Remembering the Fallen Ones

This absorbing, but deeply saddening piece NYT writers Kevin Flynn and Jim Dwyer outlines the continuing story about those who jumped from the World Trade Center buildings before they collapsed. Little is known about who jumped, how many,etcetera, but the investigations continue.

You've probably read elsewhere accounts of family members (understandably) discounting the possibility that their loved one would have jumped, consideringit a sort of suicide. But given these conditions, who *wouldn't* jump?

Temperatures in pockets of the buildings rose to more than 1,000 degrees, sufficient to weaken steel, according to researchers. The first people jumped or fell from the upper floors of the north tower just minutes after the impact of American Airlines Flight 11. The heat reached people on the upper floors long before the flames. Some of those trapped reported that the floor itself had grown so hot they had to stand on their desks, according to a fire official.

"The heat was absolutely phenomenal," said Dr. Guylene Proulx, who studies human behavior in fires for the National Research Council of Canada. "If you have ever burned your finger, you know how much that hurts and how you pull away. In the trade center, it was such a hot fire. It was impossible to think you might survive. Why suffer a minute longer when it is so unbearable? It may have appeared to be the best thing to stop the pain, when the window is shattered and the opening is there."

Louis Garcia, New York City's chief fire marshal, has it right:

This should not be really thought of as a choice. If you put people at a window and introduce that kind of heat, there's a good chance most people would feel compelled to jump.

On the subject, if you haven't read Tom Junod's article "The Falling Man" from the September, 2003 issue of Esquire, you really must. It's the most extraordinary piece of post-9/11 literature I've read so far. The photo above is the one described in the article. Junod ends his article with this:

The picture is his cenotaph, and like the monuments dedicated to the memory of unknown soldiers everywhere, it asks that we look at it, and make one simple acknowledgment.

That we have known who the Falling Man is all along.