During construction, the safety of the workers must be ensured. These workers, or "skyboys", as they were called during the construction of the Empire State Building, have to wear safety belts or harnesses to prevent them from falling to the ground, even when they lose their footing.
After
construction, when people start to work or live in these skyscrapers, fire
becomes an important problem. It is very dangerous, especially in tall
buildings. Even fire escapes are a very long way down. If they are not
blocked by fire, and it would be pointless to jump from a window, because
it's too high and it would be committing suicide! Because of this fire
problem, fire detection equipment and sprinklers are installed into the
building, so that a fire would be detected earlier and the sprinklers would
put out the fire. Some skyscrapers also have a system called a
pressurization system. When a fire alarm is sounded, the system will
increase the air pressure in escape routes, making smoke in the burning
rooms harder to escape. Even though the steel and concrete structure of a
building cannot burn, the heat of a fire can make the steel buckle. So when
constructing a skyscraper, steel beams and columns are either covered or
sprayed with fireproof material.
However, fires can't be completely
prevented. Here are some fires in skyscrapers in recent years.
23-11-1995
New York Empire State Building caught fire in the basement and filled the
skyscraper with smoke because of an electrical short circuit, and hundreds
had to be evacuated while more than 40 fire engines had to be dispatched to
the scene to control the fire.
21-11-1996 The worst blaze in Hong Kong's record broke out in the 16-storey
Garley Building on Nathan Road, a tourist shopping street. Forty people were
killed and 81 were injured. People were seen throwing themselves from
windows to escape the flames.
23-2-1997 Three people were killed in the fire in the 36-floor complex of
Bangkok's President Tower. The seventh to ten floors of the building were
totally destroyed.
8-12-1997 At least 14 people were killed in a fire that surrounded the top
floors of the new 25-storey Indonesia's central complex in Jakarta.
2-8-2000 2 people died and 47 injured in the fire which broke out inside a
unit on the 13th floor of Hong Kong's Immigration Tower. Authorities say the
fire was caused by some mainland Chinese protesters seeking the right to
live in Hong Kong, and some set themselves alight.
28-8-2000 A fire broke out in Moscow's Ostankino TV tower, Europe's tallest
structure, crippling television broadcasts across Russia, and killing 4
people.
These are only general safety precautions.
But there are also some other dangers as well, one which is unpredictable,
unavoidable, and it is from the air, aeroplanes. The most recent aeroplane
crashes are listed as
follows:
11-9-2001
At 8:48 am, September 11, 2001, an American Airlines Boeing 767 plane bound
for Los Angeles was hijacked and driven straight into the North Tower of New
York's World Trade Center. At 9:03 a.m., an United Airlines Boeing 757 bound
for Los Angeles was hijacked and crashed into the South Tower of the World
Trade Center, creating an explosion. At 9:05 a.m., the South Tower collapsed
and at 10:29 a.m., the North Tower also collapsed. At 5:25 p.m., Block 7 of
the World Trade Center suddenly collapsed, possibly because of the shake
caused by the collapsing of the Twin Towers. The surrounding buildings were
also in danger of crumbling. A total of 3030 people were killed in this
disaster.
5-1-2002 A 15-year-old student pilot, Charles Bishop, stole a single-engine
Cessna and commited suicide by driving the plane into the 20th floor of the Bank of America building in
Tampa, Florida. He was killed and also damaged the skyscraper slightly.
18-4-2002 A small private aeroplane crashed into the 415-feet-high Pirelli
Tower in Milan, killing 3 people, including the pilot himself.