Leslie E. Robertson, 92, Twin Towers Engineer, Dies

I never really thought about it until I read Mr. Robertson's obituary, that perhaps the luck and relative ease I had in getting out of Tower One, 29th floor, on 9/11 might have had something to do with a structural engineer's design.

Mr Robertson and his firm were the chief structural engineers for the WTC project. He was basically just starting out when the architect, Minoru Yamasaki chose the firm he was with, Worthington and Skilling, to do the engineering design for the Twin Towers. To show you how long it takes to plan and execute one of these projects, consider that these contracts were awarded in the early '60s. The Towers opened in the mid-70s.

Unique to the design of the Towers was the fact that the walls supported the floor, there were no columns. Thus, the floors were nearly an acre of open space. This was a phenomenal opening of rental space.  One hundred and ten stories times two times an acre of rentable space.

After the collapse of the buildings there was considerable outcry that the buildings weren't safe to start with, that the floors were not adequately supported. This was nonsense. Each tower withstood the impact of a Boeing 767 flying into them.  When designed, the engineers accounted for a Boeing 707 hitting the Towers and withstanding the impact. A 767 is significantly larger and wasn't around when the Towers were designed and built.

Yet, of course the towers did survive the impact of the 767s ramming the buildings at full speed; even withstood the giant fires afterward for a while. They did not immediately collapse. That took some time. The impact about 40 floors above my head pushed me into my desk on the office chair and caused drawers to fly open.

I remember Mr. Robertson in one of those post 9/11 documentaries almost crying when describing watching the building going down. He apparently was in Hong Kong at the time. His wife, and engineering partner SawTeen See, watched from the firm's New York offices on Broad Street.

Mr. Robertson apparently felt tremendous remorse about what he saw his role in not building something that could withstand what was thrown at it that day. The ferocity of the fire was not factored in, but then it was not the engineer's role to do that. It was the architect's. Nevertheless, he always carried a heavy heart.

He described getting hate mail after 9/11, but also recalls being upgraded to first class on a flight by a thankful airline attendant who told him he attributed his survival that day to the buildings' design, and by extension Mr. Robertson.

Mr. Robertson would describe the buildings as being made "by hand." The pieces were fitted into each other by construction crews that guided the sections into place from massive cranes. When you think about it, buildings are all made "by hand." Machines craft the parts and lift them, but people fit them together.

After 9/11 and the collapse of the Towers Mr. Roberston expressed concern that his career was over. But that was not to be the case. Commissions still came in. I remember soon after 9/11 being on campus at Geneseo College where my daughter Susan was going and looking at the project sign accompanying the construction of a science building with steel framework. There on the sign was the name Leslie Roberston as the structural engineer. I pointed it out to my daughter.

Until reading the obituary I never knew Mr. Robertson carried the feeling of design failure for so long. "My sense of grief and my belief that I could have done better continue to haunt me." he wrote in the "The Structure of Design." 

Mr. Robertson, obviously a sensitive man, seems to withhold any personal triumph for the fact that perhaps 25,000 left those two building basically unscathed. Perhaps a bit dusty and wet, but physically okay.

I once listened to a retired NYPD Captain tell me that they're trained to avoid the "what if" syndrome. "What if I had done something else,? Then what followed wouldn't have happened." Mr. Robertson built a lifetime chain of event following 9/11. 

"Perhaps had the two towers been able to survive the events of 9/11, President Bush would not have been able to project our country into war. Perhaps the lives of our military and women would not have been lost. Perhaps countless trillions of dollars would not have been wasted on war. Just perhaps my passage into and through old age, comfortably, without a troubled heart."

That's a lot of "perhaps" that doesn't take into account the responsibility of the terrorists who perpetrated the events. Perhaps if they hadn't been born..." You can go on and on. And some people do.

But there is an interesting "what if" paradox that argues that if you changed something in the past you'd still get to where you are today. If the grandfather you have or had weren't around, (that person) then someone else would have gotten your grandmother pregnant.  

Playing the "what if" game is futile. If the Boeing 767 hit Tower One significantly lower, I wouldn't be writing this. But here I am. Because Mr. Robertson thought about a plane hitting the buildings.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com