UL questions the "steel softened" theories re. WTC collapsing

(UL = Underwriters Laboratories)

www.septembereleventh.org has an interesting letter from Kevin Ryan of Underwriters Laboratories to Frank Gale of the National Institutes of Standards and Technology.

Dr. Gayle,

Having recently reviewed your team's report of 10/19/04, I felt the need to contact you directly.

As I'm sure you know, the company I work for certified the steel components used in the construction of the WTC buildings. In requesting information from both our CEO and Fire Protection business manager last year, I learned that they did not agree on the essential aspects of the story, except for one thing - that the samples we certified met all requirements. They suggested we all be patient and understand that UL was working with your team, and that tests would continue through this year. I'm aware of UL's attempts to help, including performing tests on models of the floor assemblies. But the results of these tests appear to indicate that the buildings should have easily withstood the thermal stress caused by pools of burning jet fuel.

There continues to be a number of "experts" making public claims about how the WTC buildings fell. One such person, Dr. Hyman Brown from the WTC construction crew, claims that the buildings collapsed due to fires at 2000F melting the steel (1). He states "What caused the building to collapse is the airplane fuel…burning at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The steel in that five-floor area melts." Additionally, the newspaper that quotes him says "Just-released preliminary findings from a National Institute of Standards and Technology study of the World Trade Center collapse support Brown’s theory."

We know that the steel components were certified to ASTM E119. The time temperature curves for this standard require the samples to be exposed to temperatures around 2000F for several hours. And as we all agree, the steel applied met those specifications. Additionally, I think we can all agree that even un-fireproofed steel will not melt until reaching red-hot temperatures of nearly 3000F (2). Why Dr. Brown would imply that 2000F would melt the high-grade steel used in those buildings makes no sense at all.

<snip>

This story just does not add up. If steel from those buildings did soften or melt, I’m sure we can all agree that this was certainly not due to jet fuel fires of any kind, let alone the briefly burning fires in those towers. That fact should be of great concern to all Americans. Alternatively, the contention that this steel did fail at temperatures around 250C suggests that the majority of deaths on 9/11 were due to a safety-related failure. That suggestion should be of great concern to my company.

More...

people.

Three + years after the fact and these government shills are still claiming that an office fire can melt hi grade steel. :argh:

soften. To witness this take a piece of steel and put it in a vice. Attack a 25 lb weight to the end. Now heat it with a propane torch. Propane torches have a working temp of 750 F. The steel will sag. Now get an Oxy-acetylene torch to witness MELTING.

I spent a good part of my life with explosives and metals and can tell you it wasn't an explosives job. I can tell you that steel begins to loose strength in a non linear fashion as it approaches its melting point.

From the last parargraph.

.......I believe your work could also be a nucleus of fact around which the truth, and thereby global peace and justice, can grow again. Please do what you can to quickly eliminate the confusion regarding the ability of jet fuel fires to soften or melt structural steel. (my emphasis /jc)

Steel softens in a non linear fashion as it increases in temp towards its melting point.

Now fireproofing may have helped the building stay up but that is speculation.

I am just going by what the UL employee says in his letter, presumably speaking on behalf of UL (the certifiers of the steel used in the WTC construction), and he is clearly saying that the evidence presented so far to UL is that the fire inside the WTC did not burn long enough at a temperature such that the steel would soften to the point that it could be responsible for the buildings collapsing. I assume the UL has some scientific expertise and knowledge on which to base this analysis. If he is not speaking on behalf of UL, I would also assume that UL would issue a statement disowning this opinion and issuing a correction. So far to my knowledge they have not done so.

Just because UL "says it" is no guarantee that they are correct in their assesment, but I do find it interesting that an outfit like UL is apparently confident enough in their opinion to publicly question the "official" explanation.

pools of molten steel were found in the sub levels of both towers, and molten steel was found at WTC 7 as well.

"As of 21 days after the attack, the fires were still burning and molten steel was still running. What concrete that wasn’t pulverized into dust will continue to be removed for weeks to come. The structural steel is being removed and shipped by barge to be recycled. All photographs shown on television, shot-on-site were preapproved by the FBI. We were shown photographs that were not released for public view."
http://www.seau.org/SEAUNews-2001-10.pdf

that would be needed to do that? You have to rip out walls and place shaped cutting charges on I beams to demo a building. If the beam is big enough you would have to pre score it with a cutting torch.

This is bullshit.

I've had the opportunity to play with explosives through a couple of jobs I had, years ago. And no, you wouldn't have to rip out walls, or pre score a beam with a cutting torch. Yes, one would have to shape a charge, but with modern plastiques, that is quite easy. Get a grip and open your eyes friend.

I spent 20 years building and maintaining the most advanced shaped charge systems in the world. I modeled these scenarios on computer systems 7 years ahead of what was on the civilian market. I know the behavior of metal under the effect of an explosive lens. I've blown up plenty of steel in real life and in a computer.

1) Steel cut with explosives stands out. It looks like it has been hit with a cutting torch. It also shows spray from the copper jacket of the charge used. It is covered with explosive residue.

2) quantity. Even a professional would require thousands of charges through the building to do that. Flying an airplane into that may fuck them up. Those charges are usually hard wired to ensure they fire in proper order. Using cell phones or any other system that does not operate at 186000 miles per second could cause the job to fail.

3) I think people would notice walls being taken down to get at support columns to place charges.

4) Modern explosives aren't modern and compounds like C4 and other "plastic" charges are nothing new. They were old school when I was a new guy.

This story is BULLSHIT and really bothers me that people are stupid enough to fall for it.

How do you get a building, designed to withstand the impact of a 707(which is statistically equivalent to the planes that hit the WTC), made out of hi grade steel, that has a melting point of over 2000 degrees Farenheit, to fall virtually straight down, not sideways as would be normal in a burning building(I was a fireman for a long while, burning buildings whose interior skeletons collapse fall to one side or the other, never straight down), from a jet fuel fire that generated at most 900 degrees Farenheit, and not only have this miracle happen once, but twice in the same day?

It is called the Big Lie friend, don't fall for it.

1) Melting is not necessary for failure. Metals soften as they reach a melting point. Once the metals soften they can not support their load and place it on another part of the structure. This structure overstresses its support.

2) Once the floors failed and collapsed the shell of the building was not able to hold its self up. The floors were not I beam supported and were not designed to hold the weight of the floors above them.

3) Jet fuel was not the only thing burning in the building.

4) Design and function are very different. I suspect 707's would have caused a similar failure.

5) The Big One. Controlled Demo takes weeks to plan. Buildings are gutted and charges placed on pre weakened sturctures. Cutting charges are designed to work on metal to metal contact. It would require thousands to ensure a clean fall. Thousands fired in sequence by a hard wired demo system.

Explosives leave fingerprints obvious to the eye.



See Below for result...Scroll down, having trouble with link.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http://www.air-and-space.com/20020624%2520China%2520Lake%2520Explosive%2520Ordnance%2520Disposal.htm&h=504&w=756&sz=56&tbnid=mEi7hCHJ0PsJ:&tbnh=93&tbnw=139&start=1&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsteel%2Bcut%2Bwith%2Bexplosive%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26safe%3Doff

1. Hi-grade structural steel doesn't even begin to soften until it reaches aprox. 1500 degrees Farenheit. Fire was never, ever in that range. This also relates to your point 3. No, jet fuel wasn't the only thing burning in there. There was paper(450-500 degrees), and also the office furnishings. Every single public building requires flame retardent fixtures inside. Things like flame retardent floor coverings, drapes, furniture, green board, etc, etc, even down to what type of wall finishing. In addition, firefighters and eyewitnesses on the scene stated that the sprinkler system was functioning well on the effected floors. To go along with that, firemen on the scene were requesting only three lines for each of the towers in order to put out the fire. I don't care if those are six inch lines, only calling for three of them says to me that they thought that the flame was easily extinquishable, and that it wasn't ravaging out of control. In addition, look at the tapes, thick black smoke is roiling out, a sure sign that the fire is being oxygen deprived. Also, if temperatures were as hot as they claim, the windows would have exploded and showered down on Manhattan. Instead, they went down with the building. There is no way in hell that these flames were ravaging the steel at the temperature or time required to soften them.

2. Actually, the floor were I-Beam supported, both horizontally by 39 inch beams, and vertically with the center core taking ALL of the gravity stress. To cause such a catastrophic collapse, you would HAVE to take out at least one section of the center core, something that couldn't be done with the time, or teperature provided on 911.

3. Addressed above

4. Doubtful friend, very doubtful. If a structure is certified to be able to withstand certain events, then such statements have to be verifiable. Besides, the WTC had to be so strong, to withstand the wind pressure if nothing else.

5. Well, gee, apparently this was weeks, at least, in the planning. And with members of the Bush family being in charge of the building, and cronies in charge of building security, they would have all the time and cover to do what they need. And you know what, we will now never see any evidence from the site. For strange as it may seem, the scene of the greatest crime in our nations' history was violated, with all of those two buildings' debris be hauled off, and then the steel sold off and recycled, all within a year of 911. With no examinations of the metal allowed. There are a few token pieces still unsmelted, those left in memorials. But of course those won't be touched either. A quick gloss over of an investigation, one that violated several SOPs for a crime scene investigation. Makes you go Hmmm.

a facility (dump) and examined. I have seen tape of the steel piles of it. And saw a metallurgist pointing to sag in a beam.

I'm not a fireman but know my way around explosives and metal.

Those buildings and the pentagon were not damaged by explosives.

Those beams were joined to the rest of the structure, a weak point.

I don't think bush was responsible the last time someone detonated a huge bomb in the basement of that building. I think they just got smarter.

http://www.geae.com/engines/marine/lm500.html

Low performance turbine exhaust at over 1000 F. Internal temps are over twice that. Guess jet fuel will reach that temp..

I seem to remember fires in Dresden creating updrafts and acting like their own blast furnaces.

You are certainly showing what little you do know. Your comment about the temperature of a turbine is irrelevant, since according to even your site(and the principles of jet engines in general), the air is superheated before it is mixed with fuel and ignited. Thus your exhaust temps above 1000. Besides, exhaust temps and the temperature of burning fuel are two different things. Yes, the engines may have well been running that hot, but the fuel, once spilled, will only burn at 800-900 F. Then again, this is all truly irrelevant, since the specs you gave stated that the exhaust temps were 1049, and as I stated before, you have to have upwards of 1500 F to soften steel. In either case, we're still nowhere near that magic number now, are we.

As far as the steel goes, the debris from the towers was almost immediately carted off to Fresh Kills, and yes, there was some perfuntory examination. You may have even seen a metallurgist pointing at a beam on TV(do you believe everything you see on TV?). But first of all, was it a steel beam, what part of of the structure was it from, where was it's position in the building itself, and how do we know it is a "sag" as opposed to stress? We don't, and we never will. Because even though it would have taken a couple of years to do the prerequisite tests that needed to be performed, the tests that are SOP at any crime scene, they NYC Port Authority started selling the metal off for scrap and shipping it away within a few months. This is not the actions of a concentious investigation, these are the actions of a cover up. There were protests at the time from both within and without the city power structure about the sloppy job of investigation being done, but it was all swept under the rug, covered by jingoistic patriotic fervor. But anyway you look at it, it was a sloppy piece of work, and any police dept that does such a poor job on a single murder, much less 911 has a lot to answer for.

You obviously don't wish to believe that portions of your government would do such a horrible crime. Many people didn't wish to believe a conspiracy killed Kennedy either, though the government was finally forced to admit that one did years afterwards. But remember this. Dick Cheney, in his PNAC document "Rebuilding Americas' Defenses. . . ", after describing their plan to go into Iraq, Iran and Syria in order to dominate the ME oil fields stated that they could accomplish none of these goals without a "Pearl Harbor type event" in order to rally the population around their plan. Funny, how the very group of people who had already laid out their plan for conquest and Pax Americana caught just the break they needed, not even a year into their administration.

I don't buy into the conspiracy bullshit. GE makes jets with much higher exhaust temps. After-burning jets produce higher temps. The energy in a jet engine comes from the air and compression.

You know what a blast furnace is obviously, I would think air movement in the fire had something to do with a collapse.

http://heimatschutz.org:16080/dresden/a_englisch2.htm

"In this firestorm they were of the order of 600, 800, or even 1000 degrees centigrade."

Is was NOT a high explosive. Any idiot would see the effect of a high explosive shaped charge or general use of large quantity of high explosive.

Now I posted pictures of what a shaped charge does to metal. It is easy to spot.

Like I said I didn't do demo. But I can tell you that timing charges to detonate and implode a building is complex and takes weeks of preparation and pre weakening of a structure. You can not do that with remote detonation, period. I can tell you what metal does when it is subjected to explosive forces, shaped charge or otherwise. You could put a piece of metal in front of a first year engineering student and ask him which one sagged because of heat and pressure and which one was subjected to an explosive and he would pick it in a second.

I don't like bush but don't buy into the PNAC, Mossad, CIA, did it theories.

What on earth does the firebombing of Dresden have to do with the WTC? Two entire different scenes, two entirely different set of circumstances, two entirely unrelated events. Your attempts at somehow linking them is a strawman at best, and ultimately futile.

And for the second time, let me explain to you that the air is superheated before being mixed with fuel and ignited. Your own source says that, as does any textbook on jet propulsion. And like I said before, it doesn't really matter either way SINCE IN NEITHER CIRCUMSTANCE DOES IT EVEN BEGIN TO APPROACH THE TEMPERATURE AT WHICH STRUCTURAL STEEL SOFTENS!

You don't buy into conspiracies, that's fine, like I said many people didn't buy into the JFK conspiracy. That still didn't mean that one didn't happen. If this is what gets you to sleep at night, that's fine. But please friend, if you're going to try and disprove something, don't go flying into the face of facts and common sense.

A standard structure fire grows and its temp can increase WAY beyond the burn temp of spilled JP5.

Blast furnace created by chimney effect. The fire in the building destroyed it.

Got a better idea? Please don't say explosives!

Such as the massive black smoke roiling out of the building, sure signs of an O2 deprived fire. Hard for such a fire to spread and get hotter. Or the fact that there were massive quantities of flame retardant material, again, hard for a fire to spread and get hotter. Or that the water sprinkler system was in full action, again, hard making it harder for a fire to grow and burn hotter. Or that the firemen on the scene were calling for only three lines, thus indicative of a relatively weak and altogether completely controlable fire. Please explain how these discrepancies fit into your theory.

I have a position. No explosives were used in the Twin Towers. Not plausible.

My theory is the generally accepted account. Jets flew into the building spreading massive amounts of jet fuel blasting off fire retardant and causing a large fire.

Was the sprinkler system damaged by the commercial airliner smashing into the building at full power?

Fit into your theory? You keep dodging this question, why? Do such loose ends bother you? Well, they should. Can a plane flying into a building account for all of this? Somehow I doubt it.

And yes, per witnesses statements, and the recording of firement on the scene. It is on tape, the fire was being suppressed and was completely controllable. Yet we're supposed to believe that this controllable fire that was already being automatically suppressed was somehow responsible for softening steel and collapsing both towers. C'mon friend, pull my other leg while your at it.

is on you. The generally accepted cause is fire weakened floor structures and their attachment points, causing a pancake and general structural failure.

Now here is some video of demo and implosion. Note structures are gutted. This pre weakens them allowing for a controlled fall.
http://acw.loudeye.com/protec/protec_022300.ram

You are swimming upstream here what is your theory?

So you resort to trying to shift the onus to me. LOL, transparent and funny, and also quite telling. Well, that's how it happens friend, little doubts begin to gnaw at you, discrepencies become more telling, and then you start to do your own research, and question the conventional wisdom.

I wish you luck on your journey, perhaps we'll speak later. For now I think my job is done. Good luck!

nice work. :thumbsup:

Where did you get that information? The planes that hit those buildings were more than 60% more mass than a 707. It also carries twice the fuel of the 707.

60% and 100% are almost NEVER going to be a statistically insignificant change?

What expert told you those differences were statistically insignificant?
The Professor

was not the primary cause of the collapse. Had the plane hit with no fuel on board the buildings would not have failed.
It started the fire that caused the failure. A 767 is 100k lbs heavier than a 707. Not insignifigant at all. Sorry if I misspoke.

EDIT: Figured out you weren't talking to me. Still getting used to the format. Sorry.

I'm just stunned that anybody would have information suggesting that the difference in mass between a 767 and 707 would be statistically insignificant. I know more than a little about stats. I see no possibility that the other poster's statement is true.
The Professor

Instead go check the spec links from Boeing that I posted downthread. It helps to know your shit before you start talking out your ass.

site for max takeoff weight vs 707 & 767. The biggest difference in any model was 100k pounds. 707 v 767 400 I also said mass was a non issue.

Calm down sparky, no need to get nasty.

And start checking on real specs, like the ones the WTC was designed to withstand, and the actual model of planes that flew into them. Picking two random models isn't scientific. Work with facts, not fantasy bub.

I called out the use of explosives. Said mass was moot. Design and operation, very different.

Let me be blunt. Those buildings were not destroyed with a demo charges. Sorry no way.

You want to speculate on why the fundies did it that would be more productive.

I was in, out and all about those buildings, from the basement to the
top. There was a rather heavy coverup, as the damage was MUCH worse
than publically reported, as it was percieved at the time, that
telling the truth, that the structure almost came down, would have
been a bit spooky and bad for business. So they secretely laboured
away to try and fix the damage done.

I can't help but suspect that this work was never quite as good as
the original structure, and that we must consider the likelihood that
the 93 attacks did leave permanent damage that weakened the structure
to its performance specifications. I remember noticing as well,
as anyone who parked down in those lots would, that there were only
a few obviously structural columns.

A mate of mine, suggested that the 93 attack was sloppy, and they
should have driven in a specially designed shape charge, back it
up against a column and leterrrip at the bottom basement. There
was as well, a tremendous "wind" force constantly fatiguing those
structures. Even on a clear day, the pure surface area, picked up
quite a twist/bend force. They say the 2 towers used to bend back
and forth +/- 20 feet at the top. If metal was heated, then this
flex would break down entirely.

You've convinced me that there were no demo charges pre-set, and
i genuinely think that the failure was a contribution of the 93
attacks that everyone presumes were compleltely healed. If a
demo was involved, there was no need to go further than the sub
basement, taking out one of the primary 4 supports of the core.

But it explains nothing about the other. Sorry friend, it doesn't fly with me.

I prefer the british term "mate" if you must ... sorry, mate. It
is less confronting, as clearly you're not using it to mean
"friend",
and i realize that i've chimed in in the middle of a 2000 degree
flame fest that has melted the WTC.

The south tower (WTC 2) is the issue, yes, the one that collapsed
first. There did seem to be a sandwitch effect, as more and more
slices of bread compressed on the top, momentum. It has been so
long since i've seen a video, that i can't recall the actual
starting frames of the first collapse, as these would be your
proof of explosives or whatnot, yes?

Would not a shape charge in the basement not remove the elisticity
of the central core and set the whole thing up to go down? Must
the explosives be at 2000 points like our resident nuclear weapons
designer who has not done "demo" suggests... perhaps one bigg'un
at the basement was all that was needed. That was a point i
suggested as well.

That 220 2 acre floors filled with paper produced lots of paper
flying about manhattan is no suprise. Heck, if i took all the paper
in my house and threw it on a fire outside, a good bit of it would
blow away and wind up in the neighbor's yard looking unburned as
well.

The video footage must prove your point. In this game of poker, it
is incumbent upon you to show where the charges were in the building
and to show the blast. I've seen lotsa videos of controlled demo's
and there is always that telltale blast signature. Where is it?

And it shows the poofs of smoke running up and down the building, and it certainly looks like charges going off to me. It has been posted to DU before, and is somewhere in the archives, or perhaps in the 911 forum.

Sorry about the friend, it's just my way of being nice. If it offends, it is unintentional.

If you check the specs for the two, a fully fueled 707 320B weighs fifteen percent less than a Boeing 767 200ER. Since none of these flights were going overseas, we know that they wouldn't have been fully fueled, hence they would weigh considerably less. Check for yourself: <http://www.boeing.com/commercial/707family/product.html>
<http://www.boeing.com/commercial/767family/pf/pf_200prod.html>

So yes, the differences WERE statistacly insignigicant. Go check your specs before you jump down my throat next time, OK.

I don't know about the rest of your post, but I do know that gravity pulls things downwards, not sideways.

Take a candle and apply a flame to the side of it. Watch it collapse over towards the side from which the flame is being applied. This is essentially what the official explanation is stating, that the fire burned on one side of the central, weight bearing core, softening the steel there to the point where it "slumped" and collapsed, however it collapsed straight down instead of to the side.

Ask yourself this, you have two towers, hit in two different areas, two different fire scenarios. How come they both collapsed in exactly the same way, straight down? The odds of one doing that are fairly large, the odds of both doing that are getting into impossibility territory. Yet we're supposed to believe this highly implausible scenario? Sorry friend, I don't buy it.

A candle is made of solid wax. The towers were made of a skeleton structure that was 99% empty space. The two don't behave the same.

The central core of the structure is what they are saying softened and slumped. And that central core is solid structural steel.

The inner core of the WTC buildings were made of steel beams and girders that housed elevators. It was not "solid" by any means.

"he steel used in the core column was the strongest steel in the world. A very dense material, it weighed 3,080 pounds per linear foot."
http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/news/news_articles/wtc.html

WTC7 collapsed straight down too.

In the OKC blast there definately was a bomb and it was outside the building, yet the building pancaked into its own foot print. That's what big buildings do when they collapse. They go straight down. They just don't fall over like a tree. They only look solid. In reality they are like so many stacked sticks. Remove the support and they always go straight down, NEVER sideways.

...if the beams were, in fact, softened by the jet fuel fire, wouldn't the tops of the towers have buckled to one side or another, and possibly slid off center and/or tumbled off, rather than collapsed straight down, one floor atop the other?

but the simple answer is the most obvious one.

Gravity.

Remember, Marvin Bush, Dubya's brother was directly involved with security in the WTC and United Airlines. They had plenty of time and opportunity.

What version of the event indicates the presence of a pressure wave of sufficient velocity to indicate high explosive detonation? Answer: None.

You're saying: We have an explosion with sufficient force to destroy a millions of tons building and there is no overpressure wave. So, your background on high explosives should be able to address the next question.

Question:
What kind of explosive would do that?

Answer: None. I'm sure your expertise would inform you of that fact.

There is either overpressure or there isn't. Any HX creates an overpressure wave. If there is no overpressure wave, there is no high explosive.

Once again, your expertise should inform you of the fact that an overpressure wave, even if subsonic (which is rare in true high explosives, but then you knew that), would be visible just from the light scattering of the MUCH higher air density, but even more so from the entrained ejectate. That's why i can only assume that you have video evidence of your inarguable position. Because such a position would be CLEARLY defensible from visual observation. Right?

So, i would surmise that NOT every intelligent person considers that conclusion without doubt. I'm pretty sharp. I'm pretty educated. And i've yet to see evidence that makes a secondary explosion an irrefutable fact. You should either rethink that statement or show the evidence. You can't have it both ways.
The Professor

Cant tell who you are responding to. If not me, excuse error.

"What version of the event indicates the presence of a pressure wave of sufficient velocity to indicate high explosive detonation? Answer: None."

None, correct.

You're saying: We have an explosion with sufficient force to destroy a millions of tons building and there is no overpressure wave. So, your background on high explosives should be able to address the next question.

"Question:
What kind of explosive would do that?"

I didn't work in demo but I assume a coper jacketed shaped charge. Lots of them, hundreds if not thousands of pounds, placed by a crew of experts. Enough of any explosive would do the job but would be visible to the naked eye. A mass of smoke and material moving at super high speed would show up. Of course there would be a wave of compressed air.


Answer: None. I'm sure your expertise would inform you of that fact.

"There is either overpressure or there isn't. Any HX creates an overpressure wave. If there is no overpressure wave, there is no high explosive."

In effect yes. Waves can cancel each other but this is never seen in demo work, TMK. Demo charges create overpressure

"Once again, your expertise should inform you of the fact that an overpressure wave, even if subsonic (which is rare in true high explosives, but then you knew that), would be visible just from the light scattering of the MUCH higher air density, but even more so from the entrained ejectate. That's why i can only assume that you have video evidence of your inarguable position. Because such a position would be CLEARLY defensible from visual observation. Right?"

Black powder is not HX but is subject to exothermic disintegration, deflagration. Subsonic. Unsuitable for blasting. There is no commercial or military explosive that does not create a hypersonic wave and massive overpressure.

"So, i would surmise that NOT every intelligent person considers that conclusion without doubt. I'm pretty sharp. I'm pretty educated. And I've yet to see evidence that makes a secondary explosion an irrefutable fact. You should either rethink that statement or show the evidence. You can't have it both ways.
The Professor"

I think I may be responding to the wrong person. A demo charge would be a primary charge and diesel fuel in the basement would be a secondary reaction. I am open minded if there were persuasive evidence that there was an explosion I would be very interested but a mass detonation of hx would cause clear signs. Something that an untrained eye would see.

You do make valid points.

No pun intended. Finally! Some factual data dispelling this stupid myth. What's that smell? Oh, I know--it's Rome burning!

I'm a glass blower and use steel in some of my artworks, as I work with Borosilicate I can say that steel melts at 2800F degrees, the point where the botosilicate (Pyrex) I work with is boiling. (The cone for Borosilicate is 06 and slump/fuses at 1803F/984C.)

The story, as far as I can tell, is absolutely correct.

PS - I use Stainless Steel and not high grade which has a higher melting point to my understanding.

At room temperature.

Being a skeptic of the official story, I also agree that a distinction should be made between increased malleability (softening) and an actual state change from solid to liquid (melting.)

The UL letter implies that the steel should not have softened to any great degree at temperatures below 2000 degrees, but it would be interesting to see what evidence that is based on. Knowing little about the performance of steel at high temperatures, I cannot speculate.

However, I think the main point of this letter is crucial - if the World Trade Center collapsed because of heat from a jet fuel fire, that means that it did not perform to the safety standards that it is supposed to. Since there are literally hundreds of large buildings built with that same type of steel, all of which are currently assumed to be safe in high-temperature fire conditions, either A) a major investigation of the true safety situation in those buildings is in order or B) the official WTC collapse story doess not hold up.

anyone with a modicum of common sense knows that the "official" story of how the WTC buildings collapsed is just bullshit . . . the laws of physics say it just can't be, and finally we have a respected source agreeing that it just can't be . . . they'll try to bury this, of course, but UL is universally known and respected, so it's not going to be easy to debunk this . . . maybe the truth will finally come out after all . . .

So what DID happen? Are you telling me that bush had explosives
planted in the elevator shafts? (not "YOU!" just rhetorically)
It seemed like, the top floors started sandwiching down and that
the weight was heavier and heavier as the packed lot gained inertia.

I haven't seen a video or photo in ages, i can't remember where the
actual collapse began.

Yes, explosives were used. The concrete turned into dust! The steel was broken into pieces. None of this would happen without explosives. This scam was carefully planned.

and their use in demo.

I didn't do demo but know explosives. You don't just makes things go boom to get a result like that. Sorry, I call bullshit.

http://www.controlled-demolition.co.uk/web/explosive_template/explosive.asp?Content=../../content_library/ex_case_studies.asp~high

In the months prior to blow down day up to 40 Controlled Demolition Group staff soft stripped and pre-weakened the buildings, removing hazardous asbestos and asbestos contaminated artex using revolutionary safety techniques developed by the company.

thanks for the link, JC

n/t

security--- Marvin Bush, right? And LOTS of elevator ..full building shaft access,, just after his take-over and prior to the attack.

Why am I not surprised?

Is that there is no way that fire could have been burning at 2000 degrees. Jet fuel, which is essentially high grade kerosene, burns at aprox 800-900 degrees farenheit. In addition, all public buildings such as the WTC are required to make extensive use of flame retardant materials in their floor coverings, furniture, drapes and other accoutrements. This slows down the fire, and causes it to burn cooler. In addition, the tapes from the firefighters inside the WTC, and the accounts of eyewitnesses state that the sprinkler system was working well at the time, and on the effected floors. Thus, you've got robust fire suppression going on. So robust that the firefighters who were on the scene, in the towers, were calling for only three lines in order to extinquish the fire. I don't care if your calling for three six inch lines, that still means the fire is quite controlable.

This is have to uncovered like the Kennedy assasination was, and is being uncovered, through drips and drops, over a long period of time. But sooner or later, the government is going to be forced to acknowledge the facts. Too bad it will be too late to bring those responsible to justice.

Motive aside, The explosive expert brings up the question of opportunity to place the explosive charges.

About 3 weeks prior to 9-11 there was major elevator maintenence closure of the WTC towers on a Sunday. I would only differ with the explosive expert that hundreds, not thousands, would be required to do the job. Probably as few as 64.

Regarding whether one should believe their lying eyes or official Government animations for the cause of all 3 buildings collapsing, I believe my eyes.

I can see charges/small explosions going off immediately before the collapse of the 2nd tower on at least 3 different levels, not all at once but one level after another.

http://www.plaguepuppy.net/public_html/collapse%20update/wtc-1_jets.mpg

I'm not really a partisan on this issue but I am interested in the truth
and the official story smells funny. In this video you can see
jets of smoke and fire coming out in regular intervals slightly below the collapse point. Interpret it for yourselves.

The resolution on that video is so low I can't see anything like you describe. The visible part of tower is about 1 square cm in size - the rest is obscured by a damn TV 'bug'. My interpretation is that you can't tell anything off of this clip.

They could also be the result of pressure increase by the layers moving down.

--IMM

I was walking my dog. I felt tremors prior to the collapse and saw a subsequent mushroom cloud. My immediate thought was "Oh My God! Now They're Bombing Us!"

The ensuing debris which covered my apartment was very fine dust consistent to exploded material.

The initial reports on released tapes from Fireman on the scene in the first tower do not report any fire. Are we to believe this massive fireball erupted after impact?

If it was fire, why did I find no burnt paper. My neighborhood was blanketed with office paper after the collapse. No sheet of paper was singed or burned. I still have pieces of paper from the Towers from that day. Every piece is perforated with tiny holes. I saw no evidence of a fire.

My question: If it wasn't explosives and if the airplane fuel had not melted the inner steel support system, which no one expected, what would have been done to the damaged buildings?

Would the damaged towers been allowed to remain standing?

What would have prevented the damaged towers from falling to either side?

Had the airplane fuel not melted the steel support system which no one anticipated, how would the damaged towers been brought down? What would have been the means of bringing down the damaged buildings?

When would the damaged towers have been brought down?

Finally, Why has television stopped broadcasting television shows, documenting the razing of buildings with explosives? Prior to 9/11, the History Channel or TLC would constantly show footage of buildings being demolished by explosives i.e. the razing of old Vegas casinos. They don't show footage of those type of demolitions any more. Why is that? Has public taste changed? Or they don't won't viewers noting the similarities between the collapse of the Towers and these explosive razed buildings?

I worked with the most sophisticated explosive modeling systems in the world. I have seen first hand how charges behave. My work wasn't demo, but the theory is similar.

A shaped charge is jacketed with metal, usually copper. This material becomes a liquid cutting torch and slices through metal. It leaves a clearly definable trace of copper and whatever compound was used for the primary charge. I posted pictures upstream of a cut steel I beam.

The real problem is that you would have to place thousands of charges on bare metal and then hard wire them to fire in the proper sequence. This was my specialty, sequence. Using cell phones or radio signals would introduce latency that would prevent the explosives from detonating in proper sequence. Leaving armed charges with a radio detonator in an office building in Manhattan would be very risky. Any wrong signal (cell, wireless, etc) and the detonator could fire. Also flying a jet into the towers would destroy the charges and or their firing mechanism.

The problem of latency with remote control is essentially the same as with wires: it isn't really a problem as long as you can control latency. And you can control it in both cases. It is not so that latency with radio control would be unpredictable. Equipment and distance cause a known latency and the latency for each charge can be controlled by introducing delays in the firing signal, just as one would do with wired explosives.

Your cellphone won't go off because of a "wrong signal" - radio electronics can be made so that signal detection is very selective, not just in frequency but also wrt to the specific signature of the triggering command. "Wrong signals" are a know problem in radio technology for which exist solutions that are applied on a routine basis.
For added security detonation could be a two-step process: first remotely arm the detonation mechanism - this could include a unique code (like a pin-code or password), then send the actual detonation signal. This may sound complicated but it is in fact fairly trivial.

That leaves the issue of placing the charges. This is not trivial but i'd think that the fact the buildings were pretty much under control of the people who benefit from their destruction would make it feasable.


"keep in mind WHO ran the WTC

security--- Marvin Bush, right? And LOTS of elevator ..full building shaft access,, just after his take-over and prior to the attack." - oldlady

I spent 20 years on high speed switching for explosives. There is NO WAY to time an implosion with radio controlled charges. The potential for failure is to great. Even with specialized gear and software using cell or other means of communication, the potential for failure is massive.

Like I said, I didn't do demo but I assume we are talking abut fractions of a second time intervals on thousands of charges. This is not feasible with anything other than hard wire.

Someone would notice if the building was being prepped for demo. Someone would notice the EFFECT of the demo on the raw material.
The Demo charges would be upset by some ISLAMIC Extremest from SA flying into the building in the wrong spot.
The plan to use aircraft as weapons was discussed by ISLAMIC extremists in SE Asia a decade ago.

Sorry I don't buy this bullshit.

> Like I said, I didn't do demo but I assume we are talking abut fractions of a second time intervals on thousands of charges. This is not feasible with anything other than hard wire.

I didn't do any explosives (though i know some of the basics) but i do know electronics, including radio technology.

As you probably know E/M waves (radio) travels at the speed of light; 300,000km/sec or 1/300,000 of a second for 1 km, that's 3.3 thousandth-of-a-thousandth of a second.
From demo's i have seen it seems delays are in the order of one-tenth of a second, maybe one-hundredth of a second in some cases. I can't imagine there'd be a point in using intervals in the order of microseconds for demolition.
So detonation intervals are several orders of magnitude longer then travel delays of radio signals over distances up to a few km. Travel delay of the signal is essentially a non-issue, even local bouncing of the signal would cause no problem. There'd be latency in the order of milliseconds inside the equipment but that's a known fixed latency that can easily be taken into account.
I don't see why you could not have practically perfect control over the delay times needed for detonation intervals when using wireless control.

> Someone would notice if the building was being prepped for demo.

Some technicians going into the maintenance shafts, maybe placing equipment to measure mechanical stresses in the building. All official according to schedule, so security isn't alarmed. The owner knows, he's in on it.

> Someone would notice the EFFECT of the demo on the raw material.

There'd be little effect during the explosion if you can call it that. It "cuts" through the material, right? it won't be silent but there's a lot of noise anyway. It certainly isn't the force of the explosion that breaks the beams; it's the cutting action of the hot copper. On this forum there has been mention of a company that specializes in such charges that actually are relatively quite, it's what they pride themselves on. I guess it'd be mainly a matter of slowing down the explosion/burning to reduce the noise, and that it can be slowed so that it doesn't actually do much of a "bang".
More then a few videos of the collapse show *something* that looks a lot like puffs of dust and debris caused by explosions.

Then there'd be an effect in the form of traces of the burning as you described previously. There has been very little forensic investigation of the rubble, none official that i know of and any investigation was very brief because the steel rubble was rather quickly sold and shipped to several 3rd world nations. Of course reports of non-official investigations are easy to keep out of the media. It's even easy to keep parts of official reports out of the news, such as the FEMA finding that they can not plausibly explain what caused WTC7 to collapse (see FEMA website).

> The Demo charges would be upset by some ISLAMIC Extremest from SA flying into the building in the wrong spot.

Yes, but not so that they'd go off and you'd still have plenty of charges left to bring the building down. The spot that got hit by the plane is already damaged so that doesn't have to be a problem in bringing down the building. You can take the problem of upset charges into account in the configuration of the charges and the time between the planes hitting and the collapse would be plenty of time to reconfigure the sequence and intervals of detonations if needed. First pulverize the part above where the plane hit, then the rest. Primarily the central core of the building had to be cut into pieces.

> The plan to use aircraft as weapons was discussed by ISLAMIC extremists in SE Asia a decade ago.

Which BUSH and the PNAC gang knew full well, but publicly denied knowing. It was their defense for not doing anything to prevent it.
They LIED OUTRIGHT about that beyond any shadow of a doubt.

> Sorry I don't buy this bullshit.

I have no reason whatsoever to believe anything the Bush gang says.
For me peace is still peace and war is war. Peace through war is an illusion that helps keep us under control and lines the pockets of the already filthy rich global power mongering elites. In reality it's not peace, just war and a population living in "entangled in webs of endless deceit".

Morality is a hindrance if you are convinced the people need to be deceived in order to keep them in line (L Strauss, Neo-cons, Reaganites and company).
They are capable of doing anything they think they can get away with.

> Like I said, I didn't do demo but I assume we are talking abut fractions of a second time intervals on thousands of charges. This is not feasible with anything other than hard wire.

I didn't do any explosives (though i know some of the basics) but i do know electronics, including radio technology.

As you probably know E/M waves (radio) travels at the speed of light; 300,000km/sec or 1/300,000 of a second for 1 km, that's 3.3 thousandth-of-a-thousandth of a second.
From demo's i have seen it seems delays are in the order of one-tenth of a second, maybe one-hundredth of a second in some cases. I can't imagine there'd be a point in using intervals in the order of microseconds for demolition.
So detonation intervals are several orders of magnitude longer then travel delays of radio signals over distances up to a few km. Travel delay of the signal is essentially a non-issue, even local bouncing of the signal would cause no problem. There'd be latency in the order of milliseconds inside the equipment but that's a known fixed latency that can easily be taken into account.
I don't see why you could not have practically perfect control over the delay times needed for detonation intervals when using wireless control.

* No demo company in the world uses any system based on radio. An electrical fired cap is susceptible to interference and detonation from things like radios and flo lights. They all use hard wire because it is not AS susceptible to interference and detonation. Software would have to be written to control the sequence. Use a cell phone? ever get an echo that is a problem for controlled explosions. If you are blowing up a mine or single charge, non issue. Blowing hundreds in sequence and one misfires you have a problem. The systems I worked with were allowed zero tolerance for failure. A single charge detonating out of sequence causes the system to fail. Needless to say it was hardwired.

> Someone would notice if the building was being prepped for demo.

Some technicians going into the maintenance shafts, maybe placing equipment to measure mechanical stresses in the building. All official according to schedule, so security isn't alarmed. The owner knows, he's in on it.

* To implode a building requires weakening it and placing cutting charges on beams pre scored to allow the SC to work properly. Even if done properly, a bunch of ISLAMIC fundies flying jets into it would damage the charges.

> Someone would notice the EFFECT of the demo on the raw material.

There'd be little effect during the explosion if you can call it that. It "cuts" through the material, right? it won't be silent but there's a lot of noise anyway. It certainly isn't the force of the explosion that breaks the beams; it's the cutting action of the hot copper. On this forum there has been mention of a company that specializes in such charges that actually are relatively quite, it's what they pride themselves on. I guess it'd be mainly a matter of slowing down the explosion/burning to reduce the noise, and that it can be slowed so that it doesn't actually do much of a "bang".
More then a few videos of the collapse show *something* that looks a lot like puffs of dust and debris caused by explosions.

Then there'd be an effect in the form of traces of the burning as you described previously. There has been very little forensic investigation of the rubble, none official that i know of and any investigation was very brief because the steel rubble was rather quickly sold and shipped to several 3rd world nations. Of course reports of non-official investigations are easy to keep out of the media. It's even easy to keep parts of official reports out of the news, such as the FEMA finding that they can not plausibly explain what caused WTC7 to collapse (see FEMA website).

* Anyone with a high school education would see a copper splattered beam that looks like it had been cut with a torch as out of place. Sorry the guys cleaning up the site would see this.

> The Demo charges would be upset by some ISLAMIC Extremest from SA flying into the building in the wrong spot.

Yes, but not so that they'd go off and you'd still have plenty of charges left to bring the building down. The spot that got hit by the plane is already damaged so that doesn't have to be a problem in bringing down the building. You can take the problem of upset charges into account in the configuration of the charges and the time between the planes hitting and the collapse would be plenty of time to reconfigure the sequence and intervals of detonations if needed. First pulverize the part above where the plane hit, then the rest. Primarily the central core of the building had to be cut into pieces.


*Never did demo but my understanding is that charge sequence is critical.

> The plan to use aircraft as weapons was discussed by ISLAMIC extremists in SE Asia a decade ago.

Which BUSH and the PNAC gang knew full well, but publicly denied knowing. It was their defense for not doing anything to prevent it.
They LIED OUTRIGHT about that beyond any shadow of a doubt.

> Sorry I don't buy this bullshit.

I have no reason whatsoever to believe anything the Bush gang says.
For me peace is still peace and war is war. Peace through war is an illusion that helps keep us under control and lines the pockets of the already filthy rich global power mongering elites. In reality it's not peace, just war and a population living in "entangled in webs of endless deceit".

Morality is a hindrance if you are convinced the people need to be deceived in order to keep them in line (L Strauss, Neo-cons, Reaganites and company).
They are capable of doing anything they think they can get away with.


* I don't like them but the concept that they orchestrated 9/11 is pretty damn dumb in my book.

Thanks for contributing something authentic to the discussion.;-)

The official bullshit about a kerosene and and office supplies fire causing steal to fail and the buildings to be blown to smithereens by nothing else...well I think it's just a cover for something else you experienced some of. The tremors prior to the collapse (which were detected by Earthquake-measuring equipment miles away), were from explosives going off deep in the sub-basement (there are witnesses to this), which were probably some extremely hot explosive such as Thermite, or maybe even one Bush's charming little "mico-nukes". This would have melted the central cores running up the building...and cause some of the phenomana which are being bogusly "explained" as the result of a kerosene and office supplies fire.

Micro nukes, right. I'm sure no one would notice the double flash and gamma spike. Why not space men with green rays.

Thermite is aluminum and another metal that "burn". It leaves a big fat blob when done burning, it is subject to gravity. Not an explosive.

Nukes, Jesus tap dancing Christ.

but a very thorough understanding of nuclear weapons and explosives.

"At this point I stopped filming, and went back inside my
apartment.

Upsetting enough, but then:

4) As more and more and more and more and more emergency vehicles
descended on the World Trade Center, I hear a second explosion in
WTC 2, then a loud, low frequency rumble that precipitates the
unthinkable -- a collapse of all the floors above the point of
explosion. First the top surface, containing the helipad, tips
sideways in full view. Then the upper floors fall straight down in
a demolition-style implosion, taking all lower floors with it, even
those below the point of the explosion. A dense, thick dust cloud
rises up in its place, which rapidly pours through the warren of
streets that cross lower Manhattan...........

Upsetting enough, but then:

6) I decide it's time to get my daughter, who was taken by the
parents of a friend of hers to a small office building, six blocks
farter from the WTC than my apartment. As I dress for survival:
boots, flashlight, wet towels, swimming goggles, bicycle helmet,
gloves, I hear another explosion followed by a now all-too familiar
rumble that signaled the collapse of WTC 1, the first of the two
towers to have been hit. I saw the iconic antenna on this building
descend straight down in an implosion twinning the first.

This dust cloud was darker, thicker and faster-moving than the
first. When this round of dust reached my apartment, fifteen seconds after collapse, the sky turned dark as night, with visibility of no more than about a centimeter.

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

Vallebuona: . And so I walked up and I started to say something to him, they’re going to need everybody, we’ll just start from here. So I went back. The chief started putting his gear on. I went to grab my gear and stuff and I heard boom, a loud boom, I thought. I looked up, it was a beautiful sunny day, and I heard that crescendo sound.
But something scared me. It sounded like – it must have been all the aluminum on the side, like just shhh, shhh, shhh. I looked up and it looked like a fountain, like a firework. It was the south tower collapsing. I looked up. I said, oh, my God. I tell you I thought I was back in the firehouse asleep. I said this can’t be real.
------------

I wanted to be closer. At the corner of Liberty and Broadway, I angled my way through a large, packed crowd to get the best view. We talked about people jumping. The police stood behind the yellow tape. Minutes later, there was a boom. I thought it was a bomb, so I crouched, but people ran, so I ran. I couldn't see anything. I don't know how far I ran. Couldn't see where I was running. Didn't know if I was in a street or next to a building. Didn't know what street I was on. No one could talk because the dust filled our throats. After about 10 steps I tripped over a pile of people and then people tripped on me. I lay there. The only sound was the falling of dust and debris. No one moved under me.
-------------------------
living 3 blocks from the WTC, as I do, I was astonished by the loud proximity of the first crash, and went down to the street in time to see the second fireball plane exploding. I went up to get ready to get out, and the worst sound effect of all, a huge explosion approaching my house, shaking like an earthquake on a train toward me, and then a black cloud of dust blocked all the sunlight, I was plunged into the nuclear winter of burning soot and ash and toxic fumes, and lost sight of everything
------------------
then came upon a guy with a telescope aimed at one of the towers. The picture I will never forget. At about the 60-70th floors, people were hanging out windows trying to get air. Literally holding onto the side of the building waving a T-shirt to try to get someone's attention. I couldn't watch any longer. I kept walking, and about 10 minutes later I was about a half mile away and was talking with someone and we heard this sound that can only be described as a "thundering crack." That is the best I can do. I then saw what I thought was just a chunk of the WTC but it was actually the whole tower. I said it wasn't ... I couldn't believe it ...
------------------
Many people were busy on cell phones, trying to reach friends and relatives they knew in the buildings or to alert their own loved ones that they were all right. But the circuits overloaded. Fear mounted. And then it got even worse. Police officers warned people in the vicinity to move north, that the buildings could fall, but most people found that unthinkable. They stayed put or gravitated closer.
Abruptly, there was an ear-splitting noise. The south tower shook, seemed to list in one direction and them began to come down, imploding upon itself. "It looked like a demolition," said Andy Pollock. "It started exploding," said Ross Milanytch, 57, who works at nearby Chase Manhattan Bank. "It was about the 70th floor. And each second another floor exploded out for about eight floors, before the cloud obscured it all."
-------------------
We saw Special Operations Battalion Chief John Pailillo, Deputy Chief Galvin and 22 Truck. We headed right past them. As soon as 22 Truck came through the doors, we went into the lobby of the Marriott and then walked in maybe 50, 100 feet and all of a sudden, we heard an explosion. We stopped dead in our tracks and Brian goes, ooh, that doesn’t sound good. And there was a second of nothing. Then you felt a heavy vibration like an earthquake, then you start hearing the pancaking collapse.
Brian said it’s coming down, and we all just scattered…………………….
….Then we heard the explosion of the second one, which was the same sound I heard when I was down in the lobby. I remember turning around and looking at the north bridge. I remember looking over my shoulder and going oh, and I saw you’re on your own. The guys dropped me, and I don’t blame them, you had to run for your life
-------------
About 8:45 AM what seems like forever ago, last Tuesday, I was getting ready to go over to my office from my apartment, which as many of you know, is diagonally opposite the World Trade Towers by about ½ block to the southwest………

I put on the TV and the FBI was stating that they were NOT declaring this as a terrorist attack, when the second plane hit. Frank Samaritano and I were commenting how tough these two buildings were (I believe the actual statement was something like "strong as a brick shithouse").

Another friend, Mike Benjamin, called to tell me that his brother Arthur had made it out of the building, when I started hearing a series of bangs, one right after another. I sounded like those building demolition shows on TV, when simultaneous charges are detonated and set off one by one.

I heard people in the street screaming (remember, I am on the 22nd floor) and all of the sudden, I saw a huge tidal wave of thick, black dirt cloud flying past my apartment at a very rapid pace. I felt like I would drown, and in fact, the dirt came into my apartment to such a strong degree, that it was like being in a cave, absolutely no light whatsoever.
-----------------
tried going to my office, across the street at 20 Vesey Street, but upon arriving I was told that the building was being evacuated. Standing on Vesey Street, near my building, I tried calling my wife again, but could not get a connection. I kept redialing until I heard a loud rumble and looked up at the south tower. As I watched, the top half of the tower broke off and fell towards the west. It was inconceivable that the tower fell. After the tower fell, there was this huge cloud of smoke, ash, debris, etc. coming right toward me."
--------------
I had been out of the building for only 15 minutes. We were about 5 or 6 blocks from the WTC when I heard some explosions and turned to look up at where they had come from. What I saw was surreal.The antenna and the rest of the roof atop the building I had just left, leaned to one side and fell in on itself. The rest of the floors below collapsed under the weight and an enormous cloud of dust and debris was expanding outward from the Trade Center. Everyone turned and hauled ass."
---------------------

I've always heard the the steel wouldn't melt until about 2400 degrees F. My understanding is that engineers have said that the steel was weakened by the heat, and gave way.

The disintigration of the whole structure to a fine powder within seconds. It doesn't supply anywhere near enough energy to blow the building to smithereens like that.

See the discussion at
http://911research.wtc7.net/index.html
http://physics911.org
http://www.serendipity.li/
http://home.comcast.net/~jeffrey.king2/wsb/html/view.cgi-home.html-.html :nopity:

Can't quite remember the name of it. Anywho, it says if you drop thousands of tons of concrete and steel from over a hundred stories, it really blows the concrete to smithereens.

I agree with what weird posted.

I muster missed that one in grammer school, but I did hear me somewhere that the Bush Evil Crime Family don't care much for science, either.

:eyes:

In addition to the steel being weakened by the heat, there were several missing and damaged beams, and the insulating material on the beams was knocked away by the impact.

That still doesn't get you to the mushroom-cloud exlosion that blew most of the matter in those buildings to smithereens with seconds.

Look at some pictures of what DID really happen:
http://plaguepuppy.net/public_html/collapse%20update/

Every citizen who stands up and uses whatever expertise they've got to discredit The Great 9/11 Propaganda Myth, is a true HERO FOR OUR TIMES. It should be clear to everyone now that the official story is a lie, and we can't make any progress in this country until we expose that lie, and face the terrible truth about what treacherous wealthy and powerful Americans have really done to us. THERE'S NO WAY FORWARD WITHOUT TRUTH AND JUSTICE FOR 9/11! :yourock:

All these explosive experts, glass blowers and physic ts who weren't there and didn't experience the Attack know it all!

Right now, I am looking at a sheet of Fleet stationary entitled Loan Rollforward-Owned. One of the thousands of pieces of office papers which covered Downtown Manhattan after the Towers fell. It is not burnt, singed, or charred. I do not recall any piece of paper that looked as though it had been through the massive fires that supposedly took down three skyscrapers.

This piece of Fleet stationary is stained grey-brown color and does have tiny holes in it.

Why didn't First Responders to the site of impact see a fire?

If this fire hadn't taken down the Towers, would the damaged structures still be standing three years later?

If not, how would they have removed these damaged and dangerous structures?

I saw plenty of burned paper. I visited our NY office and people I had worked with had burned paper. They wanted to give it back. It was very sad. I attended funerals for people I worked with for many years.

I SAW a giant burning fire when the jets hit and continuous smoke. It was not coming from smoke generating machines or smoke bombs. It came from burning jet fuel.

People don't jump out of windows to escape nothing. Think on this one. Why jump and die if there is no fire?

No your loaded question to get someone to say they would use demo to implode the buildings. Who knows. But to prepare for explosive demolition takes weeks, months on a huge structure.

Maybe your paper was moved by the wind and blew out of the giant hole in the building where a jet hit it.

They had all the time they needed...

I believe his job description was "Cheif of Security for the WTC".
Exactly what was he doing, then?

If the jet fuel fire had not occurred, would the damaged structures still be standing yet today?

If not, if the city having deemed such damaged structures as dangerous, how would they have brought down the damaged towers?

I have no doubt that the events of September 11 took weeks, months to prepare for.

...and I can confirm the fine powder. I was a volunteer disaster relief worker, and we had a "service center" going in a health club in Battery Park City for those displaced from their jobs/homes by 9/11. We were adjacent to a building that was right next to the WTC complex.

During my lunch break, I watched through the window as workers used a crane rigged with giant steam-shovel jaws to remove WTC debris from the top of this building across the street.

Each time the jaws came down, they dumped a heap of what looked like beach sand studded with some paver-sized concrete pieces. There was also some paper mixed in; some of it had got wet and turned into white goo, kind of like toilet paper. As they kept scooping, I saw paper that was basically intact, if covered in gray dust.

I've been to plenty of housefires, as a local disaster volunteer, and I'll just relate the differences I saw:

• The stuff they were scooping off the top of this building didn't look like it had been burnt at all. The powder and concrete chips were a pristine light gray; the paper, as far as I could tell from where I was, was dirty but not sooty. In a housefire, the piles of debris that the fire department throw out are sooty, filthy and BLACK. Once they get wet, they're just black-brown mud.


• I was summoned to a fuel-started arson fire early in July of this year. The burned building was a condo/co-op under construction. The fire's heat was so intense that the 100-gallon yard waste containers up and down the block on the OTHER side of the street had buckled and melted. On that same side of the street, auto paint and window tints were blistered. Half of the condo building next door to the north had just burned black, and a motorcycle parked in a covered area underneath it was blazing away, right where it was parked, even though it was not near the part of the building that had burned. The vinyl siding on a house a block away melted off; it was one of the more bizarre-looking things I've seen. But the steel girders, both in the building originally torched, and the adjacent building that caught fire, were still perfectly in place. Now why is that, if the heat was intense enough to melt sh*t a block away? If the heat in the WTC towers was intense enough to soften high-grade structural steel, why don't we see blistering and collateral heat damage all over the neighborhood?

I don't purport to have answers here, these are just things that make me go 'hmmm,' and think armchair experts don't quite know everything there is to know about this.

Those who are in denial now about the truth behind this "War On Terror" have a rude awakening coming.

And there is a name for those of you who are deliberately turning a blind eye to these Fascist thugs, who are now in almost complete control of your Government: Passive Collaborators.

>...

Those who fail to learn from history...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055031/quotes

Ernst Janning : Judge Haywood... the reason I asked you to come. Those people, those millions of people... I never knew it would come to that. YOU must believe it, YOU MUST believe it.
Judge Dan Haywood : Herr Janning, it came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.

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Ernst Janning : There was a fever over the land. A fever of disgrace, of indignity, of hunger. We had a democracy, yes, but it was torn by elements within. There was, above all, fear. Fear of today, fear of tomorrow, fear of our neighbors, fear of ourselves. Only when you understand that can you understand what Hitler meant to us. Because he said to us: 'Lift up your heads! Be proud to be German! There are devils among us. Communists, Liberals, Jews, Gypsies! Once the devils will be destroyed, your miseries will be destroyed.' It was the old, old story of the sacrifical lamb. What about us, who knew better? We who knew the words were lies and worse than lies? Why did we sit silent? Why did we participate? Because we loved our country! What difference does it make if a few political extremists lose their rights? What difference does it make if a few racial minorities lose their rights? It is only a passing phase. It is only a stage we are going through. It will be discarded sooner or later. 'The country is in danger.' We will 'march out of the shadows.' 'We will go forward.' And history tells you how well we succeeded! We succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. The very elements of hate and power about Hitler that mesmerized Germany, mesmerized the world! We found ourselves with sudden powerful allies. Things that had been denied us as a democracy were open to us now. The world said go ahead, take it! Take Sudetenland, take the Rhineland - remilitarize it - take all of Austria, take it! We marched forward, the danger passed. And then one day, we looked around and found we were in even more terrible danger. The rites began in this courtroom, swept over our land like a raging, roaring disease! What was going to be a passing phase became a way of life.

and I've got a U.L. book of rated assemblies right in front of me.

This is not rocket science. Steel is tremendously vulnerable when overstressed, which is exactly the case that day.
I'll just say that the most critical factor is the slenderness ratio of the columns. Once the floors were blown away for just 1 or 2 levels of any column- it's unbraced length immediately doubled or tripled.
Add to that the heat of whatever temperature the fires were raising the steel to, and you have a very vulnerable situation. There was wind that day and the towers were notoriously flexible strcutures.
The slightest extra stress of wind load on the towers could bring such an overstressed column to failure and begin the collapse sequence.

I don't know what the original slenderness ratio of the columns was, but if I remember correctly it is linearly dependent on the unbraced length.

That combined with the raised temperature (see this page for a stainless steel example) could certainly be what caused the failure.

just days afterward. He said it was absolutely a factor.
The columns were braced on at least 1 side (and sometimes 2 for a core corner column) by the very light open web joists and floor slabs. We know that at least one floor was immediately removed by the crash impacts, and probably badly damaged for 2 or 3 more.
The slenderness ratio increased 2 or 3 times places an exponentially larger stress on a given column, making it prone to buckling.

I just cracked open my old info on columns and was reading about the Euler-Johnson curves. The columns in the WTC would be "pinned-pinned", right?

:kick: :nuke: :kick: :nuke: