Steve McQueen final speech at the end of the film He states 200 Died. And next time it could be 10.000 I thought he was taking about the Twin towers which had only been recently built in 1970 As a juvenile at the time I seem to remenber there was talk of a safety issue If a plane where to hit ?
I don't think it was meant at the time to refer to the World Trade Center twins but certainly when you watch the movie today 9/11 comes immediately to mind and it is rather chilling to hear. A bit more creepy is the fact that The Towering Inferno completed principal photography on SEPTEMBER 11th, 1974!
The movie is meant to allude to the various skyscrapers built at the time including the World Trade Center in NYC but also the John Hancock Center and Sears Tower in Chicago. The Glass Tower having mixed use offices and residential with a restaurant at the top is closest to the set up at Chicago's John Hancock Center as that was the only super tall skyscraper in the world at the time to include residential space.
There was no particular reference to the Twin Towers in anything to do with this movie. (They were actually completed in 1974 but not entirely moved into until a few more years.)
In planning the WTC the most obvious hazard discussed and taken into account was a plane hitting it. To that end the towers were enclosed in those "cages", the metal structures girding each building. If an airliner hit a tower the metal cage was supposed to absorb the energy from the impact and stabilize the building. It was demonstrated that the towers could in fact stand up to the impact of a 747 and it was believed any larger planes that might be developed.
The thing few realize is that when the hijacked airliners did fly into the towers on September 11, 2001, the towers and their cages performed exactly as designed -- the cages did in fact absorb the impact and by transferring the load of the buildings to themselves helped keep the buildings standing.
The problem was something that no one -- not the architects, the engineers, fire marshals, no one -- either in the late 60s when the buildings were being designed and engineered, or in all the years since, had ever thought about: the effect of thousands of gallons of jet fuel igniting, feeding off the building's interior furnishings, and burning so long and so hot that it would weaken the structural integrity of the steel girders holding up the towers. This was compounded by the decision to use spray-on fire-retardant material on the steel instead of layering it into the steel itself. Here too, no one thought about an impact knocking the fireproofing off the steel, rendering it vulnerable to the fire's effects. So after the fires had raged long enough, the now-unprotected steel frames softened and gave way, leading to the catastrophic collapses we all witnessed.
It's perhaps a tragedy of human nature that even experts can seemingly take into account all potential problems and deal with them accordingly...but even the best can't always think of every potential hazard or its consequences. The inherent but unrealized shortcomings in the WTC are by no means the only such examples of people considering every possibility...but one.
It is a misunderstanding, that a building should keep standing after a fire.
There is just the rule, that while burning, a building has to stand the time necessary to evacuate the buidling.
Unluckily on 9/11 the upper stores could not be evacuated and some stupid folks decides, that the people below the impact should stay in the offices instead of trying to walk down.
In Germany/Europe we say, a building hast to stand 60 to 90 minutes of fire. That is the boundary that an architect or civil engineer has to match.
So, the WTC did well with more than 60 minutes
The Twin Towers did perform well on 9/11...although No. 1, the second tower hit, didn't quite last 60 minutes -- it fell in 56, because it was hit lower down (adding to the weight of the damaged area) and at an angle, nicking an edge of the building, that compromised its structural integrity even apart from the impact and fires. The first tower struck lasted longer (102 minutes) because it was hit higher up and squarely in the middle, not along the edge as with the second impact.
However, I don't agree with your statements,
It is a misunderstanding, that a building should keep standing after a fire. There is just the rule, that while burning, a building has to stand the time necessary to evacuate the buidling.
Unluckily on 9/11 the upper stores could not be evacuated and some stupid folks decides, that the people below the impact should stay in the offices instead of trying to walk down.