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Reflective strips line the stairs of the Empire State Building, in case there's no lighting (WNYC/Beth Fertig)

NEW YORK, NY June 24, 2005 —Ever since the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, engineers have been taking a whole new look at skyscraper safety. Yesterday, a federal agency released its own recommendations following a lengthy investigation into the collapse of the Twin Towers. WNYC’s Beth Fertig has more.

REPORTER: Investigators have said all along their goal wasn’t to help the average office tower survive the impact of an airplane hijacked by terrorists. Instead, Doctor Shyam Sunder of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, says his agency’s mission was to prevent tragic scenarios that are much more likely.

SUNDER: Most of our recommendations are for normal building and fire safety events such as fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, large power outages, that's the range of events.

REPORTER: Yesterday, Sunder described thirty different recommendations drafted by NIST following its 3-year investigation of the World Trade Center collapse. Some of them sound like common sense. For example the agency is encouraging the use of sprinklers and wider staircases, so buildings can withstand a total evacuation instead of doing it in stages. It’s also discouraging the use of command centers in lobbies during an emergency – which is what happened on 9-11. But other recommendations are more high tech.

There are calls for developing new fire-resistant materials; and a black box with information about a building’s monitoring systems. Sunder says there could also be hardened, fire-protected elevators. He suggested these could have made a difference when the World Trade Center was attacked.

SUNDER: Of the 99 elevators in each building that were in the tower portion, above ground portion of the buildings, only 1 elevator was known to be functioning in each of the buildings. We believe that had these improved elevators been in these buildings many more of these elevators would have been functioning.

REPORTER: Sunder also said the towers would have been required to have four stairwells instead of three, if the Port Authority was held to the New York City Building Code. He conceded there’s no way to know whether that would have made any difference. But his agency IS recommending that quasi-governmental agencies - like the Port Authority, United Nations and embassies – agree to meet or exceed local codes.

The NIST recommendations would have to be adopted by state and local governments, along with the private sector. New York City tried to get a jump start by amending its antiquated, 1968 building code last year. New buildings are no longer allowed to stack their stairwells close together. And all high rise buildings have to put photo-luminescent

At the Empire State Building, operations manager Hani Salama points to the new reflective strips lining a stairwell. These little green arrows will guide people all the way down 102 flights if the backup generators and batteries go out.

SALAMA: You’ll see almost like an airport type of landing at night. You’ll see lit strips on the staircase on the landings.

REPORTER: Salama says the custom-made strips cost the Empire State Building more than 100 thousand dollars. Older buildings above a certain height also have to install sprinklers by 2019. Salama says these changes make sense – but they’re costly.

SALAMA: Obviously we will pay more than a smaller building. And if we’re in competition with another building obviously they have less expenses.

REPORTER: The city spent two years consulting with the building industry before adopting the changes last year. Up on the 80th Floor of the Empire State Building, architect Ronnette Riley says she doesn’t think the code will be a great hardship.

RILEY: To make a stairwell six inches wider is not effectively adding any cost to the building. It might be taking away some rentable space. And then you weight that against being able to advertise your building as a safer building.

REPORTER: New York City Buildings Commissioner Patricia Lancaster says she looks forward to examining the new federal recommendations to see how they’ll fit into the city’s code. Meanwhile, her department says representatives from the United Nations came in last week to discuss ways of ensuring compliance. For WNYC I’m Beth Fertig.