Did 300+ firefighters believe they were on a suicide mission inside WTC?

I haven't heard this brought up before. I'm sure I'm not the first person to look at this facet- our analysis of the 9/11 events makes the scrupulous dissection of the Kennedy assassination look like a hastily-written book report. With that disclaimer....

Surely the first responders who went into the WTC did not expect it to collapse from the damage that it had sustained from the airplane impacts. These were firefighters with a great deal of experience and training on what to expect in structure fires/damage. Yet the collapses took everyone by surprise.

But I'm not sure even this hypothesis is correct- can anyone help me hunt down instances where firefighters believed that they were heading into buildings which would collapse? A niggling point, to be sure, but if anyone has input either way I'd be grateful.

Thank you,

PB

They knew the fire could be contained and it was structurally sound.

big difference. The WTC was beyond any one's experience unless you can show previous cases of tall buildings being hit by an airplane then catching on fire. Their training and tradition prevented them from saying: "hold on a second - let's think about this awhile." They did what they always did and they died for it.

http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/firefighter-tape-excerpts.htm

9:52 a.m.

Battalion Seven Chief: "Battalion Seven to Battalion Seven Alpha."

"Freddie, come on over. Freddie, come on over by us."

Battalion Seven Chief: "Battalion Seven ... Ladder 15, we've got two isolated pockets of fire. We should be able to knock it down with two lines. Radio that, 78th floor numerous 10-45 Code Ones."

Ladder 15: "What stair are you in, Orio?"

Battalion Seven Aide: "Seven Alpha to lobby command post."

Ladder Fifteen: "Fifteen to Battalion Seven."

Battalion Seven Chief: "... Ladder 15."

Ladder 15: "Chief, what stair you in?"

Battalion Seven Chief: "South stairway Adam, South Tower."

Ladder 15: "Floor 78?"

Battalion Seven Chief: "Ten-four, numerous civilians, we gonna need two engines up here."

Ladder 15: "Alright ten-four, we're on our way."

http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/firefighter-tape-excerpts.htm

they never penetrated into the center of the impact zone and never saw the fires on the 80 floor and higher. They had incomplete information.

"For well over a year, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey refused to release the audiotape of firefighters' communications from the World Trade Center during the September 11 attacks. In early November 2002, the tape was released to the New York Times, then to other unspecified "news outlets" (according to the Associated Press). To my knowledge, the NYT is the only outlet to post excerpts from the tape."

9/11 Transcripts and Police Reports
http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/pa-transcripts/

The Complete Firefighters' WTC Tape from 9/11
http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/firefighter-tape.htm

Why only the New York Times? Smacks of favoritism to me. That isn't fair.

"These transcripts of phone calls and radio transmissions, and copies of police reports, were finally released under a federal order resulting from a lawsuit brought by the New York Times. The Times originally sought the actual recordings but eventually settled for transcripts."

http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/pa-transcripts/

Firefighters are trained to spot structural problems and report them.

According to the tape, integrity wasn't even an issue. Are you saying damage that caused the collapse was not visible to the professional firemen?

beyond the 78th floor or where they saw the core columns. They can't assess things they never saw.

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeperiod=0:10am-11:50pm+11+Sept+2001&timeline=complete_911_timeline&startpos=300



9:52 a.m.: Firefighters Reach 78th Floor of South Tower; Find Two Isolated Fires Ronald Bucca.
Two firefighters climbing up the south tower, Orio Palmer and Ronald Bucca, have reached its 78th floor, the lower end of the impact zone where Flight 175 hit. They are just two floors below the level where, minutes later, its collapse initiates. Over radio, Palmer tells firefighter Joseph Leavey, “We’ve got two isolated pockets of fire. We should be able to knock it down with two lines.” The fact that they reached so high up the tower only comes to light almost a year later, when a tape of radio communications from 9/11 is made public (see August 4, 2002). The New York Times will report “owhere on the tape is there any indication that firefighters had the slightest indication that the tower had become unstable or that it could fall.” Palmer’s communication appears to contradict claims that “extreme fires” contributed to the tower’s collapse. Ronald Bucca, a Special Forces veteran, had actually conducted his own private research into Islamic militancy following the 1993 WTC bombing. He’d even taken time, in 1996, to attend the beginning of the trial of Ramzi Yousef, a mastermind of the bombing

http://www.physics911.ca/Flynn:_Fire_Department_Tape_Reveals_No_Awareness_of_Imminent_Doom

Fire Department Tape Reveals No Awareness of Imminent Doom

By KEVIN FLYNN and JIM DWYER
New York Times
2002/11/09

-- 'Nowhere on the tape is there any indication that firefighters had the slightest indication that the tower had become unstable or that it could fall.' --

-- ' "Just two hose lines to attack two isolated pockets of fire. "We should be able to knock it down with two lines," he tells the firefighters of Ladder Company 15 who were following him up the stairs of the doomed tower.' -

http://www.physics911.ca/Flynn:_Fire_Department_Tape_Reveals_No_Awareness_of_Imminent_Doom

"We knew we were in trouble, so we started calling people down. We had a report from OEM that there was possibility of a third plane coming in. That really put the antennas up for us because, number one, if a third plane does come in and hits these buildings, they’re coming down for sure. Before we had the partial collapse, we were aware that timewise we thought we had a couple of hours. And I think everybody envisioned the idea we’re going to get everybody down and back everybody out a few blocks and watch this event, the top 15 or 20 floors fold in. That’s what we thought. It didn’t happen that way, though."

I think that was after the South Tower came down.

"We didn’t know what it was right away, but then somebody told us that a plane hit the second tower. At that point, in time we had a brief conference and we started calling everybody down in the north tower after the second plane hit. We had a number of conferences with the staff chiefs about the possibility of collapse. We recognized the possibility of a collapse, but our thought process was that there was going to be a partial collapse, a gradual collapse after a couple of hours of burning, and we thought we had time to complete the evacuation and get everybody out. We made a conscious decision early on that we weren’t going to try and put the fire out, for a number of reasons. One, there was too much volume of fire. Second, the building systems were probably not functional. We had too many distress calls coming in. We didn’t think the standpipe system was even going to be intact up there. We had to forgo the whole idea of trying to put any fire suppression efforts in there. This was strictly a search and rescue operation. When the second plane hit the south tower, Chief Burns left the lobby of the north tower and went over to assume command of the operations in the south tower. Only a few short minutes after that occurred, we felt it was wise for us to start evacuating this building and we started calling our people down, which was probably about 25 minutes before the north tower collapsed."

the firefighters said that there were large fires and that the sprinklers system most likely did not survive.

...that firefighters had never before encountered the situation that they were faced with that morning, and although they knew they were at risk (as they always are when they enter burning buildings), they did what they were trained to do with their top priority being to save lives.
It is terribly sad that 343 of them died trying to save others.

And yes, if you look at first hand accounts from surviving firefighters, it seems apparent that there were massive fires indeed.

The unofficial reality is that the chiefs are lying goons. Never underestimate the extent of 9/11 corruption.

p.s. welcome

not the "official" reality. It is the reality from actual firefighters who were actually there. Do you seriously believe that the other thousands of firefighters who survived were all in on this grand conspiracy as well?

p.s. thank you

or some of them. Their lies are splashed around here regularly. If you want to know what really happened, read the rest of the first responder interviews that the Times had to sue the city under the FOIA to get released. Here's the direct link:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/met_WTC_histories_full_01.html

I do not get my info from "just the chiefs" or what you call "their lies". My beau is a professional firefighter and long time HUSAR (Heavy Urban Search and Rescue) member who went and helped in NYC after the fact. He talked to many, many firefighters who were there during the events of Sept. 11/01, and I have personally spoken to some who were there during the events.

People really ought not base everything they believe on what they can find on the internet.

p.s. thanks for the link - I read a bunch of the interviews when they were first published but had since lost the link in a computer meltdown last year.

the tapes that are available, and then read the subsequent text; the story does not remain “as shown on TV.”

BTW, Can some one give me a reason why the top half of the two towers traveled the path of MOST RESISTANCE? Unless they were built with "magic" concrete and steal, the undamaged structure bellow did not resist anything falling from above.


Opinions are nifty but we don't have the luxury of assumption. You must understand to be fair proof is all we really have anymore, so without some proof to be shared your words ring hollow. I wish this were not true and maybe some other time it will be when things are different.

when you talk to people who were actually there instead of relying on the internet and news bites for all of your opinions, the real world is exactly that - the real world, where things happen that have never happened before; where unprecedented events are not fully explained and wrapped up with a bow in 60 minutes (including commercial breaks); where people are human and fallible; and where Perry Mason does not compel a witness to confess dramatically on the stand.

and he wouldn't need the internet, either. :)

and so would I.

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

in the 911 truth movement. Do you have any idea of the background of the AFP? There is a reason they are ban on DU.

I Googled the article. The 9/11 demolitions are not a partisan issue.

they have an agenda and a reputation for making stuff up. The fact that it is on the internet does not mean its true.

for revisionists to throw mud around.


http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Free_Press

"Fire fighters know that there were bombs in the building, but there is a gag order on them. They are prohibited from speaking publicly about the events of 9-11, without the permission of the Fire Commissioner."

http://ny911truth.org/events/DRG_events_report.htm

I don't want you or anyone else to believe me, trust me, or understand me; you are mistaken. I wish that people would spend more time sticking to what can be known by all and trying to understand it themselves.

As for opinion I wish I could have one but alas as you have disregarded any contextual observable reality that could unhinge the hearsay you wish the people who read DU to note as the reality you believe to be true. I have not and will not venture that path because it starts with assumption; which endangers any real understanding this is the point you clearly attempted to make.

Thus I will again state that the Towers collapsed along the path of most resistance, with out any resitance at all. If you can't start with reality we can't get to the truth.

Good luck convincing people science is something to be believed and not known.

of firefighter communications. The internet is merely the medium, not the source of information.

Do you post anything based on objective reality, or is all of just made up?

This is what really irritates me about some posters trying to come up with a master conspiracy theory to explain 9/11. If you don't like the testimony of a particular group then they must be lying. If you think that chief officers of the FDNY were complicit in the deaths of 342 of their brothers then please provide some shred of proof rather than just your uninformed opinion.If there were any shred of truth to this then there would be chief officers hanging from lamp posts in front of every fire house in Manhatten. Don't forget that several high ranking chief officers were killed in the collapse. I can already predict your response to this. The officers who were killed had to be silenced because they knew too much.

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

You didn't address the fact that you called the Chiefs "lying Goons" The fact that Bush lied or members of the Govt. may have had foreknowledge doesn't pertain to the chiefs at all. What is your proof?

If you think that a gag order would keep firefighters from exposing complicity in the FDNY you obviously don't know any Fire fighters. Firefighters would go through hell to identify anyone responsible for a brothers death.

"Former auxillary FDNY" is one man truth squad. Thats like having a school crossing guard investigate the JFK assasination.

Once again, if you have any proof that FDNY chiefs lied please share.

You're 100% correct. I had responded to DailyKoff and when you responded to me I made an incorrect leap. Sorry. It is Dailykoff's "theory " that is so absurd and without any merit. The more forgiving of you might say "it's important to discuss all ideas" but when a theory that impunes a group without ANY proof at all is put forth I think it is equally important to call Bullshit.

Do the research.



Agreed, I have trouble believing police and firefighters could be so easily intimidated. Unfortunately, I don't have the opportunity to independently verify this information. Some of my friends are in law enforcement but not from NY.



There should have been a real independent investigation from the beginning or we wouldn't be here arguing.

As for the lamp posts, you might be onto something.

On what do you base your assesment? There were Chief officers killed in the collapse. What motive is there for complicity of the chiefs? The communications problems were and are well documented. Even now FD and law enforcement have difficulty communicating with each other. Not to mention hand held radio weakness in a building. One of the most common phrases heard on the fire ground is "can you hear me now?" I've actually used a cell phone when I couldn't get radio reception. Your impuning the chiefs with no evidence is disgusting.

as quoted here and elsewhere. They're pretty lousy liars. For example:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=80778&mesg_id=81073

"We had a number of conferences with the staff chiefs about the possibility of collapse. We recognized the possibility of a collapse, but our thought process was that there was going to be a partial collapse, a gradual collapse after a couple of hours of burning, and we thought we had time to complete the evacuation and get everybody out."

1.) they recognized the possibility of a partial collapse after a couple of hours of burning.
2.) they recognized the possibility of a gradual collapse after a couple of hours of burning.
3.) they thought there was time to complete the evacuation and get everybody out

I don't see suicidal tendencies or knowlege of an immediate global collapse.

http://www.firehouse.com/terrorist/911/magazine/gz/hayden.html

"1.) they recognized the possibility of a partial collapse after a couple of hours of burning."
"2.) they recognized the possibility of a gradual collapse after a couple of hours of burning."
"3.) they thought there was time to complete the evacuation and get everybody out"

"I don't see suicidal tendencies or knowlege of an immediate global collapse."

That is exactly my point.

They foresaw collapse, but did not expect it to happen so quickly.

One can reasonably and conservatively expect a partial and gradual collapse(s) over the course of a few hours. If structural integrity was an issue after either attack, I doubt he would have sent anyone.

The main factor that made him vacate was the possibility of a third plane attack and its effects. I don't blame him. Who in their right mind would want to risk that kind of liability?

from the tape transcripts and post event interviews, there are two points I'd like to highlight.

A) There were fire fighters up near the crash who assessed that if they could get more people up there they could put out the fires.

B) The only reason the order came to pull out fire fighters was because they thought a third airplane might be come in and crash into the buildings. They estimated that if another plane hit the towers the building(s) might collapse.

Now, we the public, most of us didn't think the towers were going to fall.

No one on in the media nor any of their experts that morning predicted they would collapse.

Every article I've read by structural engineers about this subject has said that until the towers actually collapsed, they never thought the buildings would collapse. The only reason any of them say it's possible now is due to 20/20 hindsight. Not to mention, engineers that claim it's not possible are ridiculed and fired. It's not socially acceptable to argue otherwise.

This is backed up by the fact that NO ONE in FDNY's vast body of structural/terrorism experts thought that the towers would collapse.

The structural capabilities of those buildings were well understood and studied by FDNY in light that only 8 years before, terrorists had attempted to destroy that building.

Just because this situation had never happened before doesn't mean that the fire commanders were "just doing what their training taught them" with out taking into consideration the obvious damage the building at sustained. The fire commanders assess EVERY situation for safety, and the morning of 9/11 was no exception.

Think about it - there were two HUGE holes in those buildings - it's not like they couldn't estimate how much damage the buildings had sustained. They made those assessments and obviously thought the towers would remain standing despite the damage they observed. They had no reason to suspect that the structural integrity of those buildings was compromised, otherwise they wouldn't have stated the only reason they did pull was for fear of a third airplane.

Question is, was every expert at FDNY's disposal wrong that morning, or did something else cause those buildings to fall?

except that they did expect some kind of collapse based on their prior experience. They expected at least a partial collapse but thought they'd have a couple of hours before it happened and expected to be able to evacuate before it happened. But they'd never EVER been in a situation before in which large airliners fully loaded with fuel had crashed into buildings of similar construction, so they based those expectations on prior experience that wasn't on point.

That's where the precedent part comes in. It had never happened before that large jetliners deliberately crashed into buildings.

Sadly, they didn't get out soon enough as they were busily trying to rescue people and ultimately many died.

that figured out the tower's collapse was imminent. I don't recall if they were specifically employed by the FDNY but they were at the scene and at the FDNY's disposal.

Sorry but I don't have links handy.

was potentially imminent?

Why?

These alleged reports from the EOM and other anonymous sources are suspicious as hell, yes.

So the responders that may have figured out a collapse was imminent, were just telling stories to please their masters? OKeeDokee.

I know I will regret this but how were put options odd?

Some top FDNY chiefs knew in advance. They're the ones who made sure there were no helicopter rescues, that the towers were chock full of firefighters, and so on. Others lower in the food chain were brought on board later to help catapult the propaganda. All firefighters were apparently "debriefed" by US intelligence agents.

And I don't want to be the one to point out it you have just taken another oppurtinity to hump a foundation-less speculation as something possibly true, but what does your propaganda have to do with someone believing a collapse was possible?

to believe a collapse of WTC2 was possible before it started would have been to be told by someone in on the scheme. That's the point. Nobody with any building or firefighting experience would have any reason to think it would collapse.

there are so many past examples of skyscrapers being hit by large airplanes and then catching on fire that those fire fighters knew exactly what would happen. :eyes:

They did foresee collapse, either partial or total, but given that there was no precedent for the events that occurred on that day, it is not surprising that they underestimated the speed at which collapse might occur.

His story is all over the place:

"We knew we were in trouble, so we started calling people down. We had a report from OEM that there was possibility of a third plane coming in. That really put the antennas up for us because, number one, if a third plane does come in and hits these buildings, they’re coming down for sure. Before we had the partial collapse, we were aware that timewise we thought we had a couple of hours. And I think everybody envisioned the idea we’re going to get everybody down and back everybody out a few blocks and watch this event, the top 15 or 20 floors fold in. That’s what we thought. It didn’t happen that way, though."

1. Did he "forsee" a collapse caused by existing damage, or by a third plane?

2. What "partial collapse" is he talking about?

3. And what the hell does he mean when he says he thought everybody was going to get out and "watch this event"?

It looks like he and a few others knew the buildngs were coming down, but that it happened differently than the way they'd been told, no doubt to maximize the carnage.

I'm also skeptical about the "faulty communications equipment" that supposedly prevented his evacuation orders from reaching the other firefighters.

the towers would collapse that morning to the FDNY, as you seem to remember. I'm open to it, so take me through that door by siting some evidence that it actually happened. Until you do that, I can't support your new claim.

We've all heard that after the second plane hit, the commanders thought that there was a possibility that a third airplane might hit the towers. They figured if that happened, then one of the towers might fall, so they decided to pull out all their fire fighters, but like you said, communications weren't working so well so a lot of them died.

But I've never heard that any experts warned there was a serious possibility the buildings would collapse from just the damage up to that point. I would love to see that evidence, because that would rule out this line thought that "no one saw it coming".

I'm not asking you to "show proof" because I'm trying to be a jerk, I seriously don't remember ever hearing that before and I don't have any such evidence of it.

Like I said, I'm open to the possibility, but please show me a link or site a source for that info. Thanks. :thumbsup:

if that's in fact the case.

the problem was the warnings came too late and communications were too poor to be effectual.

I seem to recall a Helicopter (noticed the towers twisting and a perimeter wall bowing in) and a city engineer on the ground were convinced the towers were going to collapse maybe ten ot fifteen minutes before the collapse.

Lared, do you have a reference link to support your "memory"?

Besides Guiliani who was warned that the towers would collapse I don't recall any responder who figured out that the collapse was imminent. Any links for this claim?
I hope you provide more links this time as I'm still waiting for just a single witness account for this claim about the crash site of UA 93:
"People at the scene believe there was a plane, believe there were body parts."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=67776&mesg_id=68033

because it is real easy for people to say after the fact, oh yeah, I knew those buildings were going to come down. It's another matter entirely if the firefighters were making such comments BEFORE the buildings came down.

"Police had already ordered a complete evacuation of the north tower at the time those transmissions were made, said Police Department Inspector Michael Coan. Both transmissions came after the south tower was already down, he said."


I guess it's easy to predict that the WTC would collapse, since one tower had collapsed already.


BTW: So much for the jets 'full' of fuel theory causing the towers to collapse.


Other key findings include:

* Even though the jet fuel on the planes burned off in the first few minutes after impact, there was enough office furniture to sustain intense fires for at least an hour.

firefighters arrived, according to the Naudet tape.

And the proposition that plaster and glass in the lobby presaged the building's collapse is
absurd. How is damage to the 80th floor going to stress the lobby level before the initiation
of collapse?

That you find it absurd to believe glass and plaster in the lobby were breaking before the collapse confirms you lack a basic understanding of the dynamics of a building stressed to the point of collapse.

Unfortunately I lack the desire to explain this to you mainly because it is a waste of time. You will not listen, and will not engage in dialog that allows you to see outside the box you have built around yourself.

Perhaps someone else will attempt to explain it.

discuss the point that the windows were already blown out when the
firemen got there.

Given the extreme redundancy of the structure of a building that was constructed
to resist 150 mph winds, given the ability of the stresses to redistribute through
the perimeter spandrels and the 47 14" X 36" core columns, the notion that the damage
800 feet above resulted in window-popping stresses at ground level is absurd.

I believed the zipper/pancake theory until I considered Building 7 and found that the
WTC squibs were not photoshop hoaxes. I can accept that perhaps the buildings did
fall from fire--that localized collapse caused buckling and that falling debris then
brought the building down. Had the authorities not destroyed the evidence and obstructed
all investigations I would take more kindly to their story. I can conceive of no mechanism
by which the 80th floor damage would distort the ground floor.

You owe Jane Doe a big apology, by the way. She is a professor of Mechanical Engineering
at Clemson, and your nom de guerre has been immortalized at the Scholars for 9/11 Truth
website. http://www.st911.org/

Its link to the following thread is entitled "LARED's giant "trash compactor" model"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=49321&mesg_id=50155

Clemson should apologize for hiring JaneDoe.

(I wouldn't say "brevity" or "pithiness") don't aid your credibility.

amount of time I waste discussing this with you.

knowledge, but you don't want to demonstrate it.

where you are mistaken. It really is about my time, and your unwillingness to be open minded.

unconvincing.

There were people who survived the collapse, and they said that in the last, say, twenty minutes or so they were aware that it would collapse and that they had to get out of there.

..but it wouldn't be fair to the OP. A point of reference can help determine the time line. Do you have a link?

although I think it is a lie. One of the versions of this story I read said that after the collapse they looked up and saw a patch of bright blue sky...I don't think blue sky was visible after the collapse for a long, long, time...This sounds like a story invented to say, Look! A Miracle! or to serve some purpose. I looked up the people involved a while ago and could find no trace.
" Miraculously, 20 people survived the collapse, amid steel beams, concrete slabs and other wreckage. They escaped death in the most unlikely of ways and in the most surprising of places. Fourteen people survived inside the remnants of a stairwell at the center of the north tower. One man remembers falling from a 22nd floor stairwell in the north tower and regaining consciousness atop the 12-story-deep pile of rubble at Ground Zero. Two police officers, trapped in debris between the towers, barely survived both collapses"....
more at link
http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2002-09-05-miracles-usat_x.htm

Oh, another thing, this would negate the use of nuclear weapons or radiation , maybe that was the point of it.

even before the first plane hit. A lot of people say they 'saw' the airplanes, when in reality all what they saw were the explosions. Lot's of people reported all sorts of things. It is especially easy to say, gee I knew the building was going to fall after the fact.

how do these threads get so out of control?

That's the title of the OP

"102 Minutes - The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers" by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn, reporters for the NY Times. Communications were atrocious. Almost no one could get through to anyone else.

For example, there was one staircase that could carry people down from the upper floors in the South Tower but very few knew about it:

<snip>

"And so the people inside the south tower remained unaware of the open staircase. They spoke to their families, who watched the towers burn on television, but also did not know about the stairway. The word had not gotten back to the fire commanders, to the 911 call center, or to broadcasters, so the information that stairway A was available did not circle back to the places where it might have done some good."

<snip>

Then the first gleanings from an engineer that the buildings might not make it:

<snip>

"An engineer from the Department of Buildings reported that the structural damage appeared to be immense. The stability of both buildings was compromised. In particular, the engineer was worried about how long the north tower would stand. This was an astounding possibility. Like many others, Peruggia, the Fire Department's delegate, was a veteran of the 1993 bombing, and after that attack, he had heard the presentations about the strength of the two towers. No one could forget the claim by Leslie Robertson, the structural engineer, that the towers were designed to stand up to the impact of a Boeing 707. The Building Department engineer did not care what had been promised a decade earlier, or three decades earlier.....he could see the damage.”

<snip>

Inside the North Tower, Frank De Martini, Construction Manager for the NY Port Authority, reported on a walkie-talkie from the 78th floor to the street: "The elevator...the express elevators could be in jeopardy of falling. Be prepared for that. Do you copy?"

But even so, De Martini, who “loved the World Trace Center and all its gadgetry ever since he started as a consultant following the 1993 bombing, did not anticipate the buildings falling. He stayed in the North Tower getting as many people out as he could.

<snip>

"For practically everyone still in the towers, including the men on the 78th floor (North Tower) with Trapp, who knew the buildings as well as anyone, the notion that they might collapse would have seemed far-fetched indeed....Almost universally, it seemed, they did not think the buildings could fall. Whatever worries Frank De Martini and his crew had about the building, they most likely concerned local problems they saw on the 78th floor, not its survival. De Martini had heard the founding dogma about the strength of the trade center: planes could hit them, and they would still stand. He, too, believed it."

<snip>

Then:

<snip>

"On the street, Rich Zarillo had arrived at the West Street command post with the message from the Buildings Department engineer that the towers were near collapse, and told Chief Ganci's aide, Fire Marshal Steve Mosiello. Mosiello turned to his boss, involved in other business. "Chief, these buildings are in imminent danger of collapse," Mosiello reported. Ganci looked stunned. "Who would tell you something like that?" he asked. After 35 years in the Fire Department Pete Ganci had risen to chief of department, and he knew full well that skyscrapers do not collapse from less than an hour of fire. Mosiello turned to the messenger. "Richie, come over here and tell the chief what you just told me," Mosiello said.

<snip>

A fireman, Orio Palmer, made it to the 78th floor, South Tower: "Behind Palmer's voice there was no alarm, no clamor." Palmer was trying to rescue "an entire elevator car full of people trapped on the 78th floor for almost 55 minutes."

Then the South Tower falls. In the meantime, firefighters are sacked out throughout the North Tower, unaware the South Tower has fallen and unaware their building was in danger of falling too. Their friggin’ radios didn’t work.

considering that they'd spent eight years and who knows how many millions fixing the problem.

p.s. the New York Times has been a major 9/11 collaborator from day one.

FDNY did spent money on a new digital radio system which was deployed in March 2001 and then pulled because of complaints of poor coverage. The old radios were reissued. A repeater was installed after 1993 but wasn't believed to be working by the FDNY at the scene.

http://mrtmag.com/mag/radio_fixed/index.html
Better radio communications could have saved some of the 343 firefighters who perished in the collapse of the New York World Trade Center towers. That's the contention of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, a union that represents about 2,500 captains, lieutenants and battalion chiefs among the Fire Department of New York's 11,500-member department.
Primedia Business - MRT, Click Here!

“One of FDNY's staff chiefs gave an order to evacuate the north tower, and 56 minutes transpired from the time he gave the order to when the tower collapsed, and no one heard the order. We lost 120 firefighters in the building,” said FDNY Lt. Steve Carbone, the vice president of UFOA.

UFOA President Peter Gorman issued a demand during an August news conference that FDNY replace the aging VHF hand-held portable two-way radios that were in use on Sept. 11, 2001.

Early last year, the department had replaced its older 3,000 VHF analog radios with 3,800 UHF dual-mode, digital-and-analog radios that were set to digital mode. But by March 2001, the UHF radios were withdrawn because of what Gorman said were complaints about inadequate coverage. The department re-deployed its older VHF radios, which then were in use on Sept. 11, 2001.
more...(It's a long article with a lot of background detail)

The repeater in the wtc complex may not have been faulty after all (but the Chiefs thought it wasn't finctioning so they didn't use those channels:
http://cms.firehouse.com/content/article/article.jsp?id=242§ionId=46
The repeater was installed on the top floor of 5 World Trade Center after the first terrorist bombing in 1993. "During our radio coverage tests, we concluded that the system worked exceptionally well," Deputy Fire Commissioner Steven Gregory wrote in a 1994 letter to Allen Reiss, the Port Authority official who oversaw the installation.

On Sept. 11, it did not seem to be working well to Battalion Chiefs Joseph Pfeifer and Orio Palmer, two of the first chiefs to respond. They tested their radios but could not hear each other, an effort that was recorded by the repeater tape.

One possible explanation, according to a Port Authority radio expert who reviewed the tape, is that the problems originated with a radio console that had been set up in the lobby by the Port Authority at the request of the Fire Department. The console resembled a telephone and served as a fire radio. The official suggested that a broken earpiece could have made it impossible for Chief Pfeifer to hear Chief Palmer. Another possible explanation is that the volume had been turned all the way down before they arrived.

In any event, Chief Pfeifer needed to establish communications quickly, so he turned to a backup repeater in his car, the tape makes clear. That repeater also did not appear to work. When the second plane hit, Chief Palmer was dispatched into the south tower with a senior chief, Donald Burns. There, both were able to speak over the trade center's repeater channel that had stymied Chief Palmer a few minutes earlier.

also:
http://www.skyscrapersafety.org/html/article_20040720.html
http://www.skyscrapersafety.org/html/article_20050513.html

it looks to me like a bill of goods. Broken radios, broken earpieces, broken repeaters -- what a load of crap.

Who gave the orders to evacuate? Nobody, that's who.

And what that says about these firechiefs is so disgusting I don't even want to spell it out.

The radios were working well in WTC2, and some of the radios were working in WTC1. See the fireman statements.
A lot of them were warned and they were told to get out- lots of them did.
http://www.flcv.com/firemen.html

http://www.flcv.com/firemen.html

and witnesses outside who witnessed the ground level explosions before the buildings fell.

1) their radios were working, and
2) the buildings weren't "moving," they were being blown up. I think they could tell the difference.

and they talked about the small fires in WTC2 that they thought they could control.
http://www.flcv.com/firemen.html
http://www.flcv.com/nypolice.html

I'm sure there were many. That is not particularly unusual in highrise fires as various and sundry things catch fire, and some explode when they catch fire. Various and sundry things falling can even sound like explosions, etc. in certain circumstances.

And, personally, I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were some secondary devices planted in the towers.

However, the buildings were not brought down by controlled demolitions. The collapses do not mimic controlled demolitions. The firefighters and others fully expected at least a partial collapse from the beginning but thought they'd have a couple of hours before the towers collapsed. Of course, they had never dealt with jumbo jets with massive fuel loads crashing into skyscrapers in this manner before, so it is not surprising that the collapse was greater than anticipated. There was no precedent for them to rely upon. Still, they expected at least a partial collapse of WTC1 and WTC2 from the very beginning.

They also expected WTC7 to collapse when they found that they didn't have sufficient firefighting capability (water problems from broken water mains) and severe structural damage, and made a conscious decision early on not to risk more firefighter lives. That building burned for several hours before it came down (which they expected) but, of course, #7 was less than half the height of the twin towers and it had not been hit by an airplane, so it is not at all surprising that it lasted longer.

I think that the government is covering up the substandard construction and kickbacks and underhanded deals that allowed the buildings to be built so shoddily, which hastened their collapse, and I think that the government is covering up their ineptitude and piss poor response to the threat that was manifesting itself, and I think that the government is covering up shoddy and inexcusable security procedures, shoddy response procedures, horrific and inept and negligent coordination among various governmental agencies and bodies.

But I do not believe that the government planned and coordinated and carried out the events of September 11/01 and I do not believe that the towers were brought down by controlled demolitions.
There is no way on earth that thousands of firefighters, police officers, other rescue personnel, and cleanup personnel, are all going to keep their mouths shut if they there had been any evidence of controlled demolitions. Not a chance.

For the record, I also do not believe that a cruise missile hit the Pentagon or that holograms were used to disguise cruise missiles or that planes were towed out to sea, or that hundreds of passengers were summarily executed by the gov't and substitute airplanes were used, etc. etc.

I have, and it's a much slower process than the instantaneous total collapses on 9/11, which looked exactly like three explosive demolitions. And I know you've seen explosive demolitions.

Another thing: have you ever witnessed an actual highrise fire? I have, and while there was lots of noise, there were no explosions, and I have yet to read an account of such sounds at any other highrise fire.

And if, as you admit, there may have been explosive devices planted in the buildings, how come the first responders and other witnesses report hearing the explosions, but the fire chiefs don't?

Yes, I have seen wrecking balls take buildings down, and I have seen buildings deliberately imploded.

And yes, I have also witnessed an actual high rise fire and my beau is a professional firefighter who has personally been involved in fighting several high rise fires. Every fire is different, depending on what is in the building. He tells me that there often are sounds of "explosions" as various items are engulfed in flames. Some things just burn; some things "explode".

about the highrise fire you witnessed? Which fire was it, and did you hear explosions? And if so, what was the cause of the explosions determined to be?

Most highrises fires are pretty thoroughly covered by the media and investigated.

in a high rise apartment building on Bay Street South in Hamilton, Ontario in the early 1980s. Obviously, on a much smaller scale than the WTC buildings. I heard noises that sounded like things exploding but I was too busy getting out of the building to stop and wonder what they were at the time.

As I recall, the fire was investigated to determine its cause and source (grease fire in a kitchen which spread rapidly) but I do not recall there being any investigation into what the various explosive sounds were caused by.

I imagine they could have been caused by all manner of substances such as propane, aerosol cans, batteries, paints, all manner of flammable liquids, oxygen cylinders, filament lamps, solvents, other combustibles. Heck, even dusts from everyday materials such as wood, grain, sugar, and synthetic organic chemicals can be combustible and explode violently if ignited.

So, I cannot tell you what caused the explosions and I really never thought about it after the fact.

It was certainly big news in Hamilton at the time, although I doubt very much if it made it to the international news wire. The fire, although extensive in relative terms, was brought under control pretty quickly and nobody was killed.

Have a look at the victims' lists.