A Usenet persona calling itself The Unreal Franklin wrote:



Whether I would try to save him depends on a number of factors, including
whether I'm capable of doing so without losing my own life.

Wow. That's interesting. On one hand, you have the NYFD firefighters who
were killed after rushing into a collapsing World Trade Center to save lives
on 9/11, and then you have Scott Wieser, who *might* help, depending on
whether or not his own life might be at risk. You're my hero.

Well, maybe I'm your hero. It depends. Did you do something egregiously
stupid to get yourself into trouble? Are you saveable, or would it be a
futile attempt to recover a body that puts rescuer's lives at unnecessary
risk? Do I have the proper tools and equipment to give me a reasonable
probability of success, or, like the unfortunate would-be rescuer at the
Potholes, west of Grand Junction on the Little Dolores, who drowned after
being pulled underwater because he tied a blanket to his wrist while trying
to save someone who fell into the raging flood, is what I have at hand more
likely to get me killed than save the victim? Dead rescuers can't save
anyone. It's asinine to leap to the rescue of someone in trouble if you
don't know what you're doing or don't have the proper equipment to at least
give some probability of success to the attempt.

You can be a dead hero if you like, but I'll calculate my risks first,
thanks.

Do you think that the NYC fire department would have ordered 343
firefighters into the buildings on 9/11 if they *knew* that they were
"rushing into a collapsing World Trade Center?"

No way.

They're not that stupid, nor are they that callous, nor would any sane NYFD
firefighter have obeyed such an asinine order. Firefighters have families
too, and they deserve to go home at the end of the day. And while we (yes,
we, I'm a volunteer firefighter) may choose to take risks, sometimes
substantial risks, we do it *voluntarily*, and we don't do it stupidly
because we don't want to die any more than anyone else does. If you become
the kind of "hero" firefighter you refer to, it usually means you
miscalculated the situation and got killed, usually along with the victim,
while attempting a rescue.

Firefighters aren't heroes because they take stupid risks and do stupid
things, they are heroes because they train like the devil so that they know
*exactly* what they are doing and can accurately assess the risks involved
in fighting a fire or making a rescue so that they know when to back off and
when they can push the envelope to save a life. They are heroes because they
know exactly where the edges of the envelope are and how far they can go
without getting killed, and because they decide to go into the burning
building anyway, unlike most people, including you, I imagine, who run away
from the fire and hope a firefighter will save them. They're not heroes
because they throw their lives away uselessly on lost-cause situations.

The NYFD went into the towers to fight the fires and save victims, fully
expecting to succeed in putting the fires out, not to pointlessly sacrifice
their lives for nothing in a building doomed to imminent collapse. While
there was certainly some risk of collapse, because that's inherent in any
structure fire, from the point of view of the fire department at the time,
the risks inherent in entering the buildings were thought to be acceptable,
based on their knowledge of the structures and their firefighting
experience. Nobody, including the engineers and builders of the towers, knew
at the time that the force of the jets collisions would strip away the
insulating foam from the steel and thus subject the structure, particularly
the truss flooring system, to aviation fuel-based fire far beyond the design
parameters of the steel. Nor did they know that failure of the joist hanger
bolts, caused by melting, sagging floor joists on the fire floors, would
cause a progressive and catastrophic failure of the entire building's
structure. Nobody even dreamed it was possible because the buildings were
built specifically to prevent such heat-related structural failures.
Unfortunately, this event exceeded all the "worst case" design parameters,
but the NYFD had no way of knowing that at the time.

The fire department entered the building to put out the fire fully believing
that the basic structure of the towers would remain intact and that the
risks of fighting the fires was acceptable and within department guidelines.
They had no idea that a catastrophic collapse was impending. If they had, I
absolutely guarantee you that they would not have allowed 343 firefighters
to enter the building just so they could die, even if that meant that some
victims inside could not be rescued. If you don't believe me, then why don't
you ask them?

Firefighters are not stupid, and they don't generally take unnecessary
risks. Sometimes that means they can't rescue people and the victims die.
That's very sad, but it's just a fact of life, not their fault, and doesn't
make them cowards just because they don't meet your twisted definition of
"hero."

Your implication that somebody else ought to throw their life away just to
try to pull your sorry ass out of some cleft stick you've stuck it into is
unbelievably arrogant.

The lesson here is: "Sometimes you die."

Would you care to make an ass of yourself again, or have you had enough?
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser