Madrid Skyscraper burns for two straight days without collapse

[mopaul]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SPAIN_BUILDING_FIRE?SITE=VANOV&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

...of course, this is a much more modern building than the world trade center towers, and everyone knows that the spaniards are better skyscraper builders.

just an interesting story....

[Padraig18]

1. Unless I misunderstood, that's not EXACTLY true.

I believe that I heard that the top 6 stories DID 'pancake'.

edit: I was right.

"...Hours earlier, several top floors collapsed onto lower ones.....

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SPAIN_BUILDING_FIRE?SITE=VANOV&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[Bridget Burke]

3. And they still think the rest of the building might collapse....

As reported on BBC this morning. All surrounding buildings are closed; they're definitely in danger.

[Padraig18]

7. Exactly. n/t

[hector459]

35. Things that make you go "hmmmmmmmm."

That implosion theory about the WTC looks more interesting.

[hlthe2b]

2. I was just struck with how totally the building was consumed....

evenly throughout--which I would not have expected from an electrical fire. In fact, I would have thought they might have caught it before it consumed the whole building? :shrug:

[shoelace414]

5. Sprinklers

[jmcgowanjm]

4. More incrimination-the pancake didn't start a cascade effect

The film I want to see-
split screen, Madrid Building and the WTC's

I guess they're going to have to do a
controlled demolition to bring it down.

I hope they get it down before
other buildings around it start to
collapse.

[TrueAmerican]

6. Hmm

The heat generated by the jet fuel may of played a role in that. And how did this fire start? Where was the sprinkler system?

The higher the temperature of the fire the faster the steel would collaspe. IMO>

[dutchdoctor]

8. The jet fuel..

I read somewhere that the energy released with the explosion of the planes fuel tanks was the equivalent of 1/50th of the energy released by the atomic bomb dropped on nagasaki.
It is a while ago, so I may be mistaken, but I think the heat generated by that explosion melted the iron bars in the WTC causing the collaps.

[BlueCollar]

10. PBS ran a good program

on the WTC collapse.

Basically, from what I remember, the explosion of fuel blew a lot of the insulation off the structural members of the building which caused them to melt.

An electrical fire, I assume, wouldn't have the same effect?

I'm no engineer but it makes sense.

[ashmanonar]

20. then why did the buildings wait for 15 minutes to collapse?

that's my question. if the plane was so destructive, why didn't the buildings collapse right then and there?

[Media_Lies_Daily]

25. The first plane took out only those structural supports in the....

...center of the side of the first tower struck by that plane. It took a while for the fires and the weight of the floors above the impact site to have an effect on the remaining structural supports of the weakened floors.

The second plane struck the second building along one side, knocking out most of the structural supports on that side. The structural supports for that building were weakened substantially more than those in the first building.

The fact that the second building collapsed first is evidence that the structural supports in that building were more heavily damaged than those in the first building.

The towers didn't collapse right away because the remaining structural supports were continuing to bear the load of the upper floors. But, as those structural supports weakened, the top floors of the first building collapsed toward the weakened side, while the floors of the first building proceeded to pancake downward.

Additionally, the towers had been designed/built to withstand the impact of the smaller passenger airliners in use at the time the building was designed, not the impact of much larger planes fully with jet fuel.

[ashmanonar]

53. ok, foot (a) in mouth (b).

heh, didn't realize til just now, it wasnt' 15 minutes, but 2 hours...i honestly didn't pay much attention back then, to tell the truth. weird to think of, but i haven't really gotten involved til just this year.

that makes it even stranger...the fires should have been burning out, especially since the firefighters seemed to think it wasn't that bad of a fire. 2 hours later, the buildings fall? O.o

[KharmaTrain]

22. The WTC Structure, Too...

That fuel set supporting rods that held the floors of the WTC together...they were supposed to be "fireproofed", but the heat of the fuel and fire baked off that insulation...weakened the floors and then the collapse.

I've heard building engineer go both ways. Some marvel it took the buildings as long as it did to collapse, others saying that if the fireproofing had been modernized the structure might have stayed up. I'm of the "amazed" it stayed standing that long. I can see see that first plane hole that Tuesday morning and thinking how this was going to be one bitch of a fire to put out.

No matter how they say tall building are "safe" or "fireproof"...how many fires do we have to have to disprove this. Sprinklers or no, most office buildings today are loaded with cheap furnishings...many made of highly toxic and flamible plastics, synthetic carpeting and other combustibles that can take a small fire and turn it into an inferno in no time.

Fortunately, this fire his on a weekend and no one was hurt. I'll be interested to see how they take this building down. I can't recall a building this tall ever having such damage and then having to be razed. I don't know of a controlled demolition can be conducted on a building that is structurally unsafe (would you like to be the one drilling the holes and loading those sticks???).

[jmcgowanjm]

30. you're mistaken-open air fire burns no hotter than 875 degrees

Jet Fuel Cannot Melt Steel: The melting point of construction steel is 1500 degrees Celsius. Jet fuel burning in open air can reach just over half of that temperature. Inside a high-rise office block (which are usually an enclosed space), the fire is likely to have died down rather quickly because of lack of enough oxygen. The thick black smoke was an indication of that. That 300,000 tons of steel structure was melted by two planeloads of jet fuel is an absolute rubbish.

http://uscrisis.lege.net/911/

The only way to melt steel in open air:

The INCREDIBLE INCENDIARY, THERMITE, was thought to
be used on some of the beams in the bottom of the 7
story basement which could easily cause the pools of
molten steel. It is composed of  3 to 1 parts of Iron Oxide
and Aluminum power and set off with a Magnesium fuse.
The white hot burning temperature is around 3000 deg. C
or 5400 deg F.

[Spider Jerusalem]

9. Googling "structural steel" and "melting point" returns this...

There is no indication that any of the fires in the World Trade Center buildings were hot enough to melt the steel framework. Jonathan Barnett, professor of fire protection engineering, has repeatedly reminded the public that steel--which has a melting point of 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit--may weaken and bend, but does not melt during an ordinary office fire. Yet metallurgical studies on WTC steel brought back to WPI reveal that a novel phenomenon--called a eutectic reaction--occurred at the surface, causing intergranular melting capable of turning a solid steel girder into Swiss cheese.

Materials science professors Ronald R. Biederman and Richard D. Sisson Jr. confirmed the presence of eutectic formations by examining steel samples under optical and scanning electron microscopes. A preliminary report was published in JOM, the journal of the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society. A more detailed analysis comprises Appendix C of the FEMA report. The New York Times called these findings "perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation." The significance of the work on a sample from Building 7 and a structural column from one of the twin towers becomes apparent only when one sees these heavy chunks of damaged metal.

A one-inch column has been reduced to half-inch thickness. Its edges--which are curled like a paper scroll--have been thinned to almost razor sharpness. Gaping holes--some larger than a silver dollar--let light shine through a formerly solid steel flange. This Swiss cheese appearance shocked all of the fire-wise professors, who expected to see distortion and bending--but not holes.

A eutectic compound is a mixture of two or more substances that melts at the lowest temperature of any mixture of its components. Blacksmiths took advantage of this property by welding over fires of sulfur-rich charcoal, which lowers the melting point of iron. In the World Trade Center fire, the presence of oxygen, sulfur and heat caused iron oxide and iron sulfide to form at the surface of structural steel members. This liquid slag corroded through intergranular channels into the body of the metal, causing severe erosion and a loss of structural integrity.

http://www.wpi.edu/News/Transformations/2002Spring/steel.html">more...

[Padraig18]

11. Don't confuse them with facts.

:tinfoilhat:

[Spider Jerusalem]

15. Yeah....

Not that they pay attention, anyway.

[izzie]

14. So it is what makes up the beams?

It is like you have sterling silver, vs. 'fine' silver? The problem then is, is the more 'fine' steel stronger than the sterling( less pure)? It may not be, unless you are talking about burning. Right? Now you have to look at it as if you wish a softer 'fine'silver used in the case of holding something up or if it will burn. I am thinking that when they were building the Trade Center they looked at how strong the steel was to hold up things. The beams were covered in something for burns so they must have also looked at that and went with the stronger over the burn ing of the steel.Then as I read, the cover of the beams was burned off. This left the beams open to burn. I guess I mean melt.Both ways would have left the building in an unsafe state when the top fall in.

[Spider Jerusalem]

16. Um...what?

That doesn't make any sense...

[dsc]

33. He is saying that the beams were likely alloys of steel

with a lower melting point due to having a different metal added for strength.

[MadHound]

27. Funny, how this minor technical institute received WTC samples

Or maybe not, upon further consideration. Doing some research into Worcester Polytechnic Institute, one finds deep connections to both governmental institutions such as NASA, JPL, DOE, Goddard Space Lab, and the DOD among others. In addition, they place a strong emphasis on signal technology, generally a province of people like the CIA and NSA. Projects that have been worked on at this university include Star Wars, sophisticated data mining, and work on WWW2, that shadow web that the government keeps pushing.

I also find it interesting that the government, rather than doing such analysis itself, or at least at a well know place such as MIT, Sanford, etc. hand off this analysis to a small time, privately funded school that few have heard of. Also, since this is such an important piece of evidence, why has it not been broadcast far and wide? Instead, it gets buried in the back of the FEMA report, and your link doesn't turn up anything other than a "404, not found" error.

You may put great stock in this theory that has been put forth, but I would like confirmation from a more reputable source. This institution smells of being one of the government's pocket universities, ready to do and say anything to keep that money flowing. Funny how this school received these samples to work on, while others didn't. In fact the steel from the WTC disappeared in record time, first being hauled out and kept under guard at Fresh Kills landfill, and then being shipped overseas, sold as scrap metal. How many time has such a gross negligence of investigative procedure been performed? None that I can think of. In most case that even hardly approach the scale of the WTC, the area and evidence is processed on site, and then shipped to multiple, unaffliated labs for analysis. But with the WTC, it was all a hush, hush, hurry, hurry cleanup, with just this one podunk school with suspicious connections doing the analysis work. Things that make you go hmmmm.

[Emillereid]

69. I can't get the link to work --

is there another way to see the whole article??

[Poppyseedman]

12. I think it would be a different story

if a Jet Liner was flown into the building

Just my guess.

everyone knows that the spaniards are better skyscraper builders.

They are? What basis is that assumption being made on?

[Vickers]

17. I think that's the "sarcastic" assumption.

In fact....I feel it in my bones.

[Poppyseedman]

23. I believe I missed his point

This Bones would concur

[in_cog_ni_to]

13. They forgot to put explosives in the basement.

Amazing, isn't it? The towers fell within minutes. This building can burn for days and remain standing.

Yeah. I believe there were no exposives involved in 911. :eyes: None at all. Our government wasn't involved. :( There's no doubt that the office Skyscraper was built much better than The World Trade Centers. :grr:

[Az]

18. Its true: Electrical fires are identical to jet fuel fires

Its true its true!

Reality check. The top six floors pancaked early in this fire. Just not enough weight to send the rest of the building down. Different building different weights.

[Sweet Pea]

56. Correct...

Different building different weights

Different situations different circumstances different construction different stressors different causes different structures

DIFFERENT EVERYTHING!

Anyone who compares one with the other is is comparing apples with pineapples. True, they were both bulidings and true they were both tall (comparitively), but that is it as far as similarities go.

[Jacobin]

19. Maybe it didn't have 30,000 pounds of jet fuel

burning in it and maybe it wasn't hit by an airplane weight 300,000 pounds going 400 mph.

Just a thought.

[jmcgowanjm]

34. This is easy kerosene burns at 875 degrees-no hotter

no matter how much you have, and you'd better
have an accompanying amouht of forced oxygen to go
with it.

And in the middle of this inferno:

9:25 a.m.

Ladder 15: "Go ahead, Irons."
Ladder 15 Irons:

"Just got a report from the director of Morgan Stanley. 78
seems to have taken the brunt of this stuff, there's a lot of
bodies, they say the stairway is clear all the way up,
though."

http://guardian.150m.com/wtc/firefighters.htm

[electricmonk]

21. Different designs also

The WTC was held up by an external skeleton. I don't know if that design has been used in other buildings. I remember seeing a special about the WTC and the show mentioning that it was the first time that that design had been used. The Madrid building looks like a standard internal skeleton.

[Name removed]

24. Deleted message

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

[Name removed]

26. Deleted message

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

[Padraig18]

28. Again, the Madrid skyscraper DID collapse, partially. n/t

[jmcgowanjm]

31. Again, the pancake did not cascade in straight line

at the speed of gravity to ground level.

[Padraig18]

32. No, but a collapse DID occur, which is the relevant point. n/t

[jmcgowanjm]

36. No, the point is the pancake was stopped. And WTC's

had not one, but 2 pancakes. The Wrong
building fell first and both buildings fell at the speed
of gravity-impossible w/ the pancake scenario.

[Padraig18]

37. We obviously don't agree on what 'relevant' means.

The Madrid fire does nothing to buttress the nutcase "it was a bomb" theories regarding the WTC.

:tinfoilhat:

[jmcgowanjm]

40. Gosh, I was about to agree & you had to use the word "nutcase"

Give me right now a seven point list of what
happened on 911. Should be easy. Like persons,
places, times.


Start anywhere.

They take great delight in debunking only those
conspiracy theories that are the weakest or that are planted
by other government sympathizers to help discredit the
more credible conspiracy facts. This is what is referred to as
a "straw man" argument, where a weak or false argument is
set up so that it can easily be knocked
down.

Throughout, the voices of Chief Palmer, Chief Geraghty, and
the other firefighters showed no panic, no sense that
events were racing beyond their
control.
When Chief Palmer radioed from the 78th floor, he
sounded slightly out of breath, perhaps from exertion or
perhaps from the sight of all the people who moments
before had been waiting for an elevator and now were dead
or close to it.
"Numerous 10-45's, Code Ones," Chief Palmer said, using
the Fire Department's radio terms for dead
people.
At that point, the building would be standing for just a few
more minutes, as the fire was weakening the structure on
the floors above him. Even so, Chief Palmer could see only
two pockets of fire, and called for a pair of engine companies
to fight them.

http://guardian.150m.com/wtc/firefighters.htm


http://home.comcast.net/~skydrifter/exp.htm

[jmcgowanjm]

41. you can disregard that pic of flt77 in the pentagon

I meant to put: this pic up:



If the "cap" had tilted first, the mechanical tilt of the “cap”
should have relieved a major portion of the purely vertical
stress from above; alleviating any tendency for the
immediate lower structure to “pancake;” as was witnessed. It
is not difficult to imagine the floors collapsing over a period
of time - but NOT simultaneously!

It is worth noting that there was an expected delay in the
core collapse, as evidenced by the videotapes and
pictures illustrating heavy free-falling external debris gaining
a slight lead on the building collapse. Again, a stopwatch is
a key forensic instrument.

The basic mechanics of the collapses offer another major
clue - BOTH buildings were damaged so as to create
a segmented "cap." Yet with a radical difference between
the mass (size) of the "caps," both towers collapsed -
identically!

[Padraig18]

42. Yes, I did have to use the word 'nutcase'.

The Bush Administration's negligence is horrific enough; there is absolutely no need to 'gild the lily' with whacked-out theories that have absolutely no credible evidence whatsoever to back them up.

[ashmanonar]

47. none of the theories have credible evidence.

sorry to burst your bubble, but giuliani made sure that there wasn't any evidence from the towers to prove any theory. all there is is bits of pieces that various places have studied.

there's really no way to say "you're all nutcases, bc you believe in *****" bc nobody has the answers.

face it: we're all in the dark. the last thing we should do is call each other nutcases, cuz that only divides us further.

[jmcgowanjm]

50. So no reply to my points. no links on yours.& pejoritives freely thrown

OK. If you're happy, I'm happy. Good luck.

In the "official" account, the floor-plate attachments
are supposed to have let go, (on cue - given the
images) causing the accelerating cement "pancake"
mass. According to that theory, only the first floor above the
fire initially collapsed, causing the floors below to
progressively collapse; one-floor-at-a-time. That requires
a sequence of delays - however brief.

According to that presentation, the core columns would be
left standing - however briefly; as the floor panels released
from their attachment points. In theory, as the floor panels let
go from their mountings, the load would be relieved from
the core columns - leaving them to stand/balance,
momentarily. We can be certain - just from the timed duration
of the collapse - that such was NOT the factual
collapse progression. In the case of BOTH buildings,
everything let go at once. Thus, with the core columns
obviously collapsing first, there had to have been SOMETHING
to breach the vertical integrity of the 47 steel columns - EARLY
in the collapse, not later.

http://home.comcast.net/~skydrifter/exp.htm

[ashmanonar]

39. exactly...and it didn't bring the entire tower down.

the fire in this building was far worse and far longer-lasting than the fires in both the towers and in wtc 7. wtc 7 lasted some 7 hours, i believe (correct me if i'm wrong) and the 1 and 2 towers lasted for what, 15 minutes?

2 days of intense fire should have brought this tower all the way down, crushing it into dust and shredding the steel according to wtc logic.

[jmcgowanjm]

45. towers hit at 8:48E, collapsed 10:28E

William Biggart, an independent photojournalist, snapped
this picture. Shortly afterward, the 54-year-old called his
wife, Wendy Doremus, and said, "I'm O.K. I'm with the
firemen." At 10:28 A.M. he captured One WTC seconds before
it cascaded back to Earth. Four days later, Biggart's body
was discovered beside those of several firefighters.
Somehow, 290 of his film and digital images survived inside
his battered cameras.

http://nationalreview.com/murdock/murdock090902.asp

2 days later Madrid building stands.

[ashmanonar]

49. ok, nm.

my bad.

[Occulus]

44. Not a complete collapse.

An aside: WTC #7 appeared to be a controlled demolition. Why?

[Name removed]

38. Deleted message

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

[Poppyseedman]

29. I'm about to put my ............................on

[UdoKier]

43. Wow. So a concrete/rebar building with a conventional fire...

didn't collapse as easily as an all-steel building burning in a fire caused by thousands of gallons of jet fuel after being hit by a jumbo jet?



Wow, you would think that even under the completely different circumstances, both buildings would collapse the same way.


This is clear proof that Bush planted charges in the WTC himself.

Or maybe Cheney shot a laser beam at it from his Wonder Woman/Independence Day Invisible UFO...






People. The Bush people are evil scum. They probably LIHOP. Maybe MIHOP. But they didn't set charges - they DIDN'T NEED TO. Enough X-Files nonsense!

[Occulus]

46. If they didn't set charges, what about WTC 7?

I've watched the videos of WTC 7 collapsing over and over again, and it looks exactly like every controlled demolition I've ever seen.

Having seen several documentaries on companies that perform controlled demolitions, I know it takes several days of very careful planning to put a building into its footprint. It isn't easy by any stretch, but it's not impossible by any means.

My point is, the WTC7 collapse appears controlled, and the only way that's possible is if the building was laced with deliberately placed explosives well before the planes hit the towers. This, to me, is the single most glaring indication that something is amiss with the entire event.

[UdoKier]

51. No need, no motive.

Why would they set charges in WTC? Why collapse such a relatively insignificant building?

There are many things amiss with this event, but the things that strike me as odd are "coincidences" like that the FAA hijack coordinator was on his FIRST DAY on the job, the military JUST HAPPENED to be doing exercises simulating a 9-11-style attack that day, the pentagon was notified way too late, then jets were scrambled way too late, and when they were, they were told to fly 100 miles out over the Atlantic, the FAA's air traffic control tapes of conversations with the pilots during the hijacking were destroyed and thrown away, despite specific instructions to retain them. There were the numerous and specific warnings, many of which crossed Bush's desk, but nobody cared a whit.

To me, the "pattern of collapse" of the WTC 7 (or any of the other buildings that collapsed that day) is the LEAST suspicious thing about it all.

[Name removed]

52. Deleted message

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

[Old and In the Way]

54. IIRC, WTC7 was the home office for a Federal Task force investigating

some big Wall Street criminal fraud cases.

If your gonna pull off something like 9/11....might as well go all the way.

I've seen pics of the WTC7....it didn't look like a particularly big fire to me....I wonder why the sprinkler system wasn't able to handle it.

[spooked911]

62. WTC7 was not insignificant-- it had CIA, DEA offices

among other things. Quite likely it had evidence they wanted destroyed.

[NecessaryOnslaught]

55. Then why quash an investigation?

$ELLING OUT THE INVESTIGATION

BY BILL MANNING

Did they throw away the locked doors from the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire? Did they throw away the gas can used at the Happyland Social Club Fire? Did they cast aside the pressure-regulating valves at the Meridian Plaza Fire? Of course not. But essentially, that's what they're doing at the World Trade Center.

For more than three months, structural steel from the World Trade Center has been and continues to be cut up and sold for scrap. Crucial evidence that could answer many questions about high-rise building design practices and performance under fire conditions is on the slow boat to China, perhaps never to be seen again in America until you buy your next car.

Such destruction of evidence shows the astounding ignorance of government officials to the value of a thorough, scientific investigation of the largest fire-induced collapse in world history. I have combed through our national standard for fire investigation, NFPA 921, but nowhere in it does one find an exemption allowing the destruction of evidence for buildings over 10 stories tall.

Hoping beyond hope, I have called experts to ask if the towers were the only high-rise buildings in America of lightweight, center-core construction. No such luck. I made other calls asking if these were the only buildings in America with light-density, sprayed-on fireproofing. Again, no luck-they were two of thousands that fit the description.

Comprehensive disaster investigations mean increased safety. They mean positive change. NASA knows it. The NTSB knows it. Does FEMA know it?

No. Fire Engineering has good reason to believe that the "official investigation" blessed by FEMA and run by the American Society of Civil Engineers is 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. Except for the marginal benefit obtained from a three-day, visual walk-through of evidence sites conducted by ASCE investigation committee members-described by one close source as a "tourist trip"-no one's checking the evidence for anything.

Maybe we should live and work in planes. That way, if disaster strikes, we will at least be sure that a thorough investigation will help find ways to increase safety for our survivors.

As things now stand and if they continue in such fashion, the investigation into the World Trade Center fire and collapse will amount to paper- and computer-generated hypotheticals.

However, respected members of the fire protection engineering community are beginning to raise red flags, and a resonating theory has emerged: The structural damage from the planes and the explosive ignition of jet fuel in themselves were not enough to bring down the towers. Rather, theory has it, the subsequent contents fires attacking the questionably fireproofed lightweight trusses and load-bearing columns directly caused the collapses in an alarmingly short time. Of course, in light of there being no real evidence thus far produced, this could remain just unexplored theory.

The frequency of published and unpublished reports raising questions about the steel fireproofing and other fire protection elements in the buildings, as well as their design and construction, is on the rise. The builders and owners of the World Trade Center property, the Port Authority of New York-New Jersey, a governmental agency that operates in an accountability vacuum beyond the reach of local fire and building codes, has denied charges that the buildings' fire protection or construction components were substandard but has refused to cooperate with requests for documentation supporting its contentions.

Some citizens are taking to the streets to protest the investigation sellout. Sally Regenhard, for one, wants to know why and how the building fell as it did upon her unfortunate son Christian, an FDNY probationary firefighter. And so do we.

Clearly, there are burning questions that need answers. Based on the incident's magnitude alone, a full-throttle, fully resourced, forensic investigation is imperative. More important, from a moral standpoint, for the safety of present and future generations who live and work in tall buildings-and for firefighters, always first in and last out-the lessons about the buildings' design and behavior in this extraordinary event must be learned and applied in the real world.

To treat the September 11 incident any differently would be the height of stupidity and ignorance.

The destruction and removal of evidence must stop immediately.

The federal government must scrap the current setup and commission a fully resourced blue ribbon panel to conduct a clean and thorough investigation of the fire and collapse, leaving no stones unturned.

Firefighters, this is your call to action. Turn to the article, WTC "Investigation"?: A Call to Action in this issue and on http://www.fire-eng.com, then contact your representatives in Congress and officials in Washington and help us correct this problem immediately.

Bill Manning
Fire Engineering January, 2002


http://fe.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm?Section=ARCHI&ARTICLE_ID=133237&VERSION_NUM=1

[vincent_vega_lives]

57. Is this guy for real?

Of course this article is THREE years old, so perhaps he missed this.

http://wtc.nist.gov/

[NecessaryOnslaught]

58. Yep Vince these guys are "for real" too

Statements from the House Committee on Science

----------------------------

"According to reports that we have heard since, there has been no comprehensive investigation. One expert in fire engineering concluded that there was virtually a nonexistent investigation. We haven't examined any aspects of the collapse that might have impacted rescue worker procedures even in this last month.

Second, reports have emerged that crucial evidence has been mishandled. Over 80 percent of the steel from the World Trade Center site has already been sold for recycling, much of it, if not all of it, before investigators and scientists could analyze the information."

-----------
"I am concerned that no clear protocol was in place for building investigators who were attempting to understand how the two buildings collapsed. While I understand that Ground Zero is first and foremost a crime scene and rescue area, we must also allow investigators the ability to fully examine evidence that will give us a greater understanding of why the buildings collapsed. I was disappointed to learn that investigators were unable to examine recovered pieces of steel from the Twin Towers before they were recycled."
--------------
"The FEMA BPAT encountered numerous obstacles during its investigation, including an inability to examine the steel, either removed from the site during the early search and rescue work or shipped to recycling plants, and the denial of access to building design, construction, and maintenance documents."
----------------
"The American Society of Civil Engineers team, whose report is due in April, admits they may have lost data due to the decision to recycle the structural steel."
--------------------
"In the month that lapsed between the terrorist attacks and the deployment of the BPAT team, a significant amount of steel debris—including most of the steel from the upper floors—was removed from the rubble pile, cut into smaller sections, and either melted at the recycling plant or shipped out of the U.S. Some of the critical pieces of steel—including the suspension trusses from the top of the towers and the internal support columns—were gone before the first BPAT team member ever reached the site"
-----------------
"The efforts of NSF-funded researchers were impeded by the same obstacles the BPAT team encountered: an inability to examine the steel, either removed from the site during the early search and rescue work or shipped to recycling plants"

http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/science/hsy77747.000/hsy77747_0.htm

[vincent_vega_lives]

59. Did you notice the date?

March 2002.

http://wtc.nist.gov/

[NecessaryOnslaught]

60. And?

Are you saying that the steel was unrecycled and inspected since march 2002?

From your cherished NIST report:

Project Approach
• Due to lack of physical evidence, we rely almost exclusively on:
• Fire insight
• Computer simulations
• Experiments
• Photographic evidence
• Eyewitness accounts

[spooked911]

63. I sent an e-mail to the NIST WTC group asking if they had tested for

explosives. They sent me a stock reply about finding no evidence for explosives and didn't answer my question.

It's hard to find evidence when you don't look.

[vincent_vega_lives]

65. so what was that stuff in the pictures smart guy?

http://wtc.nist.gov/media/gallery.htm#recover

fakes?

[spooked911]

66. I don't see any large steel beams that were used in the center core of the

WTC--those are the ones that would have been blown by explosives. It's not clear what those exterior lighter beams tell them anyway.

The question is what happened to the central core structure?

[AZCat]

67. Here's the list of core column material kept by the NIST

This is from Appendix F of the June 4, 2004, Interim Report.
Our message format doesn't support tables so it's not aligned very well.

Table F–3. Identified pieces of core column material from WTC 1 and WTC 2.
NIST Name | Type | Description | Bldg. | Column | Floors | Derrick Division | FY (ksi)
B-1011 RB Heavy rectangular column WTC 1 508 51 – 54 55 36
B-6152-1 RB Heavy rectangular column WTC 1 803 15 – 18 52 36
B-6152-2 RB Heavy rectangular column WTC 1 504 33 – 36 51 36
C-83 a RB Heavy rectangular column NA NA NA NA NA
C-88a RB Heavy rectangular column WTC 2 801 80 – 83 550 42
C-88b RB Heavy rectangular column WTC 2 801 77 – 80 550 42
C-90 RB Heavy rectangular column WTC 2 701 12 – 15 549 36
C-30 or S-12 W Wide flange section WTC 2 1008 104 – 106 NA 36
C-65 or S-8 W Wide flange section WTC 1 904 86 – 89 52 36
C-71 W Wide flange section WTC 1 904 77 – 80 NA 36
C-80 W Wide flange section WTC 1 603 92 – 95 51 36
C-155 W Wide flange section WTC 1 904 83 – 86 52 36
HH or S-2 W Wide flange section WTC 1 605 98 – 101 53 42

a. C-83 was not positively identified but due to similar size and shape was deemed a core column.
Key: NA, information not available.

</snip>

RB = Rectangular built-up box column (not perimeter column)
W = Wide flange trusses

[NecessaryOnslaught]

68. The USACE removed it

and it never made it to fresh kills.

"As of this date, there are only two legal pathways by which scrap metal moves from ground zero of the World Trade Center. First, light iron and non-ferrous materials are being sent to the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island for forensic review. After the authorities have released the materials they are transferred to a scrap processor under contract with the New York City Department of Sanitation that existed prior to September 11, 2001. Second, two contracts for 25,000 tons each of heavy steel were awarded on a bid basis on September 26, 2001. These materials are being loaded onto barges for delivery to the winning bidders.""

"Two recent bid awards were made to scrap processing firms to recycle 50,000 tons of large structural beams. Under the terms of those awards, the beams will be taken from the World Trade Center site, loaded onto river barges and sent directly to the purchasers' facilities for recycling. These two scrap processors have already offloaded 20,000 tons of structural steel beams shipped by barge directly from ground zero to their facilities.""

http://www.steel.org/news/innews/pr_prnewswire10_04_01.htm

[spooked911]

61. The NYFD thinks there were bombs.

There were bombs in '93 too.

Why COULDN'T there be bombs on 9/11?

It isn't such crazy stuff. Lots of people think there were explosives. Open your mind a little. No one is saying Bush/Cheney set the bombs. However, the WTC was clearly a target that was meant to be brought down.

[leftofthedial]

48. why do you hate freedom?

LOL!

And the parts of it that fell didn't fall neatly into its own footprint a la controlled demolition like two buildings ten times as big did in New York.

Interesting story. I wonder if they found any pristene passports in the rubble?

[spooked911]

64. Note this thread-- NY City Firemen think there were bombs in the WTC

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x34188

[k-robjoe]

70. Update

Update :

"That tower is still standing, even after a very heavy snowfall, the biggest in Madrid in the last 3 years! It survives the worst weather conditions and piles and piles of snow, which can become very heavy.
Thursday, February 24, 2005

(...) town councillor, Pilar Martinez, explained that recent severe weather conditions -heavy snow, gales, and rain- "are affecting the building, heightening the risks and complicating the demolition operation."
http://www.thinkspain.com/news-spain/8215

And this has probably been mentioned allready :

"The WTC towers (110 stories) were needing to be immensely stronger than the Madrid tower (approx 35 stories)"

http://batr.org/view/022805.html


On edit : Notice also how burned and weakened the floors below the collapse are. But still they are standing, even with all that mass falling down on top of them.

[LARED]

71. It's true

I had a grapefruit that tasted a lot stronger than a watermelon.

[vincent_vega_lives]

72. Look at the picture

You see the box girder frame of the building? That is similar to the core of the WTC. Now imagine wide open floors supported by trusses extending out double the area of the core area, supported by an outer wall of columns.

Get the difference?

[k-robjoe]

73. There are huge differences

I´m not arguing about that. But looking at the pictures from Madrid, you get an idea of how much such steel columns can endure.

One thing that is striking, is that the Madrid building is obviously severly weakened by fire, also BELOW the partial collapse. Hours and hours of raging fire. But still it didn´t collapse, even with all that mass falling down on it. Look at the picture.

I´ve read that the WTC towers were fabricated from various grades of high-strength steel. Do we know if the steel in the Windsor building was high-strength?

[vincent_vega_lives]

74. It's not that individual steel girders can endure more or less

A building structure is a system. A box girder construction has redundant strength, but is much heavier than the construction in the WTC, which was optimized to save weight, cost and space. That savings came at another cost, it sacrificed redundant structural integrity, and had weaknesses that the engineers considered acceptable.

The Aircraft crashing into the towers had two key effects, it damaged the structure and stripped the fireproofing from the are of the crash. The buildings may well have survived the crash alone, or the fire alone. But both compromised the system, and a system is only as strong as it's weakest point.

[k-robjoe]

75. Ofcourse the strength of single columns is important

As is the question of how they will eventually give way. Keywords : Bending and sagging.

[vincent_vega_lives]

76. Not really

Bending and sagging is a symptom, not the cause. Steel looses rigidity and it is the force applied to the girder that causes the bending and sagging.

I didn't say that "strength of single columns is not important", but it is one important component of a system.

The question here is not whether the fire was "hot enough to melt steel" but whether the crash and the fire compromised the building's structural integrity. There are several components to that integrity, the outer columns, the floor trusses, the truss joints, the core columns and the fire proofing and sprinkler systems. Each component is important.

[k-robjoe]

77. Something different

This discussion isn´t really getting anywhere, so I might as well stray off to something unrelated, but at least new :

"Windsor blaze amateur video mystery
Saturday, February 19, 2005

A video recording taken by amateurs from the tenth floor of a building near the gutted Windsor Tower in Madrid, has cast new doubts on the possible cause of the blaze. With the building's owners denying any possibility of an electrical short circuit and calling for investigators "to find those responsible," the video evidence is being taken very seriously.

Shot from the west of the Windsor Tower, it shows two individuals inside the building after firemen had been withdrawn. The video was taken from 2.30am onwards and shows two silhouetted figures carrying torches on a floor beneath the main blaze. An hour later, a number of the building's lower floors -still seemingly unaffected by the raging inferno above-, collapsed.

A spokesman from Madrid Town Hall insists that there was nobody inside the building at the time the video was taken, and has asked for it to be made available to investigators."
http://www.thinkspain.com/news-spain/8215

This is unrelated to the discussion of the collapse. What it makes me ask is : Can this explain why the Windsor fire became such an inferno? Did they prepare it with some very flamable stuff of some sort? Because the difference between WTC and the Windsor tower, in "willingness" to burn, is striking.

[LARED]

78. Before it gets to carried away

Torches in England are what we in America call flashlights. What are flashlights called in Spain?

[k-robjoe]

79. Maybe

I´m seeing firestarters where there aren´t any. But if you read on, it says :

>"According to an article published today in Spain's right wing daily "La Razon," police investigators have found that the padlock on a "secret" door giving access -via an underground tunnel- to the Windsor Tower, had been forced open. The find was made on Sunday as they were checking all the stricken tower's doors after being informed of the break in by the building's owners.

It casts new light on an investigation already clouded by video evidence taken by a couple from Reus (Tarragona) which seems to show two people inside the building long after emergency service personnel had been withdrawn."