By Gregory Havel
On Tuesday, November 12, 2013, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat named the new One World Trade Center (also known as the Freedom Tower) as the tallest building in the United States. Its 1,776 feet of height is greater than the 1,452 feet of height of the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) in Chicago, Illinois (photo 1), and greater than the World Trade Center Twin Towers (1,362 and 1,368 feet) that were destroyed on September 11, 2001.
(1) Photo by author.
High-rise buildings have been with us for more than 100 years. As engineering and technology allowed increased building height, firefighters developed methods for accessing fires and other emergencies on floors above the reach of their tallest ladders. Developments in communications now allow firefighters to communicate with a command center in the building’s lobby, and developments in elevator technology now return elevators to the lobby, with some designated for firefighter use in accessing the floors below the fire floor. (See “Elevators: Power Shunt Trip,” Construction Concerns, February 15, 2011.)
A November 14, 2013, article on Bloomberg Business Week’s Web site www.businessweek.com proposed that buildings will continue to increase in height, that the engineering and technology required are already in place, and that cost is the factor that is slowing the increasing heights of buildings.
The tallest buildings in the world are no longer in North America but in China and the Middle East. The world’s tallest building in 2019 will be the Kingdom Tower in Saudi Arabia, with a completed height of one kilometer (0.6214 miles or 3,281 feet).
The authors of the article also proposed that buildings will continue to grow in height, and that a mile-high building (5,280 feet or 1.609 kilometers) could be under construction somewhere in the world in the 2050s.
With a building that is almost three times the height of the Freedom Tower on the horizon, the code development officials at the National Fire Protection Association, the American Society for Testing and Materials, and the American National Standards Institute will continue to modify and adapt existing building and fire codes to meet the challenges of the future. These changes will be essential to keep pace with changing technology. These new and revised standards will allow for taller buildings and for the challenges they will present to emergency services workers. Firefighters must continue to develop and refine methods and procedures to deal with upper floor emergencies in these tall buildings.
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Gregory Havel is a member of the Town of Burlington (WI) Fire Department; retired deputy chief and training officer; and a 35-year veteran of the fire service. He is a Wisconsin-certified fire instructor II, fire officer II, and fire inspector; an adjunct instructor in fire service programs at Gateway Technical College; and safety director for Scherrer Construction Co., Inc. Havel has a bachelor’s degree from St. Norbert College; has more than 35 years of experience in facilities management and building construction; and has presented classes at FDIC.
