Tell me again how damaging ONE TRUSS could have brought down WTC 7

[Ghost in the Machine]

In November 1988, Salomon Brothers withdrew from plans to build a large new complex at Columbus Circle in Midtown and agreed to a 20-year lease for the top 19 floors of 7 World Trade Center.<23> The building was extensively renovated in 1989 to accommodate the needs of Salomon Brothers.<24> Most of three existing floors were removed as tenants continued to occupy other floors, and more than 350 tons (U.S.) of steel were added to construct three double-height trading floors. Nine diesel generators were installed on the 5th floor as part of a backup power station. "Essentially, Salomon is constructing a building within a building - and it's an occupied building, which complicates the situation," said a district manager of Silverstein Properties. The unusual task was possible, said Larry Silverstein, because it was designed to allow for "entire portions of floors to be removed without affecting the building's structural integrity, on the assumption that someone might need double-height floors."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_World_Trade_Center#Tenants

So, they could remove entire sections of floors without compromising structural integrity, but one truss could cause the whole building to collapse??

[petgoat]

1. That truss was incredibly strong, see.

So when it sawed itself in half it pulled the girders in laterally, real
real strong, because it was such a strong truss. Get it? The girders
pulled a train of six core columns to buckle them, and the building
fell like a house of cards. You see? Isn't that simple?

:sarcasm:

[Ghost in the Machine]

6. Now, why didn't I think of that??

Yes, it *does* seem so simple when you state it that way...

[number6]

63. magic truss

:hippie: :smoke:

[seemslikeadream]

2. sorry can't do it

[Ghost in the Machine]

7. No one can... in a way that makes sense, anyways..

:hi:

[hack89]

3. Do you think that perhaps they used temporary bracing

to support the floors during reconstruction? Or perhaps the steel they removed was non-load bearing?

Schematics exist of the truss system - why don't you pull them out and show us what the precise engineering issue was?

[Ghost in the Machine]

8. Would they *need* temporary bracing if it was "designed" for portions of the floor to be removed?

"The unusual task was possible, said Larry Silverstein, because it was designed to allow for "entire portions of floors to be removed without affecting the building's structural integrity, on the assumption that someone might need double-height floors."

How about if *you* go find the schematics and figure out how everything came down together in a building that was built over a building, then had a building built inside of it... with all that beefing up of the structure, it should have required much more than normal to fail, shouldn't it?

[greyl]

10. Much more than normal to fail?

More pics plus video:

www.911myths.com/html/wtc7___silverstein.html

www.debunking911.com/pull.htm

www.jnani.org/mrking/writings/911/king911.htm

[Ghost in the Machine]

11. A little bit of exterior damage? *That* caused the collapse?

Your point was??

[LARED]

12. You do understand there is a difference between the

Murrah building and WTC7?

Yes?

[Ghost in the Machine]

20. Yes.. one had catastrophic damage and didn't collapse... the other had superficial exterior damage

and globally collapsed damned near in it's own footprint...

What distinction do *you* make?

[petgoat]

24. I think we can conclude from the comparison that explosives have negligible structural effect

on tall buildings. This is proof that WTC7 could not have been demolished
with explosives. Had the Murrah building suffered "ordinary office fires" like
WTC 7 did, then surely it too would have come down in a tidy heap in less than
7 seconds. :sarcasm:

[Ghost in the Machine]

28. Absolutely BRILLIANT!

:rofl:

You nailed it, petgoat.. if you could deadpan that on national television, you could be the white house's spokesman for the events of 9-11....


Fucking. Brilliant!


Ghost

[Bassman66]

29. Explosions don't cause sagging.

You can't have a collapse without sagging
Although they do dislodge fireproofing.

[hack89]

32. Don't you think that different designs and construction materials had something to do with it?

the Murrah building was a reinforced concrete building after all - why would you expect it to respond like a steel framed building?

[petgoat]

33. I expect different performance of reinforced concrete relative to steel

But construction differences are a negligible factor in the
differing results in this case.

The more important factor is that in the WTC the explosives
in the building brought the building down as planned, while in
Kansas City the bombs in the building failed to go off and
the building remained standing.

Had Kansas City gone as planned, it probably would have been
totally destroyed also.

[hack89]

34. Impossible to argue with that logic. nt

[Realityhack]

56. ROTFLOL... Petgoat you are always good for a laugh. n/t

[Realityhack]

55. Totaly dishonest.

You can't take what happened to one design and apply it to a totally different design.

For the record NIST currently hypothesizes that the exterior damage was not even required to bring the building down.

[petgoat]

14. I think that vertical gash is a video artifact from a panning video camera.

This picture doesn't show any visible damage

[greyl]

15. Very funny. This picture doesn't show any tires.

[petgoat]

17. What's your point? My picture shows the same region as the alleged gouge--no damage. nt

[greyl]

42. Funnier still.

I'm not holding out any hope that your next post will be more serious than your last.

[petgoat]

44. Do you have any reason to trust that your image wasn't altered? nt

[greyl]

45. My image? I'm the one who altered it.

For the purposes of our argument, it doesn't matter if the one I started with - yours - was altered or not. It doesn't even matter if it's a picture of WTC7.

[petgoat]

47. That you altered it does not mean it was unaltered before you altered it. nt

[Bassman66]

18. Is Composite the new name for Photoshop?

You got to love this.

[greyl]

43. Fireworks was used for that one to aid the perception of those who might need it.

If you can grasp the point without the composite, great.

[Bassman66]

46. The strange thing is....

..that NIST only mentions a gash that was from the 10th floor down.

Maybe you need to seen this <strike>photoshopped</strike> composite picture to NIST.

What a puzzle WTC7 is.

[wildbilln864]

78. notice how....

the alleged gouge has the same width all the way? Yep composite(photoshoped) alright.

[hack89]

13. The floors were non-load bearing

that's why they were removable without endangering the integrity of the structure. If they failed then the building would not collapse. The truss was load bearing - if it failed then it is certain the the building's integrity could be compromised - especially a building that had a 20 story gash in it (doesn't that meet the criteria of "much more than normal"?)

[Ghost in the Machine]

21. see post #11

and tell me more about a gash on the exterior...

[hack89]

31. Your picture shows a reinforced concrete building

are you really saying it would respond the same way as a steel framed building? Why?

Do you have an apples to apples comparison or is your point that design, construction and materials are irrelevant to how building respond to damage - that all buildings will respond in an identical manner? Is that what you really believe?

[jberryhill]

16. It seems to me....

...that if the building was "designed to allow for entire portions of floors to be removed", then a lot of the load must have been borne by a substantially smaller portion of the structure than one might expect.

From the bad analogy department: I can re-arrange the shelves in my refrigerator too, because the shelves aren't involved in supporting the structure containing the interior volume of the refrigerator.

My limited understanding of building 7 was that it was 47 stories tall, had a large atrium, and also was built with several long trusses in the lower part of the building to span a substation. Whether you can re-jigger anything from floor 7 up isn't relevant to the structure from floor 7 down. Building 7 appears to have failed near the bottom.

[Ghost in the Machine]

22. It would be interesting to know exactly where this "building with a building" was erected..

and where all this beefed up structural settel was used.. in relation to the truss (79) in question, wouldn't it?

[jberryhill]

30. Yes it would

Since the fact that various parts of the building could be re-configured isn't by itself all that relevant to the primary load bearing structure. But it doesn't surprise me that they'd modify the building and claim they'd "beefed it up". Floor 30 could have been the strongest floor on earth. That doesn't help much if floor 2 fails.

[Realityhack]

59. And that information is part of the NIST reports.

I take it you didn't even glance over them?

[LARED]

4. Putting aside the fact that there is no relation between

a single truss failure and the renovation, catastrophic collapses due to single failures are hardly unheard of

Here's one

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Bridge

[Ghost in the Machine]

5. Nice misleading post, LARED... why didn't you include this with your reply??

From your link:

"On December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge collapsed while it was choked with rush hour traffic, resulting in the deaths of 46 people. Investigation of the wreckage pointed to the cause of the collapse being the failure of a single eye-bar in a suspension chain, due to a small defect only 0.1 inch (2.5 mm) deep. It was also noted that the bridge was carrying much heavier loads than it was originally designed for and was poorly maintained."

... or even this:

"At the time of its construction, a typical family automobile would be the Ford Model T, with a weight of about 1,500 lb (680 kg). The maximum permitted truck gross weight was about 20,000 lb (9,072 kg). At the time of the collapse, a typical family automobile weighed about 4,000 lb (1,814 kg) and the large truck limit was 60,000 lb (27,216 kg) or more. Bumper-to-bumper traffic jams were also much more common - occurring several times a day, five days each week."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Bridge#Design_loads


You *do* realize the difference between an aged structure that's constantly being used well over it's intended limits and a structure that was renovated and reinforced to support more structure being added to it, right??

Please explain any comparison to your example and WTC 7 because your first post failed to do so.

Thanks,

Ghost

[LARED]

9. I only included a link in my post

I mislead no one. As the article pointed out

cause of the collapse being the failure of a single eye-bar in a suspension chain, due to a small defect only 0.1 inch (2.5 mm) deep.

The bridge although over design capacity continued to function until a single eye-bolt failed.

It really makes no difference. Designing structures is not a failure free endeavor. There are manifold examples of structures that failed because a single element failed and there was insufficient redundancy to prevent the failure. I have no expectations you will understand this issue.

Building codes are not perfect, engineers and architects are not perfect, nor are the folks that build and maintain them.

[Ghost in the Machine]

23. I agree with you on one thing...

"Building codes are not perfect, engineers and architects are not perfect, nor are the folks that build and maintain them."


However, if you can't tell the difference between a building that was solid up until it was hit by a little bit of debris and a bridge that was overused and abused for decades.. and had backed up traffic on it when it collapsed, then I can't help you....

Would the bridge have collapsed if the traffic hadn't been backed up and sitting on it? Who knows, right? Bridges are designed with the thought that traffic flows across them,,, constantly moving.. NOT sitting for long periods of time...

[petgoat]

25. Have you noticed how lame the OCTabots are getting? They're demoralized.

It's tough for them since we have the facts and they don't.

[Bassman66]

26. You're right, they seem to be less enthusiastic lately.

Maybe they know something.

[hack89]

35. There is nothing new

new faces yet the same old arguments. All we know is that nothing ever changes here.

[wildbilln864]

48. Yet, you and certain others seem to make it ...

back here to try to debunk posts which dispute the OBCS. And sometimes many only bring condescention and ridicule to the conversation. I just find that very odd.
I do believe 911 was an inside job. If I did not believe that, I wouldn't spend many posts trying to show those who did, that they were wrong. Let them be wrong. I wouldn't care because it won't effect me. There is so much more interesting stuff to do online and in other forums than argue about one CT all the time that I think is rediculous. I don't understand it. Just sayin....
:shrug:

[hack89]

49. There are many things that you don't understand - just sayin. nt

[wildbilln864]

50. And there are many things I do! nt

[hack89]

51. I have no doubt. ny

[petgoat]

52. There are new things. NIST has admitted that structural damage and diesel fuel had nothing to do

with the collapse of WTC7.

In other words, they're going to claim that office fires that burn 20 minutes in
an area before moving on to another area heated up the massive column 79 to failure.

[hack89]

53. Ok -if you say so. nt

[Ghost in the Machine]

27. It's fun to watch some of the self implosions of some of these guys...

They like to project on us, but it's really the OCTabot movement that's falling to the wayside. More and more people are voicing their concerns over new investigations and are decrying the shoddy "investigations" of FEMA, NIST & the 9-11 Commission...

We've never been given any real answers to real questions and the general public is starting to see through the bullshit...

Don't worry though, we'll still have one or two running through here always ready to defend the official lie.. er, I mean story...

[hack89]

36. You're kidding, right?

care to present any evidence that anyone outside of this tiny corner of the internet actually gives a rats ass about 911? It is a non-issue in the eyes of the public.

[Ghost in the Machine]

37. Do *you* ever get out and talk to people in real life?

I do.. all the time. I'm in the friggin' HEART of rightwing rural redneck country here and 95% of the people I talk to think that 9-11 was an inside job. I'm talking about people of every age, from teenagers to senior citizens.

I don't know what public *you've* been in, but the public *I've* been in thinks we've been lied to and that we've been "had".


Go talk to some people on the street, for real, and see what they have to say... you'd be surprised at what you find, as opposed to what you think.

[hack89]

38. Yes - I am a political activist

I can say with great certainly that people in Rhode Island are not talking about 911.

But lets get away from me and you - can you provide links to show any significant inroads on TV, newspaper, magazine articles? Show me the TV shows dedicated to 911. Show me the politicians campaigning on the issue. There is nothing there.

[wildbilln864]

39. Close your eyes....

and keep saying it over and over. "There is nothing there, there is nothing there, there is nothing there." :rofl:

[LARED]

40. It's completely pointless to discuss this issue with you

Your own words completely invalidate any notion you are even remotely fluent enough in this subject to have a rational discussion.

And please do tell me how lame it is that I won't continue this discussion because you've got me on the run. Those that understand the issue could use the giggles.

[Ghost in the Machine]

41. Please point out any "discussion" you *ever* had here.... your normal MO is basic nuisance -

distraction posts, like the one I'm replying to now. Do you have anything intelligent to say... or do you prefer your usual brand of ineptitude?

You're too clever by half, LARED,... and always good for a comedy break...

[Realityhack]

60. "Bridges are designed with the thought that traffic flows across them,,, constantly moving..."

You don't design bridges do you?

[petgoat]

19. There's no comparson between a highly redundant high-rise structure

with multiple elements and a suspension bridge made of limited numbers of chains, each of
which was only as strong as its weakest link.

Can you provide another example that belongs in the barnyard, instead of this Platypus?

[Realityhack]

54. Please do some research.

It really isn't rocket science structural engineering to realize that when you intentionally remove sections from a building you generally do not remove anything critical that would cause collapse but fire can damage critical components that you would never think of intentionally removing.

Take a look through the current working information from NIST. Their theory of a how the failure progressed is quite well documented and fits the available evidence. You can see the penthouse collapsing, the kink in the building, and various other signs that point toward their current hypothesis.

Understanding the particular nature of the specific element in question is vital to understanding the failure. Not all structural elements of a building are equally important. Removing sections of floors is not the same as removing vertical supports. Removing support for one section can not be assumed to be the same as removing from another section on another level.

WTC7 had some very unique characteristics in the way it was constructed. If you are honestly pursuing answers, go read the NIST information in it's entirety then ask an informed technical question about what you don't understand.
Surfing wikipedia and pulling out an irrelevant quote is not an intellectually honest approach to understanding the collapse.

[petgoat]

57. Their current theory is not well documented at all.

There is no evidence for their belief that fires caused three floors to fall
away from column 79, leaving it without lateral support. Girder-to-column connections
with respect to column 79 are amazingly fragile.

But then they suppose that a falling column 79 pulled another six core columns down--
through amazingly strong girder-to-column connections.

It's a total crock, and anybody who looks at Appendix L can see right through it.

[Realityhack]

58. Yet another thing that is too long for you to read?

Appendix L doesn't actually single out column 79. That is elsewhere.

Appendix L gives does show that NIST does NOT think the general girder to column connections would create a horizontal collapse but that the very different connections on the reinforced floors (5&7 in this case) could have.

Appendix L shows that the length of unsupported column is less important than the temperature reached due to fire in the initiation of a column failure.

Your complete ignorance of what is contained in the NIST report (vs. what wherever you go for information claims is contained in it) and your inability to understand simple engineering concepts no longer surprises me.
If you want to contribute to a substantive discussion about the current NIST theory of collapse of WTC 7 you are going to need to stop making things up, read the actual report, and at least attempt to understand some basic engineering concepts.

[Realityhack]

61. Ghost - Have you read the NIST info yet? n/t

[jberryhill]

62. Ah here it is....

[Redstone]

64. Not a structural engineer, are you?

Redstone

[petgoat]

65. Are you prepared to offer a structural engineer's argument

for how asymmetrical office fires (no diesel fuel fires, structural
damage not an issue) made the building come down in a virtually
symmetrical collapse into a neat pile?

If so you should contact NIST. I think they'd pay big bucks for one!

[hack89]

66. Why do you assert that structural damage was not an issue? nt

[Realityhack]

75. I think he is doing so because NIST doesn't think it was relevent....

for someone so critical of them he takes an awful lot of stuff from garbled versions of their research.

[Twist_U_Up]

83. spin it Hack!!

spin baby spin

[Redstone]

67. Nah. I don't need to offer any "structural engineer's arguments" unless some

of those are presented.

"Don't tell me this can happen" is not, in and of itself, an expert argument.

Redstone

[Realityhack]

68. Petgoat you know perfectly well that NIST has a fairly good hypothisis as to how that happened...

In addition, they site in some of their documentation that diesel fires may have been present but they can not conclusively prove they where.

Your past comments on their analysis show that you probably have not even read the currently available information much less understand it.

[petgoat]

69. NIST's current hypothesis is absurd.

Minutes from the meeting of the National Construction Safety Team Advisory Committee, 12/18/07,
record Shyam Sunder indicating that "the initiating event sequence based on fire-induced
failures resulting from normal building fires." (Quote from the minutes, not from Sunder.)

http://wtc.nist.gov/media/NCSTACMeetingMinutes121807.pdf

In that same meeting, Sunder said:

"there are no exceptional combustibles such as diesel fuel in day tanks or in large tanks at the
base of the building.... the ventilation was probably somewhat limited. Typically, when flames
extend out from windows, there is excess fuel looking for air."

He acknowledged that at "any given location the combustibles needed about 20 minutes to be
consumed."

The Structure magazine article http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.structuremag.org%2FArchives%2F2007-11%2FSF-WTC7-Gilsanz-Nov07.pdf&ei=w2KHSN-6F6OipwSH8eSXBw&usg=AFQjCNHYCMSXwgM0b3s7b7dA0D1kXxR_0Q&sig2=vv9bqNvBoxNG-TX_nNSheA specifically blames column 79.

There is no evidence of any structural damage to the eastern end of the building. It is difficult
to imagine how significant structural damage could be inflicted on column 79, which was an H-form
column with flanges 5" thick and plates 3" thick welded across its open sides making a 8-shaped
column 23" X 26".

[Realityhack]

76. Did you have some kind of point in there?

So the fires were likely standard office fires. That is all that is required by the models to account for the collapse.

The combustibles at a given location are consumed in about twenty minutes. Which is of course an explanation coming FROM the people you criticize for not understanding how this makes their theory 'absurd' (in your completely untrained opinion, unsupported by any calculations whatsoever).

Is that supposed to make me think you have a clue? NIST *KNOWS* that information. They did the calculations and still came up with a collapse scenario. After doing some modeling it has so far held up.
The fact that you do not understand a theory is no more a legitimate flaw in that theory than the existence of the creation museum is a flaw in evolutionary theory.

Then your last paragraph is a blatant straw man.
"There is no evidence of any structural damage to the eastern end of the building."
You mean from WTC tower debits? no of course not. Nobody claimed that.

"It is difficultto imagine how significant structural damage could be inflicted on column 79,"
Only for you. Or where you defining 'structural damage' in some new interesting way that only you know about?

"which was an H-form column with flanges 5" thick and plates 3" thick welded across its open sides making a 8-shaped
column 23" X 26". "
This is only relevant to your imagination. Here in the real world people use those numbers to create actual models and simulations. When that was done it showed that failure could occur in exactly such a column under the expected conditions based on the available evidence.

[Twist_U_Up]

84. " NIST has a fairly good hypothisis as to how that happened" LOL which time?

[AZCat]

70. Nobody's going to refute your stupid strawman. n/t

[petgoat]

71. It's not straw at all. Do you dispute the fact that WTC7 came down

1. at virtually freefall speed
2. in nearly symmetrical collapse
3. and landed in a pile centered on its footprint?

[Name removed]

73. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Realityhack]

77. AZ Cat. Nice to see you drop by. n/t

[Twist_U_Up]

85. what a fucking vicious reply

and its allowed to stay.............DU at its finest

[Twist_U_Up]

86. aight mods. thanks

[AZCat]

88. Yes, because deleting a 1.5-year-old post...

responding to a banned poster is a big deal. Pathetic. I guess this is what you do when you don't have any valid arguments to make.

[SDuderstadt]

89. LOLOLOLOL

Let me make sure I get this straight. You alerted on a year and a half old post???

Talk about petty...

LOLOLOLOL

[Realityhack]

74. Yes I dispute one of those.

"1. at virtually freefall speed"
This is false. Their can be no intellectually honest argument that the building came down at nearly free fall speeds. When you examine the available video evidence and start appropriately at the first sign of collapse of the penthouse it is clear that the collapse progression took far more time than 'freefall speed'.

As for your other 'points' I will simply say so the fuck what?

"2. in nearly symmetrical collapse"
Yep just as the engineering models predict.

"3. and landed in a pile centered on its footprint?"
That would be what happens when things fall. Did you expect it to fall over sideways like a block tower in a preschool?

[backwoodsbob]

79. show the WHOLE video of the collapse starting with the PH

and it is clear it didn't fall at anywhere near freefall speed

[wildbilln864]

80. so post the whole video then...

if you can?

[jberryhill]

72. I finally figured this out...

It's always the good questions that lead to good answers.

As reported in Old Fart Monthly, Larry Silverstein had a hernia several weeks before 9/11, and was fitted with a truss:



He was also having problems with frequent urination. On the afternoon of 9/11, his nurse was trying to help him get it off to pee, but the truss was broken and wouldn't budge.

Meanwhile, he was on the phone with Chief Nigro, when he said to the nurse:

"I think the best thing to do is just pull it."

Nigro didn't know that Silverstein was talking to his nurse, and so the FDNY blew up the building.

So there you have it. A single truss failure caused the building to collapse.

I'm phoning this in to NIST.

[Twist_U_Up]

82. spitting in the face of the victims family members as usual

[Twist_U_Up]

81. Show me 1 pic of trusses or floor pans in the collapse. Miles of them disappeared

[LARED]

87. If they disappeared, where did they go? nt