Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Statue of Liberty: Emergency Exit

West Point civil engineering professor Major Mark DeRocchi gave his cadets a unique assignment. Their assignment...create an emergency evacuation device for someone who needs an emergency exit from the crown of the statue of liberty.

At first I was pretty excited about this when I heard the story about these students creating an evacuation device.

Of course, we've seen people in distress on the Statue of Liberty...sure most of it in film...but this device (a gravity driven stair chair) could hardly help people stuck in the crown during some more famous situations (usually the result of tsunami, global climate change, monsters, or aliens).

This is a video I found on youtube shows some famous times when a rescue system would have been appropriate...the stair chair by the West Point students wouldn't work in these situations.



The tradition of destroying The Statue in film goes back to 1933 film Deluge, but it has really become en vouge over recently, especially in the last decade.

Here's a list of movies where The Statue of Liberty is destroyed:
Deluge (1933) ♦ Planet of the Apes (1968) ♦ National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985) ♦ Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) ♦ Ghostbusters II (1989) ♦ Batman Forever (1995) ♦ Independence Day (1996) ♦ Deep Impact (1998) ♦ A.I:Artificial Intellegence (2001) ♦ The Day After Tomorrow (2004) ♦ Cloverfield (2008) ♦ 2012 (2009)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very interesting. Although, if there was a situation that required an emergency exit of the Statue's crown, I am not so sure it would be survivable.

ajlounyinjurylaw said...

The statue of Liberty would be the last place I would want to be in case of an Emergency. Although it is a spectacular place.