Roof rescues that saved lives here not used in N.Y.

Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2001 | 9:48 a.m.

When Mel Larson piloted his helicopter to the 1980 MGM Grand Hotel fire, many hotel guests were waiting on the roof to be airlifted after escaping from a toxic, smoke-filled stairwell.

When New York City police helicopter pilots circled the twin towers of the World Trade Center after two hijacked commercial jets crashed into them on Sept. 11, no victims made it to the roofs. The doors were locked.

"My initial reaction to (learning that) was what a tragic situation to an already terrible tragedy," said Larson, former vice president of Circus Circus, who still runs Action Helicopters, a company that played an important rescue role in the Nov. 21, 1980, MGM fire that killed 87.

"If they (World Trade Center workers) could have gotten to the roof, I'm sure quite a few of them could have been saved before the towers collapsed."

The differences in the two rescue operations illustrate opposite views on high-rise evacuation plans, as practiced in New York and Las Vegas.

No evacuation plan for any tall building in New York City calls for roof rescues by helicopter, Allen Morrison, spokesman for the New York City Port Authority, the agency in charge of securing the World Trade Center twin towers, said.

"Our evacuation plan was approved by our fire department, and it called for everyone to evacuate down," Morrison said. "It would have just compounded the tragedy if a helicopter crashed while trying to make a roof rescue and fell on people below. No one had any idea the buildings were going to collapse."

While nearly 3,000 people died, Morrison said, an estimated 25,000 people escaped from the burning buildings by descending stairwells built wider than code. The roof doors were locked to protect broadcast, cellular phone and police communications equipment from possible attack from within the building, he said.

"We were very secure -- the only thing we could not protect against was an air attack under warlike conditions," Morrison said.

In Las Vegas, state law and local ordinances require that roof doors of buildings five stories or taller either remain unlocked or open automatically when fire alarms sound.

That wasn't the law when the MGM burned in 1980, but the success of the rooftop rescues during the fire gave a push to that requirement, as well as several others that are credited with averting high-rise disasters since 1981, when a fire at the Las Vegas Hilton killed eight.

"It's not just sprinkler systems like some may believe -- it's an entire system that makes it very unlikely for a fire to spread today, as it did at the MGM," Clark County Fire Department spokesman Bob Leinbach said.

"Not only is every floor of every hotel equipped with sprinkler systems, there are ventilation systems where the baffles close to prevent toxins and smoke from spreading, an intercom system to warn individual guests, a public address system to provide instructions to entire floors and smoke detectors."

Even if terrorists or vandals tried to tamper with the alarm system and smoke detectors, the devices -- monitored around the clock -- are so sophisticated they pinpoint the source of the problem immediately, he said.

"We've had other high-rise fires in the last 20 years, but we haven't had a high-rise fire death locally since 1981," Leinbach said. "I'm not saying the Titanic is unsinkable, but we are far beyond what the Titanic was capable of."

Marv Schatzman, a guest at the MGM the day it burned, said he feared, as he stumbled over dead bodies while climbing up the hotel stairwell with his wife, Carol, that the door to the roof would be locked.

"We were scared to death, because we had been told the casinos locked the roof doors because they feared that some poor fellow who lost all his money gambling would go to the roof and jump off," Schatzman, of St. Louis, said. "But when we got near the top, a young man opened the door, and we knew we would make it.

"If that door had been locked, we would have died, because all that was waiting for us on the floors below was smoke and toxic gases."

Despite that experience, Schatzman said, he understands the security concerns that prompted officials at the World Trade Center to lock the roof doors.

But Tim Donovan, president of the Las Vegas Security Chiefs Association and a Strip resort security worker, says roof doors don't have to be locked to keep a rooftop secure.

"Ways to protect property other than locking roof doors include good patrols, an alarm system and cameras," Donovan said. "Each high rise is different regarding electronics equipment on the roof and accessibility by helicopter."

But even if people at the World Trade Center had been able to get to the roof, there is a debate over whether a helicopter rescue on such a tall building is safe.

"I believe if the police helicopter pilots could have landed, they would have, because they are brave men," Morrison said, noting that visibility was restricted because of columns of thick black smoke, heat was intense and the available landing space was limited.

"They didn't land because they simply couldn't land."

Morrison also believes the roof rescue issue is a moot point, because he said people trapped in the upper stories called authorities and said the stairwells had been compromised.

"We have no credible evidence that anyone could even get to the roof," Morrison said. "And we don't know of anyone who was above where the planes hit who made it out alive."

Larson believes there probably was enough time to save lives from the trade center rooftops, as was proved 21 years ago by the MGM rescue that involved several private firms' helicopters as well as Metro Police and Nellis Air Force Base helicopters.

Larson's three helicopters alone made 100 roof rescues in the first hour and a half -- the time it took for the first World Trade Center tower to collapse.

"The helicopters at the World Trade Center were much larger than mine and they had baskets that could have held 10 to 12 people," Larson said. "One of their helicopters could have saved about 100 people in an hour."

Richard Wright, director of safety and flight operations for the Helicopter Association International, a Washington, D.C.-based trade organization, and a former Coast Guard helicopter pilot, said he agrees that people could have been rescued from the World Trade Center roofs if they could have gotten there.

"I would not have landed on the roof because of the potential for crowds to rush the aircraft, but I would have lowered a basket to get people off in stages," he said. "It would have been a 30-second flight to the roof of the Pan Am Building or Manhattan heliport."

Metro Police Search and Rescue Sgt. Clint Bassett said if people can get to the roof of a burning Las Vegas high rise, his crews can save them.

"We have the training and equipment to pull people off roofs, from windows and from the sides of buildings -- it is similar to the rescues we make off the sides of Red Rock Canyon," Bassett said.

Bassett, who has been in search and rescue for 15 years, said Metro has six rescue helicopters, two of which are surplus military Huey helicopters that have hoisting capabilities. They have been used in rescues from floods.

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