I'm a fireman. One of the parents at my kids' school is a neurosurgeon. Another acquaintance is a NASCAR driver. When the subject at hand is brain surgery or driving really fast, I know if I should speak, or ask questions and listen for the answer. Many of my aquaintances are also firefighters. When it comes to putting the wet stuff on the red stuff, I'm as close to an expert as you need to be.

Originally posted by Fremen: When we look back upon the WTC disasters it is amazing to note that despite previous bombings and fires there, the NYC FD and Port Authorities seemed to have absolutely no contingency plans in place to rescue those trapped on the upper floors!

Aw bullshit! Rule #1; When bulidings burn and collapse, people die. Rule #2; Emergency services can't change rule #1 The fact is, there are plans and then there is reality. The nature of my business is that things have gone horribly wrong long before anyone decided to let me know about it. Any plan therefore, is designed to minimize additional loss of life. I could refer you to some HI-rise Firefighting Incident Command manuals if you want. Take a week or two, better yet, take the two-year course then come back with your comments.

 In photos of the event it is obvious that there was at least one helicopter in the air over the towers throughout the nearly 2 hours that the more fortunate of trapped victims choked, broke out windows and even jumped to evade the tortures of fire and smoke. Why did this have to happen?

In general, the fire service never says anything is 'impossible' diffucult yes, but that's what we do. To paraphrase an old jazz lyric; "the difficult we'll do right now, the impossible may take awhile"

yet the city of New York with hundreds of skyscrapers, was and still is totally without any plan to rescue victims by air, using hundreds of helicopters that laid dormant at the time.

"One at a time please..."

"Please wait until the ladder is properly attached to the building..."

"Please ignore the fact that you're hundreds of feet off the ground and calmly climb through the smoke until you reach solid ground..."

It also makes no sense to shut down elevators that may still be functional (sky lobby systems) from firefighters for whom time saves lives!

It is very troubling indeed that no emergency preparedness is in place to deal with large scale skyscraper fires, or to commandeer idle choppers and equip them quickly for such critical last ditch lifesaving duty!

There has to be a better way to deal with such an emergency, since it is obvious that stairwells are practically useless, in such tall structures.

You're correct about that. The better way is to leave the brain surgery to the neurosurgeons, high speed driveng to NASCAR competition, and fireground strategies to those who have dedicated their lives to knowing the job.