Sao Paulo Fire Rescue Dec 2011

[Savoia]

Click here (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/8974470/Helicopter-rescues-residents-in-favela-fire.html) to see a vid of a helicopter involved in a fire rescue today in Sao Paulo.

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I'm not sure of the name of the 'basket' used for recovering the fire victims (it has a similar appearance to the crayfish pots I used to fish with as a youngster - only bigger) but my question is .. couldn't a device similar to this, with a sufficiently long enough line, have been used to rescue victims on 9/11?

[MikeNYC]

Such products exist for multiple people:

Helibasket Multiple Rescue Systems (http://www.precisionliftinc.com/Helibasket5.html)
From 2006 about it: Guard tests world?s first multi-person rescue basket (http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123016794)
This was developed post-9/11 and could presumably have helped on that day.

[SuperF]

Yeah, and we had been doing that sort of thing in New Zealand and other places around the world for over 50 years.

Unfortunately a lot of the rescue operators don't talk to the utility operators to see if they can learn anything. Yes it could have saved lives in 9/11, however the response time needed may have limited the number saved, and unfortunately we will never know if any could have been saved.

Also the commonsense thing to do in a tower fire is to descend, so how many people would have headed to the roof, and most roof access is locked...

[Savoia]

I wasn't thinking of this basket so much for rooftop evacuation but possibly 'dangling' the device alongside the building (as least as far as the line length would permit).

Perhaps some (even if it were just a few) could have been saved this way?

One of the many things 9/11 demonstrated is that in a 'new' war there are going to be different rescue and recovery requirements. In WWII there were no high rises to contend with but I would say that in any future conlict where urban centres are targeted, high rises would represent a risk in terms of rapid evacuation.

Some buildings have 'escape ropes' installed near their windows which allow occupants to absail out of the building but .. lack of training in their deployment, height restrictions and a general apprehension towards their use means they are likely to be of limited effect.