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A compilation of physical
impossibilities & overlooked evidence |
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in the official explanations
for the destruction of the |
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World Trade Center Complex |
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by C. Thurston |
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updated 11/07 |
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This
report is divided into the following sections: |
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Dramatic Features of the Tower Destruction that are Ignored
by All the Official Theories |
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I feel
a sense of urgency over this issue because it involves the dangerous
influence of a powerful,
highly organized but factually incorrect set of beliefs that continues to
have a strong hold on the minds of many Americans and many others as well.
These beliefs inherently create an unconscious mental disconnect from factual
reality that has been exploited as the basis for drastic changes in law and
policy that would have been otherwise impossible. |
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I am
wary of any belief
whether it be mine or someone else's if it is promoted and accepted with
little or no substantial verification. I'm learning to consider the
possibility that a tempting new belief may have been engineered to serve the
purposes of others unknown to me. |
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My
independent research efforts into this matter are of a volunteer nature and
are motivated by a desire to learn the truth about these events. Even if you
disagree with my conclusions I hope you can at least share my intentions. This report
is primarily an information assist for others who may also be looking into
these questions on their own. |
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The information
presented here can be easily verified and/or expanded upon with simple
internet searches. Many good sources are available. Independent research is a
healthy exercise for anyone's critical and logical faculties it is also a
profound opportunity to reclaim control of your understanding and
perspective. How
can we hope to control the future if our beliefs about the past and the
present are the products of deliberate deception? |
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How
were three
steel frame high-rise structures completely destroyed on 9/11? Many conflicting theories are
being put forward, but unlike most of history's unanswered puzzles, the
destruction of the WTC Towers and the mysterious collapse of WTC7 are matters
of physics. We cannot even begin to define the crime of 9/11 until we have a
basic understanding of the physical events that we all witnessed. The
consideration of who had the means, motive and opportunity can only begin
once we know what actually happened! |
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Existing
photographic and video evidence that has undisputed authenticity and is a
part of the public record presents a number of striking problems with the belief that the
airplanes initiated a chain of events that ultimately destroyed the Towers,
and of course Building 7 was not hit by an airplane. To
clearly see these problems, it is helpful to first have a basic understanding of materials
behavior and the design of the Towers, and then become aware of the distinct
and remarkable features of the events themselves. This report includes a critical
evaluation of the leading "official" explanations, followed by an
examination of the compelling forensic evidence that is consistently either
ignored or misrepresented by these explanations. |
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Structural
steel has been
used in the construction of buildings, bridges, towers, etc., for well over
100 years and its characteristics and behavior under adverse conditions have
been well tested and analyzed over this long period of time. The greatest
risks to modern highrise buildings (apart from military attacks and severe
earthquakes) are fire, high winds and accidental airplane collisions.
Consequently, the engineering and design of tall buildings must guarantee that they can successfully withstand
these adversities. |
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The
World Trade Center Towers were the world's tallest buildings when they were
built. Historic innovations in high-rise design were conceived and implemented
in order to
safely reach such unprecedented heights. Structural steel buildings up to
this time were typically designed with the support columns arranged in a
grid-like configuration. This type of framework meant that the office space
was periodically interrupted by these evenly spaced columns. The
Towers, however, were designed according to a "tube" concept,
wherein load-bearing columns are moved to the perimeter of the structure and ALSO
concentrated in a central core. The office floors could then be suspended
between like large square donuts. This design provided a column-free office
environment and also produced a very strong, flexible and relatively
lightweight structure with tremendous sheer strength. The Towers could be 100
stories high and still withstand hurricane force winds and collisions from
large commercial jet aircraft. |
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Engineering
News-Record
reported in 1964 that the specially manufactured high strength steel
perimeter columns
had strength significantly greater than the 5 X load requirement of standard
building codes, stating that "live loads on these columns can be
increased more than 2000% before failure occurs." From the book City
in the Sky
(Times Books, Henry Hold and Company, LLC, 2003, page 133), we're told
that the calculations of the engineers working on the Tower design showed
that ALL the columns on one side could be cut, along with the two corners and
some of the columns on each adjacent side, and the building would still be
strong enough to withstand a 100-mile-per-hour wind! http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/design.html Post-9/11
assertions that the Towers were poorly designed or poorly built do not square
with the historic record. They were built to be incredibly strong and were
considered to be engineering marvels. John Skilling, the lead designer, won
prestigious awards for their design excellence. |
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Considerations
Regarding Fire: |
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1)
In order for structural steel to literally melt and change state into a flowing
liquid, its internal temperature (as opposed to the surrounding temperature)
must be raised to 1538˚C (2800˚F). |
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2) The
strength of steel
is correlated to its internal temperature at a given moment. While internal
temperature will gradually rise during prolonged exposure to constant high
temperature. If the temperature stabilizes, the steel will not continue to
weaken as a cumulative effect. As its temperature changes either up or down
its strength also changes accordingly. |
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3) At high internal temperatures below the melting point, steel
can lose its load bearing strength and rigidity and become subject to
bending, sagging, etc. Much well documented testing has been done over the
years to determine these temperatures in order to predict the behavior of
steel structures in intense fire scenarios. To summarize the significant
consensus of these tests, the strength of steel is reduced to 20% of
normal when it
reaches an internal temperature of around 720˚C (1328˚F). |
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This is
significant because, as mentioned, standard building design specifications
require that structures be able to bear five times their maximum
theoretical load
(20% = 1/5). This means that even if all the steel in a building reached an
internal temp of 720˚C, the building would still be able to carry its
maximum load. Since maximum theoretical loads rarely occur, the steel
temperature in a typical situation could probably go significantly higher
before failure would occur. |
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For
example, fire tests carried out in the 1990's at the Building Research
Establishment
test facility at Cardington in Bedfordshire, UK showed that the performance
of whole buildings can exceed the performance of its parts. An 8-story closed
test structure was subjected to atmospheric temperatures of 1200˚C
(2192˚F), causing unprotected steel beams to eventually reach internal
temperatures over 1100˚C (2012˚F). This caused deformations in some
of the steel, but the structure did not collapse. Keep in mind that real
fires in closed spaces cannot be sustained due to oxygen starvation. |
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4) In addition to being relatively
lightweight in proportion to its strength, one of steel's best qualities and
a major reason it is used in building construction is its ability to
dissipate heat quickly and stand up unscathed in even the worst "towering inferno"
conflagrations on record. Open test structures were subjected to
prolonged and intense fires of up to 1200˚C (2192˚F) in an
international study of structural steel car parks, but internal steel temperatures never
reached higher than 360˚C (680˚F). Fire temperature and internal
steel temperature are NOT the same. This is why meat thermometers were
invented. Remember
360˚C for
later when we look at the various theories and claims based on the unproven
assumption that the Towers "collapsed". |
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5) The Towers were designed to
withstand impacts from the largest commercial aircraft that were in use at
the time they were built. Contrary to initial reports, the airplanes on 9/11
were not significantly larger than this, and the jet aircraft of those
days carried jet fuel just like they do now. Building survival is accomplished through
redundancy and dynamic redistribution of loads to the surviving parts of the
structure. |
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According
to John Skilling, the lead designer of the Towers (from a Seattle Times interview
from February 27, 1993), an impact from a Boeing 707 travelling at 600 mph
"would result in only local damage" and that our analysis
indicated the biggest problem would be the fact that all the fuel (from the
airplane) would dump into the building. There would be a horrendous fire. A
lot of people would be killed. But, he says, The building structure
would still be there. |
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6)
Prior to 9/11 (or since) no steel-frame highrise has ever collapsed from
fire. There
have been numerous cases of high-rise fires far more severe than those
observed on 9/11. Here's a few examples: |
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Caracas, Venezuela, Oct, 2004, 56 story building burned for 17 hours over 26
floors |
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LA,
May 1988, 1st Interstate Bank 62 stories, 5 floors burned for 3.5 hours |
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Philadelphia, Feb, 1991, Meridian Plaza. 38 stories, 8 floors burned for 18
hours |
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New
York, Aug, 1970, New York Plaza, 50 stories, burned for six hours |
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Madrid, February 2005, Windsor Bldg, 32 stories, burned for 24 hours, total
loss |
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All of these
fires were true "towering infernos" with dramatic, raging emergent
flames bursting out from entire floors of the building through shattered
windows. None of these buildings collapsed. |
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Jet
fuel (refined kerosene) is a hydrocarbon and burns at a known maximum temperature in an
open fire when supplied with unlimited amounts of air (as opposed to pure
oxygen) of approx 1000˚C (1832˚F). Temperatures are lower if the
fire is oxygen-starved, as evidenced by black smoke. Significantly higher
temperatures are possible only with forced mixing of pure oxygen. Early
reports wildly overestimated the amount of jet fuel involved based on tank
capacity. The planes had capacity for intercontinental flight, but carried
only the fuel needed for domestic flight plans. |
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It is
now acknowledged that most of the jet fuel, which is highly volatile, was
consumed in the first few minutes by the huge fireballs at the time of impact. The idea
that large pools of jet fuel could be burning for the entire 1-2 hours
preceding the Towers' destruction is not consistent with the behavior of a
volatile and highly flammable liquid in a high temperature environment. It
would have either ignited, or if inadequate oxygen was available to support
combustion it would have left the building as a vapor along with the smoke.
Indeed, the smell of jet fuel was reported over a wide area. |
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The
burning jet fuel did of course start the fires inside the buildings, which
were more severe in the North Tower where more of the jet fuel was taken
inside the building. But the jet fuel could not have been a significant
ongoing fuel for
the fires. Known combustible materials within the buildings (carpets, desks,
paper, plastics, etc.) are also mostly hydrocarbon in nature and can produce
combustion temperatures no higher than jet fuel. House fires typically
produce temperatures in the 500 - 650˚C range. |
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1) The airplane impacts into the
WTC were quite dramatic with the huge fireballs. After the first few minutes,
however, we simply had office building fires with some amount of
structural damage.
Interior damage is hard to determine based on visual evidence. The investigative
report released by NIST in 2005 claims that 14-15% of the core columns in each Tower
were severed. While often repeated as fact, this is an estimate derived from
questionable computer simulations. Even if true, this amount of damage would
leave the buildings well-within their load-bearing redundancy. More on the
NIST Report later. |
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2) Airplanes are made of aluminum
which is a much lighter and weaker material compared to structural steel.
Airplanes may look big and substantial, but they are actually made to be as lightweight
as possible.
Their aluminum skin is only 2 mm in thickness. |
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3) Both buildings quickly
re-stabilized after impact and showed no observable signs of instability or
the beginnings of structural failure prior to the sudden onset of their destruction. |
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4)
The North Tower,
unlike the South Tower, took a direct hit with the plane completely
disappearing inside the building. If the load bearing central core of the building
(see construction photos, above) had been severed by the impact of the plane,
structural distress would have been evident almost immediately. Apart from
the fires, the North Tower remained stable until the onset of destruction, almost
two hours after impact. |
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5)
The South Tower
took a glancing blow at the corner, which created a very dramatic fireball
but apparently had little significant impact on the structural core, and less
fuel was carried inside the building. People were evacuating from the upper
floors through the impact zone via stairwells in the central core area prior
to the onset of destruction. The fires were smaller in this Tower, but it was
destroyed first, 56 minutes after impact. |
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The
destruction of the buildings has been attributed by official investigators
and various "experts" promoted by the mainstream media primarily to
fire causing one form or another of structural failure leading to "total
progressive collapse". While most of these theories allow that impact damage
was probably a contributing factor, few have suggested that this damage alone
caused the total destruction of the buildings. While
we look at these so-called "collapse" theories, it is very
important to keep in mind that the use of the word "collapse" is
a misnomer.
What these theories are REALLY saying is that the upper part of the building
above the impact zone CRUSHED the lower undamaged portion of the building.
Remember that the structural integrity of the Towers was undiminished below
the impact zones and much heavier and stronger materials were used in the
lower parts of the building in order to support the much lighter upper
floors. |
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1) One of the first explanations
was put forward by the American Society of Civil Engineers in an article titled "Why
Did the World Trade Center Collapse? A Simple Analysis", by Zdenek Bazant and Yong
Zhou. Their theory depends on the simultaneous failure of the majority of the
columns on a given floor, which they say would allow the upper part of the
building to fall freely onto the lower part, thus allegedly triggering a
sequence of events that would "doom" the entire tower. They
acknowledge that this "triggering" condition would require more
than half of the column steel on a given floor to reach temperatures exceeding
800˚C
(1472˚F), but they fail to distinguish between fire temperature and
internal steel temperature and offer no explanation for how this could
possibly occur. |
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An obvious
fallacy with
theories of this type is that column strength and heat conductivity were NOT segmented
by the vertical spacing of the office floors. Load-bearing strength was
vertically continuous over many "floors" for any given region of
the building. The columns in the core structure were specially fabricated to
be multiple stories in height and were joined together by welded connections.
Dense cross-bracing between columns created a monolithic entity that was
structurally independent of the office floor attachment locations. Heat
produced by burning material on a particular office floor would also be vertically
dissipated over
a multi-story region of the building. It really makes no sense to talk about
about column behavior on a "given floor". The columns didn't have
"floors". |
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We've
already seen that high internal steel temperatures are very difficult to
achieve over a
large area in a large structure. Not only is Bazant and Zhou's so-called
triggering condition clearly impossible given the test data presented
earlier, but the results of the examination of steel recovered from the fire
zones, as reported by NIST in 8/04, showed no evidence of temperatures over 625˚C
(1157˚F) and only rare instances of temperatures over 250˚C
(482˚F)! This is consistent with the international fire test results
mentioned earlier. |
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2) Another theory was put forward
by Thomas Eager,
a professor of materials engineering from MIT, that appeared in JOM, the
journal for the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society and was also
presented in a NOVA interview that many people have seen. The transcript is
available online. Eager apparently believes that these buildings were not
designed to withstand a fire covering an entire single floor! (He doesn't
say where he gets this idea, but we know that Skilling certainly allowed
for this possibility.)
Because the spilling of the jet fuel may have caused this to happen, he
suggests that the heat from this type of fire scenario caused the floor slab
truss connections ("clips" he calls them) to fail
"unzipping" almost simultaneously around an entire floor causing
a pancaking sequence that also somehow pulled down the vertical support
structures. http://911research.wtc7.net/disinfo/experts/articles/eagar_nova/nova_eagar1.html |
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"Pancaking"
collapses are
sometimes seen in Third World countries where badly designed and poorly built
concrete structures are subjected to earthquakes. Modern American buildings
(including the WTC towers) are designed and built according to robust
specifications that require structural unification of horizontal and
vertical members.
This is done specifically to prevent pancaking floor collapses. Eager
also ignores the continuous vertical strength of the core structure and its
heavily cross-braced and unified design. Even if some of the floors had
somehow broken loose, the more heavily built column structures would have remained
standing. The floors did interconnect the core with the perimeter and they
added strength to the structure as a whole, but they were also designed to be
as lightweight as possible. |
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3) Two highly produced,
made-for-television specials have been particularly influential in
determining many people's beliefs about the destruction of the WTC Towers. Below
are two graphics used in the NOVA program "Why the Towers Fell". The one on the left
misrepresents the structural core of the building to look like mysterious
floating horizontal slabs with no vertical support! The one on the right is
from an animated sequence of falling floor trusses that is also very
misleading. Missing
from this animation
are at least three major components that would have prevented this behavior:
1) the perpendicular cross trusses, 2) the welded-plate wall connections, and
3) the steel floor pan that is connected to the trusses, onto which the
concrete slab is poured. The floor pan interconnects the trusses and provides
stiffness and strength to the entire floor system. |
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Another
TV special titled "Anatomy of the Collapse" was produced for the Discovery
Channel and also appeared shortly after 9/11. These two programs are similar
and include numerous fraudulent statements. We are told, for example, that
jet fuel had not been considered in the design of the Towers, that it had
saturated the buildings and that steel temperatures had reached 2000ΊF. None
of these statements are true. |
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We are
also told that the buildings would collapse without the floor trusses, that
the floor trusses were connected by only two bolts, that the perimeter walls
were comparable to sheets of cardboard and that the columns were like
free-standing wobbly sticks. The perimeter and core column structures were,
in fact, highly robust and independent structures unto themselves, each fully capable of standing
on its own. And the biggest lie of all? We are told that total destruction
was inevitable.
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3) The government report issued by
FEMA uses misleading
diagrams (below) to make it look to the casual, non-technical reader like
there was no central core at all! |
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A
careful reading of the fine print says the vertical members on the right side
of the diagrams are core columns and we are only looking at a detail of the
structure, but this is not obvious at a glance. There is also no indication
of the immense strength and dense cross bracing of the structural core of the
building. Many people seem to believe that the Towers were supported only
by the perimeter walls. It's easy to imagine a building collapsing if it were built to look
like this diagram! http://www.fema.gov/rebuild/mat/wtcstudy.shtm http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/official/fema.html Even
the 9/11 Commission Report, on page 558, claims that: "The interior core of
the buildings was a hollow steel shaft
" This is a blatantly false
statement with
no conceivable explanation other than the desire to intentionally deceive the
American public. The 9/11 Commission Report includes many other outright
lies, distortions and critical ommissions. See David Ray Griffin's book, The 9/11 Commission Report:
Ommissions and Distortions, for a comprehensive and thoroughly documented
examination of over one hundred of its deliberately deceptive failings. |
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Below is
another view of one of the Towers during construction. Compare it to the
diagrams above and the statement by the 9/11 Commission. This gives a good
look at how much of the footprint of the building was taken up by the core
structure and its massive design. |
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America,
who used to be so proud of her expertise and execution on every level, is now
it seems pleading incompetence in new creative ways every day, including projecting
that incompetence back into the past. Forgetting about the jet fuel and the
possibility that an entire floor might catch fire was bad enough but now
there's this: |
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4)
Hyman Brown, construction
manager of the WTC and University of Colorado civil engineering professor
said this in 2004 (quoting from the Boulder Weekly): |
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"It
is correct that the towers did not collapse because of the airliners hitting
it. But we do know how it collapsed and it has nothing to do with
conspiracy," says Brown. "What caused the building to collapse is
the airplane fuel and the fire-suppression system that we now have, which
basically blocks off five-floor blocks, so the fire cant go up and the fire
cant go down. You now have a fire confined to a five-floor area, burning at
2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The steel in that five-floor area melts. All the
tonnage above the five-floor area comes straight down when the steel melts.
That broke all the connections, and that caused the building to
collapse." |
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http://archive.boulderweekly.com/102104/coverstory.html |
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Who
could have guessed
that the fire suppression system, instead of causing the fires to die down
from lack of oxygen and depletion of flammable material like everybody
expected, actually caused the fires to become hotter! So hot that they melted
all the steel in a five floor area of the building! To fuel this fire, Mr.
Brown apparently assumes that unlimited quantities of jet fuel (and oxygen)
were available on all five floors of both buildings for up to two hours in a
1093˚C (2000˚F) environment. The behavior of volatile flammable liquids
in a high temperature environment would not allow this. |
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When Mr
Brown says that steel "melted", I think he means to say that it
failed the melting point of steel, as we've seen, is 1538˚C
(2800˚F). But failure is also a clear impossibility. Remember those open
steel test structures? They were subjected for a longer time to fire even
hotter than the one he imagines, but the highest recorded steel temperature never
went higher than 360C (680F) far below the temperature where failure could occur.
Mr. Brown's fire may have been confined to a five story region, but the steel
was still free to dissipate heat throughout the entire building framework. |
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Also,
to match his own description, this fire would have to fully engulf all five floors,
with large emergent flames bursting from every window on all sides of the
building. From photographic evidence we see only lots of black smoke with
flames here and there. And the "tonnage" he's speaking of is simply the upper
part of the structure that the lower part was designed to support. |
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I
wouldn't spend so much effort examining Mr. Brown's highly improbable theory,
except that he has been connected informally by the media to findings
reported by NIST,
the US government science agency that has recently completed a $20,000,000
investigation into the destruction of the WTC Towers. It was said in 2004 by
the media that Mr. Brown's views were supported by the preliminary findings
of the NIST investigation! |
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5)
The final report released by NIST in 2005 does indeed start with the assumption that the
Towers simply "collapsed" on their own, once impacted from above by
a block of floors that allegedly "fell" through the impact zone.
They depend on fire to "soften", "shorten", "buckle"
and "snap" core and perimeter columns and floor trusses where
necessary in order to create a plausible sounding "collapse
initiation" sequence. They don't explain how the combustion of typical
office contents could possibly produce enough heat at a high enough
temperature to cause the extensive steel deformations necessary to support
their hypothesis. And they also do not explain how they reconcile this
hypothesis with
their own test data (mentioned earlier) from 8/04! |
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The
NIST report also fails to explain or reconcile the fact that they were unable
to duplicate failure in their post-9/11 floor model fire tests. They try to convince us
that hypothetical damage to the fire-proofing of the steel explains
everything, but they provide no scientifically verifiable data to support
this conclusion or carry it beyond the status of pure speculation. http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2006/911-WTC-NIST-Lies30mar06.htm |
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And,
like Mr. Brown, once the alleged "collapse" begins, it is supposed
to be obvious to anybody why it would crush the entire structure. This part
is never explained. Out of all the thousands of pages in their supposedly exhaustive
report, the actual destruction of the building is dismissed with ONE
SENTENCE: "Global collapse then ensued". That's it! That's all they
have to say about it. This is the key issue and it should have been the focus
of the entire report! NIST's
failure to look at evidence or to carry their analysis beyond the point of
"collapse initiation" is extremely suspicious and highly
unscientific. Their inability or unwillingness to PROVE their a priori assumption that the Towers were
destroyed by a so-called progressive gravitational collapse invalidates
the entire report. |
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Also in
the October 2005 report (updated by a FAQ in August 2006), we find a stunning
reversal that
would put even a star NFL running back to shame. Not only has NIST officially
backed away from the "pancaking collapse" theory (with no apology),
but those much-maligned floor truss connections (remember the "two
bolts"?) that were originally blamed for just about everything, are now somehow
conspiring with alleged floor sagging to pull on the specialty high-strength
steel perimeter columns with enough force to cause an entire face of the
building to "snap" from inward bowing! And they still don't explain
how even this fantastic scenario would cause the inevitable destruction of
the lower portions of the building. |
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After
hearing the astonishing comments by S. Shyam Sunder, Ph D, the lead investigator for NIST,
made during an interview about "conspiracy theories" with NOVA and
available on their website, I feel compelled to question either his
competence or his honesty, or both. Among other bizarre statements, he claims in a matter-of-fact
sort of way that the Towers "fell" at the rate of free-fall because
they were "70% just air in volume" (as if that explains anything)
and because the columns weren't made of "solid steel" but were
"steel boxes" with walls only 1/4" - 3/4" thick! |
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Buildings
have NEVER been constructed with solid steel members. The very idea is
absurd! They would be excessively and unnecessarily heavy. Box columns,
I-beams and H-beams of comparable strength are much lighter. Large box
columns were indeed used in the core structure. At the base of each Tower
they measured 52" x 22" and the steel was, in fact, FOUR INCHES
thick! |
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6) Not to be left out, Popular
Mechanics
magazine in its March 2005 issue attempted to discredit legitimate
questioning of the WTC destruction by using intimidation tactics and
presenting long lists of experts. This effort was continued in 2006 with the
release of Debunking 9/11 Myths, a book length presentation of similar material.
While the authors and their band of "experts" claim to have
exhaustively debunked 9/11 skepticism, they have in fact only attacked
long-discredited claims and "straw man" arguments while ignoring
the serious questions. They fail, for example, to satisfactorily address any of the
observations described in the next section of this paper. |
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All of
these experts apparently forgot their high school physics since they, like gullible
members of a new cult, "believe in" the free fall progressive
collapse theory a ridiculous impossibility.
See "The elapsed time of the destruction" section, below. The Popular
Mechanics
experts also claim to believe (of course) that the Towers
"collapsed" because fire weakened and distorted the steel. |
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I
believe that all the above theories (and all similar ones) have to be rejected
from the outset
for at least two reasons: |
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a) They all depend on fire to do
what fire is
not able to do
and has never done before that is, heat structural steel to the point of
causing a total building failure. |
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b) The intact lower portions of
the buildings would have arrested or deflected any conceivable collapse
(crushing) process. |
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Dramatic features of the Tower destruction that are
ignored by all of the official theories: |
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1)
The Towers look like they are exploding, complete with rising mushroom clouds before any
debris reaches the ground (indicating tremendous heat release) and lateral
ejection of material with great force to great distances. Sections of the
heavy structural steel perimeter columns were ejected as far as 500 feet a
distance equal to more than 1.5 football fields! The blast wave alone
shattered windows in buildings 400 feet away. Sections of heavy steel column
structures were literally "stuck" into the sides of neighboring
buildings. |
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ABC
News correspondent N. J. Burkett is standing more than a block away from the WTC Towers on 9/11
when the South Tower destruction suddenly begins. He interrupts his live TV
commentary by shouting as everyone runs for cover: "...A HUGE EXPLOSION NOW
RAINING DEBRIS ON ALL OF US! WE"D BETTER GET OUT OF THE WAY!"
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2)
The destruction of each Tower began suddenly and was not preceded by obvious
buckling or other dramatic visible deformations. There were no reports from
firefighters of sagging, creaking or twisting steel that might signal
impending failure. |
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3) One problem that everyone is
having is that no one has ever seen a "natural" collapse of a steel frame high-rise
building (because it has never happened), so no one knows what it ought to look like! Earthquakes
sometime topple modern buildings, but they retain their shape, even if
distorted, and they don't explode or fall apart. |
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If the
Towers were experiencing a gravitational collapse due to global structural
failure, you would expect to find a huge heap of identifiable parts of the
building piled
within and spilling outside of the original footprint. It would include
sections of floor slabs, floor pans, large chunks of concrete, glass and the
remains of identifiable building contents, including the bodies of the
occupants. |
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This
is not what happened both Towers almost entirely disintegrated into rather short (30
ft or less) pieces of steel, dust and other metal debris. Hundreds of tiny human
bone fragments
have been discovered on the roofs of neighboring buildings, and the remains of
over 1000 bodies disappeared completely. Were they vaporized out of
existence? Or just obliterated into particles too small even for DNA
analysis? How could this possibly happen? |
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This
photo was taken looking straight down within the footprint where one of the
Towers once stood. The elevation of this area is not significantly higher
than the original street level and shows only pieces of metal and dust.
Search and rescue workers were stunned that so many bodies had apparently
vanished along with the desks, the computers, the glass and all the other
building contents. Note the complete lack of identifiable portions of the
building itself. Of particular interest is the fact that the corrugated
steel floor pans are missing along with the concrete floors. There is no stack of
floors piled up within the footprint of the former building. |
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4) Almost all of the non-steel
building materials and contents were pulverized, much of it into talcum powder
size (sub 100 micron) dust particles. This took the form of the dense
pyroclastic dust clouds that expanded to enormous size as they raced down the
surrounding streets at tremendous velocity and with clearly defined
boundaries, depositing most of the mass of the buildings outside of the
perimeter of
their original footprints. Concrete and gypsum, along with large amounts of
asbestos and countless other dangerous materials were all part of these huge
toxic dust clouds that spread over lower Manhattan and poisoned the air at
Ground Zero. If you
dropped a large chunk of concrete from 1000 ft onto pavement far below, it
would certainly break apart, but it wouldn't be pulverized into microscopic
particles. In the case of the Towers, the disintegration into dust somehow
took place in mid-air long before any debris reached the ground. |
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5) Both the nearly total
pulverization of the building materials and contents and the rapid
expansion of
the dust clouds (the photo on the right, below, was taken only 30 seconds after the start of the
destruction of the North Tower) to great elevations and large distances from
the building locations would require the release of tremendous amounts of
heat energy.
The only energy source presumed to be available to explain these phenomena is
the elevated mass of the buildings themselves, which is inadequate by at
least an order of magnitude according to conservative estimates. |
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6)
The elapsed time of the destruction was nearly identical to the time it would take a
free-falling object to reach the ground from the same height. Common sense
would certainly suggest that if the lightweight upper part of the building
had somehow dropped onto the intact structure below, the strength and
resistance of the more heavily built lower portion of the building would not
only slow the process, but would arrest it altogether or deflect it to one
side. Several scientific papers supply proof for this conclusion see the
following websites for an abundance of bona fide analysis. http://www.journalof911studies.com/ And IF
the structural support for the upper part of the building actually DID give
way because of damage and high temperature, it would have exhibited gradual
deformations as
it approached its failure threshold. The interconnected framework, even if it
began to bend or sag, would still prevent a sudden drop of the upper floors.
(See Cardington fire tests, mentioned earlied.) What we see instead looks as
if the presence of structural support is instantly obliterated as the wave of destruction
begins. |
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Based
on video and photographic evidence, and FEMA's mapping of the widespread
debris field, each Tower appears to have been progressively and
systematically exploded from the top down, starting from the impact zone. The explosive
sequence was timed to occur at a pace close to free-fall, thus allowing the
falling debris to blanket over and partially hide the continuing explosions. |
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The
Bazant & Zhou paper mentioned earlier, and other papers by Frank Greening and Manuel
Garcia, all
claim to have mathematical models that show how a high-rise steel structure
can crush itself at the rate of free-fall. These theoretical
"pancaking" scenarios do not take into account the strength of
specific structural features like the continuous verticality of the core
column assemblies or the fact that much stronger and heavier materials were
used in the lower part of the building. They also employ the entire mass of
the structure to drive the process while ignoring the fact that most of this
mass is actually landing outside of the original footprint and would therefore be
unavailable. |
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But
even if we forget all these objections, something else about the notion of a progressive
collapse occurring at the rate of free fall defies intuition. The obvious
problem with
this idea is that it does not allow time or energy to overcome the INERTIA of
the materials in the lower part of the building that must be instantly
accelerated up
to the rate of free fall in order to join the already falling material from
above without slowing it down. In fact, each of these encounters with stationary mass
WILL require an energy expenditure from the falling material, which WILL slow
it down and, when combined with the strength of the structure, quickly stop
the process altogether. |
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There
are only two ways a building can be destroyed at the rate of free fall: |
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a) all structural support is simultaneously removed at the foundation level
all parts of
the building will then begin to fall at the same moment and at the same rate (see
WTC7), or
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b) something (like explosives) progressively
destroys the
building from the top down at the rate of free fall, while simultaneously
removing resistance in advance of the falling debris. See the
following links for thorough examinations of Garcia's (and other related)
theories: http://911review.com/reviews/counterpunch/markup/physic11282006.html |
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7)
Oxidation and intergranular melting were observed by FEMA in their metallurgical
examination of steel samples from the Towers. They describe this as
"evidence of a severe high temperature corrosion attack". Edges of
a one inch column were described as having been thinned to "almost razor
sharpness", while a formerly solid flange had "gaping holessome
larger than a silver dollar". |
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These
findings were reported in The New York Times, where they were described as
"perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation". Deposits from a
molten liquid mixture containing iron and sulfur that have also been found in
the same types of locations are, according to Dr. Steven Jones, a PhD physicist
from BYU, the chemical signature for the type of reactions caused by thermite and thermate incendiaries and explosives
used in building demolitions. |
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8)
Intense hotspots
persisted at the sub-basement foundation level for weeks. Molten metal was
later found at these locations. Several days after 9/11, NASA conducted an
infrared aerial survey of Ground Zero and detected hot spots in the rubble
that were over 1300ΊF! What was the source of this heat? Again, the use
of incendiaries or some other type of high energy destruction appears to be the
only plausible explanation. |
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Steven
Jones has also discovered the presence of previously molten iron microspheres in the
dust that blanketed
lower Manhattan in the wake of the destruction. The "atomizing" of
molten iron can also be explained only as a byproduct of explosives and
incendiaries. |
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9)
The upper part of the South Tower begins to tip at the beginning of its destruction.
Instead of continuing this rotation as would be expected from a rigid
structure according to the law of conservation of angular momentum, the
rotation stops as it begins to disintegrate before falling into the structure
below. Without this unexplained disintegration, the upper block of floors
would have toppled to the side and crashed to the ground as an intact
structure. |
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10) The debris distribution from
both Towers exhibited almost perfect radial symmetry as the wave of destruction moved
rapidly down each building, spewing cladding, structural steel and pulverized
material in all directions like a giant fountain. 11) The destruction followed the path
of greatest resistance. In natural materials failures, like broken windows or cave-ins,
even small variations in stresses and materials strength are amplified into
highly asymmetrical breakage patterns, while the process inherently seeks the
path of least resistance. |
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12)
A number of small explosions with forceful lateral ejections can be seen occurring
many floors below the leading edge of the destruction. These can be seen in
the photo below, and also in the right-hand photo on the first page. These
have exactly the same signature appearance as cutter charges (squibs) used
in controlled demolitions to remove structural supports within a building at strategic points
in a timed sequence. Popular Mechanics would have us believe that this is just air being
forced out as a bellows effect by pancaking floors. But where are the
pancaking floors? And why would this occur so far down the building and
include so much dust? |
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13) Many eyewitnesses, including
over 100 first responders, reported explosions before and during the
destruction. Firefighters, for example, recollected their experience as they
were running from the South Tower: |
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fireman2:
It was as if as if they had detonated, det.. |
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fireman1:
yea detonated yea |
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fireman2:
as if they had planned to take down a building, |
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boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom ... |
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fireman1:
All the way down, I was watchin it, and runnin' |
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14) The Towers had stabilized after
impact, the fires were no more serious than a typical office fire and no
steel-frame highrise had ever collapsed from fire before yet there were several
reports of warnings
that collapse was imminent. For example, from the 9/11 Commission Report: |
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"At
about 9:57, an EMS paramedic approached the FDNY Chief of Department and
advised that an engineer in front of 7 WTC had just remarked that the Twin
Towers in fact were in imminent danger of a total collapse." |
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Who was
this "engineer" and how or why did he know this? |
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And
then of course there is Building 7, which many people have forgotten. It fell later in the
day and from the beginning was treated like an insignificant footnote. WTC7
was an imposing 47-story structure and more modern than the Towers. It was
not hit by an airplane and was a block away from the Towers with another lower building in
between. According to the debris distribution data contained in the FEMA
report, it was not seriously battered by heavy debris from the Towers. It did
have fires of uncertain origin and extent. |
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Official
reports suggest that fires in WTC7 had been "raging out-of-control"
all day, but there is no convincing photographic evidence of this. Clear images from the
moment of onset of the collapse do not even show emergent flames, let alone
any other evidence of an all-consuming inferno. |
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WTC7
came down in 6.5 seconds, imploding perfectly within its footprint, collapsing straight
downward from all points and looking just like a perfect controlled
demolition. Even the "kink" in the roof line seen in the second
image of the sequence above is evidence of a demolition technique that is
used to make sure the walls collapse inward, thus minimizing damage to
surrounding structures. |
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The
straight-down, vertical collapse of Building 7 could not have happened and
with such perfect symmetry unless all 58 perimeter columns and all 25 core
columns somehow were removed almost simultaneously. In the three-image
collapse sequence above, notice in the first image the light and dark
mottled pattern
of small clouds of smoke that appeared at the onset of the collapse. These
look just like evidence of explosive cutter charges as used in controlled
demolitions. |
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It has
been said that a large amount of fuel oil may have been stored in the
building, but even if this was burning it could not have caused the simultaneous
structural failure
of all the support columns or any of them for that matter. As we have seen,
open-air hydrocarbon fires are incapable of creating enough heat at a high
enough temperature to cause the failure of steel-frame high-rise structures.
The fact that WTC7 was built over a pre-existing three story substation also
does not explain the perfect symmetry of the collapse, or the collapse itself. |
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Official
investigators and "conspiracy theory debunkers" are now suddenly claiming
that a section of the lower facade of WTC7 was "scooped out" by
flying debris from the North Tower. This of course contradicts the detailed
debris distribution mapping contained in the FEMA report produced shortly
after 9/11. But even if true, this cannot account for the symmetry of the
collapse since it would create an overhanging mass. And it can't explain the
collapse itself since these new damage estimates still leave the building as
a whole well within its load-bearing design redundancy. |
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The
site diagram above shows the distance that heavy steel would have to be
propelled in order to cause serious damage to WTC7. More than anything else,
this would be evidence of the explosive force used in the destruction of the
Towers! |
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This
failure of WTC7 was attributed to "progressive total collapse"
brought on by fire in FEMA's report, but with the caveat that their
hypothesis "has only a low probability of occurrence". WTC7 was not
even mentioned
in the 911 Commission Report! |
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And, most
revealing of all,
none of the official theories have been able to explain the live news
coverage from British television announcing the collapse of WTC7 while it was
still standing
in the background of the live video feed from NYC! Somebody was reading their
script a little too soon! |
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What
would it be like if every steel frame high-rise in existence was likely to collapse as a result of a
not-too-serious fire, or even a serious fire? No one would set foot in them!
As a matter of fact, no one would build them they would be too dangerous.
If the WTC buildings DID collapse from fire, these unprecedented failures
would be extremely significant and ought to have aroused the most profound
forensic analysis (the painstaking reassembly of crashed aircraft comes to
mind). |
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This
did not happen.
The steel from all three buildings was quickly removed over the strenuous
objections of scientists, engineers, firefighters and families of victims
and most of it has been melted down in overseas markets. Access to Ground
Zero was forcefully restricted and study of the final blueprints for the
Towers has not been permitted. |
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Two
groups have been extremely vocal in their protest of the destruction of evidence and
lack of real forensic investigation: the families of those killed and
firefighters. Fire Engineering Magazine the primary journal for
firefighters everywhere ran a scathing editorial in January 2002 in which
they referred to the official investigation blessed by FEMA and run by the
American Society of Civil Engineers as a "half-baked farce that may
already have been commandeered by political forces whose primary interests,
to put it mildly, lie far afield of full disclosure." http://www.fireengineering.com/articles/article_display.html?id=131225
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This is
obviously a big concern for firefighters because they have to go into burning buildings!
Prior to 9/11 there was no precedent to caution them against entering the WTC
Towers to go about their work of rescuing people and putting out the fires.
Surviving audio-tape of firefighter communications from the South Tower show
that they had reached the 78th floor sky lobby and found only "two
pockets of fire". They called for "two lines" and began to implement their
evacuation plan just before the destruction suddenly began! |
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Now
what are firefighters supposed to do? In this new world, fires in high-rise steel structures
can apparently trigger a "total progressive collapse" at any moment
with no clear warning conditions. And this can happen not only in stable
damaged structures, but in fully (or nearly) intact structures as well! |
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I
wonder how much fear this adds to the lives of our firefighters and if
high-rise fire rescue efforts have been curtailed in any way since 9/11,
perhaps even causing unnecessary loss of life, due to this new uncertainty
over entering burning steel structures? |
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And
this: |
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If
the government's story is true, then companies that offer controlled demolitions using
explosives are clearly going to have some new competition. Thanks to those
wily hijackers we now have a much cheaper solution. If a structural steel
high-rise needs to be removed, all that is necessary is to pick a floor
somewhere in the upper portion of the building, saw off a few columns, flood
the floor with jet fuel, light a match and stand back. |
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The
building will then (about 1 or 2 hours later) miraculously explode, shattering all of the steel in
the building into tidy 12-30 ft sections. The rest of the building and all of
its contents will be conveniently converted into a fine dust that will be
spread over a large area so that somebody else will have to clean it up! |
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And
this: |
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This
photo shows the start of an explosive demolition of a large brick
chimney. |
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Look
familiar? |
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Characteristic
features indicating the use of explosives: |
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1)
Outward arching dust plumes |
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2)
Formation of debris cloud that is symmetrical around the vertical axis of the
structure |
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3)
Heavier material is propelled out ahead of the dust |
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Conclusion: |
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We have
to find the courage to think for ourselves, open our eyes and look and keep
looking. The truth will not go away. Once we see that most of what we were
told about these events is actually false, we can finally get to work on
discovering the real story of 9/11... |
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"...any ordinary person can tell an explosion from a collapse!" |