy store in New York in September Trump attends a news conference in that announced the establishment of Trump University.

From until it closed in , Trump University had about 10, people sign up for a program that promised success in real estate. Three separate lawsuits -- two class-action suits filed in California and one filed by New York's attorney general -- argued that the program was mired in fraud and deception. Trump's camp rejected the suits' claims as "baseless.

Trump attends the U. Open tennis tournament with his third wife, Melania Knauss-Trump, and their son, Barron, in Trump and Knauss married in Trump poses with Miss Universe contestants in In , Trump announces his endorsement of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. It was shortly before the Republican National Convention in nearby Tampa. He said he would give up "The Apprentice" to run. Trump -- flanked by U. Trump dominated the GOP primaries and emerged as the presumptive nominee in May.

The Trump family poses for a photo in New York in April. Trump speaks during a campaign event in Evansville, Indiana, on April Trump delivers a speech at the Republican National Convention in July, accepting the party's nomination for President.

It's time to deliver a victory for the American people. Trump faces Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the first presidential debate, which took place in Hempstead, New York, in September. Trump apologizes in a video, posted to his Twitter account in October, for vulgar and sexually aggressive remarks he made a decade ago regarding women. Trump walks on stage with his family after he was declared the election winner on November 9.

Trump is joined by his family as he is sworn in as President on January Opinion: Waterboarding isn't torture? Try it. President George W. Bush authorized the interrogation technique under his administration, a practice President Barack Obama condemned and officially ended when he entered office. Trump insisted that the U. Critics contend the practice has been proven unreliable and largely ineffective compared to standard interrogation techniques.

But Trump insisted that the approach gets results: "Don't kid yourselves folks, it works. Trump defends retweet of fake crime numbers. The brash billionaire also didn't back down from his controversial comments that he would consider shutting down mosques or putting Islamic houses of worship in the U. Something's happening. Then my boss called and told me to get to the towers to photograph the crash. By this time, the city — from 14th Street to downtown — had been sealed to everybody except first responders.

We got as close as we could but were still some way from the towers. As we ran the 35 blocks, weaving in and out of the crowds, we stopped occasionally to photograph the chaos around us. After about 25 minutes, we were within a block of the towers and there, on a quiet corner between Park Place and West Broadway, I saw a policeman, looking up at the North Tower.

There was nobody else around. I took a photo of him — capturing an image of that day that has been widely used since. As I carried on walking towards the towers, a man in an FBI jacket passed me by. Shortly after, another in a Secret Service jacket walked past. I found it strange that they would be there for a plane crash. I turned around and started walking towards the West Side Highway, and as I was walking, I saw the first person jump. She was a Black woman, in a smart skirt and vest top.

I could see her clearly. It was like she was just floating. I picked up my camera and took a photo. He thought it was a piece of the building falling. But I was close enough to tell it was a person. I was so close I could see her face. She seemed calm and relaxed, as if she had no other option but to jump.