(Intro to "Fire Initiated Collapse - Primary Arguments Against)
There are a few things we need to point out regarding the alleged "fire initiated collapse" of (3) steel framed buildings on 9/11.
First we need to make clear there were in fact THREE buildings that collapsed. Many people are only aware of the two towers. The likely reason for this is the third building, WTC 7, has been completely ignored by the media.
Second we need to establish that nothing short of controlled demolition has ever brought down a steel framed building in the manner we witnessed on 9/11. Never, not once, not even close. This of course includes fire, earthquakes, wind, poor construction, etc.
Last but not least, we need to address the fact the government's theory regarding what caused the buildings to collapse is just that: a theory. By no stretch of the imagination has the theory ever been proven and, given the ever growing body of evidence against it, one could more accurately argue the government's theory has been thoroughly demolished. (No pun intended.)
The Third Building; WTC 7 (World Trade Center Building #7)
The collapse of WTC 7 was spectacular. -Some would argue the catastrophic failure of this 47 story steel framed building was even MORE spectacular than the collapse of the two towers. The reason for making this claim is, unlike the two towers, WTC 7 was not struck by any planes or burned with any jet fuel. -and yet, in a "spectacular" fashion, it suddenly vaporized into its own footprint for no apparent reason. Here are a couple excellent videos of the collapse: Video 1 Video 2
When it comes to proving the government's "raging inferno of jet fuel" theory is critically flawed, WTC 7 represents one of the most compelling pieces of evidence available. -and yet our "free press" (which is supposed to help protect our society from the tyranny of secretive, inept, and dishonest government) has acted like the collapse of WTC 7 never happened. Rather than provide the 24 / 7 coverage this smoking gun deserves, we've instead been treated to 24 / 7 silence.
Without getting too far into the issue of "media complicity" in the cover up surrounding 9/11, suffice to say our multi-billion dollar corporate media is a "for profit" operation. There is no incentive to address any topic that could potentially destabilize the system it relies on; a system that provides (or can take away) favorable regulatory considerations, vital inside sources of information, and lucrative government contracts (just to name a few.)
Is there more to the media blackout? -Maybe; but there doesn't need to be. Good old fashioned profit motive and self-preservation are enough to stop the most important stories dead in their tracks. Both of these act as "filters" that sift every piece of information before it reaches our senses. -The corporate media might skewer a lone government criminal here and there, thats for sure; but whether it would ever truly expose the criminal system on which it depends is another issue all together. The fact is, neither the media nor the government can be trusted to tell us what we really need to know.
Case in point, the independent commission which was established to provide "the fullest possible account of the events surrounding 9/11" dealt with the complicated WTC 7 issue by not dealing with it at all.
Yes, that is correct. You could have read the entire 568 page 9/11 commission report and not learned anything about the inexplicable collapse of a 47 story office tower. -As if there was no real need to bring up something so ordinary and uneventful. Those who expected answers that would provide the "fullest possible account" got nothing instead.
But here again, with the same filters in place, what do we expect? Please forgive me for repeating myself: "-skewering a lone government criminal here and there is one thing, addressing anything that could potentially expose the criminal system (a system everyone in Washington profits from and depends on) is another issue all together."
To be fair, consider the underlying politics. Imagine if you worked decades to secure a high position at the most powerful company in the world, and the "leader" of that company selected you to get to the bottom of a problem. Would you, after careful consideration, go to your superior and say: "Well sir, based on the evidence, it looks like you're the problem - worse, there is reasonable cause to believe you and others under your command might be guilty of crimes punishable by death."
-The term "career suicide" comes to mind (if not literal suicide by way of some unfortunate accident.)
How many of us would risk our life's work to do something guaranteed to draw deadly serious attacks from the highest levels of power, but offered no guarantee of rewards in return? (Consider this question seriously-how many of us would risk our reputation, our career, our current income, our future income-or worse?) Granted, some people would, but the way around that little problem is to make sure that kind of person isn't selected for the job. -Independent investigations don't mean much when the prime suspects get to choose the people setting the parameters of the investigation. On that point, it was said of Phillip D. Zelikow (the 911 Commission's executive director:)
"Zelikow picks the areas of investigation, the briefing materials, the topics for hearings, the witnesses, and the lines of questioning for witnesses. In effect, he sets the agenda and runs the investigation."
How can we truly expect an investigation to yield the "truth" (let alone justice) when one hand-picked person can steer attention away from the most incriminating evidence? How can we uncover criminal negligence (or worse) when everything that points in that direction is excluded and deemed irrelevant?
Perhaps The Commission wasn't meant to provide the "fullest possible account" after all. It seems more likely it was intended to prop up the official conspiracy theory. It seems information that undermined the official account was only collected so it could be more effectively suppressed, countered and whitewashed. This is especially true when it comes to the issue of "intelligence failures" but that is beyond the scope of our discussion here. For now, consider the following:
- Mountains of evidence that pointed to the use of explosives in the attacks (including but not limited to eyewitness accounts of police and firefighters on the scene) was ignored by the Commission.
- Compelling video evidence, not the least of which includes an "on camera" statement by Larry Silverstein that building 7 was "pulled" (a demolition term used to describe the controlled implosion of a building) was ignored. (Video Here)
- After the government failed to suppress the firefighters radio transmissions to one another; transmissions that reported bombs going off in the buildings and fires that were far from raging; the newly available radio transmissions were, you guessed it, ignored. (Sample Audio 1) (Sample Audio 2)
Remember, for a cover up to succeed, information that exposes the lie must be kept hidden. So, if during the course of an "investigation" those charged with getting to the bottom of things are openly destroying evidence, distracting attention away from obvious inconsistencies and suppressing information that paints a more convincing account of the facts; the LAST thing we should do is accept what they offer without question. -Since those in charge of explaining the events of 9/11 are clearly guilty on all counts, scrutiny of their claims is only logical.
For a detailed list of what was left out of the "independent" 9/11 Commission Report, pick up a copy of David Ray Griffin's book: The 911 commission - omissions and distortions. Rest assured, every aspect of how 9/11 was handled has something seriously wrong with it - the Commissions "investigation" is no exception.
Fire Initiated Collapse - Primary arguments against
Presenting an uncluttered account of 9/11 inconsistencies is no easy task. The official account is so haphazard and full of holes, it's very hard to stay focused on one problem without being diverted into a string of related problems. With that in mind, try to forgive the following "rapid fire" outline:
We've got the "raging jet fuel theory" which (even if true) could have never generated sufficient heat to produce the molten metal found in all three buildings. In a logical world, we can't even begin discussing what caused the collapse of the buildings until we've identified what burned hot enough to create the molten metal. Why? Because whatever burned hot enough to create the molten metal is (logically) the most likely cause of collapse!
Another problem with the jet fuel theory (as we've already pointed out) is WTC 7 wasn't struck by a plane or burned with jet fuel. Since it must be assumed something else destroyed WTC 7, it's reasonable to assume something else could have destroyed the North and South towers as well.
To date, FEMA has only been able to come up with a "Diesel Fuel Theory" for building 7. Check the maximum burn temperature for diesel fuel and you'll run into the same problem we ran into with the two towers; it is no where near sufficient to cause the molten metal found at the site. Furthermore, when addressing how diesel fuel might have contributed to the collapse of WTC 7, FEMA is on the record as saying: "the best hypothesis has only a low probability of occurrence. Further research, investigation, and analysis are needed to resolve this issue." The attacks took place in 2001. How many more years will it take?
Now is a good time for a logical question: - How long would it take FEMA to "resolve the issue" of what caused building 7 to collapse if they were allowed to consider explosives in the building? I'm betting they could have a universally accepted, reproducible theory in a day. From there it would only be a matter of figuring out how the explosives got into the building. (...gotta be easier than trying to figure out how to bend the laws of physics.)
Another "theory" that has recently been put forward is debris from the North Tower cut into Building 7; knocking out a handful of supports on its south side. This theory also has multiple problems. First, there is scant evidence to support it. Second, the North Tower literally fell on top of building 6, crushing a GIANT round hole out of the center of the building. Despite having a huge chunk ripped from its core, the sections that weren't crushed remained standing and had to be brought down with explosives.
Diagram of WTC complex: Note in this picture 1 WTC (The North Tower) is almost directly against building 6 (6 WTC) whereas building 7 (7 WTC) is the farthest building away from both the North and South towers.
Here is a picture of Building 6 after having the North Tower fall directly on it. (Note the giant hole in the center of building 6. Also highlighted: Building 5 and the area where building 7 used to be.)
Third, and most importantly, IF the suggested damage to building 7 actually existed (scant evidence to support the assertion) and if it were sufficient to cause the damaged section to collapse, we would have seen a partial collapse in the area of the damage; not a symmetrical vaporization straight down into the buildings own footprint. -Isn't it absurd to suggest that a "few key columns on the south side of building 7 might have been scooped out by falling debris, causing it to collapse" when in fact we can all see that building 5 suffered exactly that kind of damage to its south side and yet didn't collapse? Or, how about this: I wonder if some "key columns" might be missing from building 6...(Again, here is a close up of the damage to building 6)
The truth, as evidenced by the pictures above (not to mention all known history) is steel framed buildings don't up and evaporate; even if you rip huge chunks out of them. A catastrophic failure does not a "global collapse" make. As a reference, compare these two buildings below (snapped off at the base in an earthquake) to what was left of WTC 7.
And now, here is the picture of what was left of WTC 7(Click Here.) (Note: The two buildings above fell sideways with nothing but air standing between them and the ground, they impacted on their sides which is not their strongest angle structurally and yet they didn't disintegrate into a fine powder. Why?) -Forgive the cliche', but there is "something wrong with this picture."
While we're pointing out the obvious, how about an obvious yet unasked question: Why weren't explosives the first thing considered as the cause for the WTC buildings' collapse? Terrorists regularly use bombs to attack their targets, countless reputable eyewitnesses reported bombs going off, buildings have never collapsed in the manner witnessed on 9/11 without the help of explosives, and in 1993 explosives were successfully placed (by terrorists) and detonated in one of the same buildings that fell on 9/11! To have the government bend itself into an intellectual pretzel to make their "fire initiated collapse" theory stick (without spending any time looking into the more plausible theory) makes no sense whatsoever.
There are a few more important things to consider:
Contrary to what the government would have you believe, all evidence points to relatively insignificant fires at the time of each building's collapse. Try to forget about the "jet fuel" that was endlessly drummed into your head; it means nothing. In the towers the jet fuel was irrelevant after 10 minutes (burned off) and in WTC7, it never existed. What we're dealing with are three high rise buildings that, according to the government, vaporized due to fire -
For the sake of argument; pretend there had never been a high-rise fire before in the history of mankind. If that was the case, the "fire initiated collapse" of all three buildings would be harder to disprove. Even so; it's likely that some in the scientific community would challenge the theory; let's proceed under that assumption.
Armed with a strong grasp of physics and knowledge of how heat affects steel, our scientific "debunkers" would have firmly rejected all three buildings disintegrated (at near free-fall speed) as a result of fire. To back their assertion, they would conduct a series of experiments where steel framed buildings were subjected to extremely hot "all-consuming fires" for hours on end. To be clear, the fires in these experiments would be intentionally stoked to maximum severity under ideal conditions; they would far surpass anything the WTC buildings had to endure.
-What if, at the end of their testing, the results read: "no collapse was observed in any of the six experiments -despite the temperature of the steel beams reaching 1,500 - 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit in three of the tests-" Would anyone still accept the official account? Maybe some would still believe, but what if (for the first time in history) steel-framed buildings around the world suddenly started bursting into flames? -Instead of scientific "mumbo jumbo" the masses would get to see the effects of these fires first hand. They witness:
· A fire in a Philadelphia high rise that rages for 18 hours, burning hot enough to break glass and gut 8 floors. Yet despite the severe conditions, a damage report concludes the steel support columns "continued to support their loads without obvious damage."
· They witness a Caracas high-rise fire, it burns for 17 hours and completely guts the upper 20 floors. -the building remains standing.
· Finally, they witness a high-rise fire like no other in Madrid Spain. The building literally burns like a torch (a TRUE "Raging Inferno") destroying it from top to bottom. When all is said and done, it takes more than 22 hours to extinguish the flames, the building is irreparably damaged, but it remains standing.
Would this knock the legs out from under the government's theory? -For all but the most dedicated followers, yes...
With that said, now would be a good time to reveal that each event I've just mentioned actually took place. From the scientific experiments to the individual building fires each is a legitimate historical fact. (-Save the chronology and certain aspects of the context, there is nothing "hypothetical" about any of the aforementioned.)
Rather than take the time to go through each of the cited examples, lets contrast the 22 hour, all consuming Madrid Spain fire (Below) with the 56 minute, barely visible fire of the South Tower on 9/11. If you haven't seen pictures of the Madrid fire, have a good look:
The government has told us over and over again the South tower succumbed to the devastating heat of a raging inferno. -but as is the case with nearly everything we've been told, the evidence strongly contradicts their claim. -nothing to evince a blaze even remotely comparable to the true inferno above.
First, we've got multiple eyewitness accounts (from within the building itself) that describe anything but an inferno. Perhaps the most compelling account is that of a firefighter who, transmitting from the impact floor of the South Tower, radioed the following: "we've got two isolated pockets of fire. We should be able to knock it down with two lines." If you didn't listen to it before, here is the audio. -moments after this transmission (with the fires at their lowest point) the South Tower collapsed.
Additionally, there is video and photographic evidence that proves the absence of a raging inferno. For instance, the thick black smoke seen pouring out of the South Tower prior to collapse suggests the fire was oxygen starved and on its way out-
Now, let's compare the extremely short lived and rather unimpressive "inferno" that allegedly vaporized the South Tower, to what the Windsor Building in Madrid Spain had to endure.
If ever a steel-framed building should have collapsed due to fire, the Windsor building was the perfect candidate. It had far less steel than the WTC buildings (limiting its ability to conduct / diffuse heat), it had FAR MORE intense fires to deal with, and it burned much longer. Additionally, the "core" of the Windsor building was constructed of steel reinforced concrete; nowhere near as durable as the enormous solid steel support columns of the towers and building 7. And yet, despite all of these disadvantages, it displayed amazing resilience.
For the record, few in the scientific community doubt that it's theoretically possible for a building to experience failure if it is subjected to devastating heat for a sufficient period of time. And additional factors like no fire-proofing, no sprinkler systems, insufficient steel to "bleed off" heat or inferior construction greatly increase the possibility. However, what is "doubted" (or more accurately; considered downright impossible) is that such a failure would resemble anything like what was witnessed on 9/11. -Gradual, isolated, asymmetrical failures spread out over time; perhaps -simultaneous disintegration of all load bearing columns (leaving a pile of neatly folded rubble a few stories high) -no way.
If the Windsor building had been an experiment to debunk the sudden and complete free-fall collapse of the WTC buildings, it would have to be chalked up as a great success for demonstrating the following;
1) The genuine difficulty of causing steel to fail in a building fire
2) What a fire initiated failure actually looks like, and
3) How less affected sections "hold up" under falling debris and how the CORE reacts to collapsing floor spans
Pretending for a moment the inferno was intentionally created to cause an observable failure, the logical expectations would have been:
Slowly, individual sections of steel would lose their ability to "bleed off" the intense heat they were subjected to. As a result, their temperature would rise and their rated capacity to support weight would decrease; first by 10%, then 20%, 40% etc. By the time an individual supporting member had lost 70% of its rated capacity, it would begin to sag and twist. At around an 80% reduction that particular section would likely fail.
In the end, the overall expected failure scenario reads: A series of small partial collapses (isolated and occurring at different intervals over the course of the blaze) with the bulk of the building remaining intact. -NOT expected (or believed possible): an instantaneous failure of all weight bearing columns resulting in a symmetrical free-fall collapse. And what were the results? See for yourself:
Of the approximately 10 separate partial failures, none of them had any effect on the core of the structure-This is amazing when you consider the severity of the blaze, the duration of the fire, and the inherent inferiority of its "reinforced concrete" construction. An excellent summary of the facts can be found here:
The Twin Towers and Building 7 were both 100% steel-framed, with large wide-flange columns and box columns, some measuring over four feet wide and fabricated of steel up to five inches thick.
In contrast to the WTC Towers, the Windsor building was framed primarily in steel-reinforced concrete, with columns of concrete reinforced by thin sections of rebar... -Note that steel-framed and steel-reinforced-concrete-framed structures behave very differently in fires.
* Steel is a good conductor and concrete is a poor conductor of heat. Thus in a fire, a steel frame will conduct heat away from the hotspots into the larger structure. As long as the fire does not consume the larger structure, this heat conductivity will keep the temperatures of the frame well below the fire temperatures. The same is not true of steel-reinforced-concrete structures, since concrete is not a good thermal conductor, and the thermal conductivity of the rebar inside the concrete is limited by its small mass and the embedding matrix of concrete.
* Fires can cause spalling of concrete, but not of steel. This is because concrete has a small percentage of latent moisture, which is converted to steam by heat. Thus, a large fire can gradually erode a concrete structure to the point of collapse, whereas a fire can only threaten a steel-framed structure if it elevates steel temperatures to such an extent
Regarding the time it took for each partial failure:
Time Collapse Situation
1:29 East face of the 21st floor collapsed
1:37 South middle section of several floors above the 21st floor gradually collapsed
1:50 Parts of floor slab with curtain walls collapsed
2:02 Parts of floor slab with curtain walls collapsed
2:11 Parts of floor slab with curtain walls collapsed
2:13 Floors above about 25th floor collapsed Large collapse of middle section at about 20th floor
2:17 Parts of floor slab with curtain walls collapsed
2:47 Southwest corner of 1 ~ 2 floors below about 20th floor collapsed
2:51 Southeast corner of about 18th ~ 20th floors collapsed
3:35 South middle section of about 17th ~ 20th floors collapsed-
3:48 Fire flame spurted out below the Upper Technical Floor
4:17 Debris on the Upper Technical Floor fell down
These partial collapse events, spread over several hours, contrast with the implosion of WTC Building #7 in 7 seconds, and the total explosive collapses of each of the Twin Towers in under 17 seconds. (Source: 911research.wtc7.net)
If after all this, there's still doubt about whether or not the WTC fires were sufficient to completely level the far superior buildings, there are yet a few more things to consider...
Of the columns from the fire floors NIST studied, "only three columns had evidence the steel reached temperatures above 482 degrees Fahrenheit," and none of the examined core columns had evidence of reaching even that temperature.
Granted, 99.9% of the evidence (-evidence that could have easily settled once and for all what destroyed all three buildings) was quickly hauled off under armed guard and destroyed. -Nonetheless, we take what we can get and what we got matches exactly what we'd expect to find. IE: The video, photographic and first hand accounts all support a finding by NIST that none of their core column samples had reached even 480 degrees Fahrenheit.
Now is a good time to remind ourselves of the scientific experiments conducted on steel-framed buildings mentioned earlier: "no collapse was observed in any of the six experiments -despite the temperature of the steel beams reaching 1,500 - 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit in three of the tests-"
David Ray Griffin wrote an excellent piece on this topic and in it, he points out something very obvious but often overlooked: There is no evidence to support the government's "fire destroyed the building's" theory. -Not one feature of the WTC buildings' sudden and complete disintegration matches any historical reference of how large steel framed building's react to fire. By contrast, the WTC buildings exhibited at least 11 features that are consistent with the intentional demolition of a building.
Just one question: -Is there any logical reason why the much better theory, (with all its supporting evidence) has been vilified and ignored in favor of the lesser one?
A final appeal to Common Sense
If we ignore the impossibility of molten steel; the comparatively insignificant fires, the historical evidence, and the fact that WTC 7 was not struck by a plane there is still one remaining argument some try to advance regarding the towers. That argument is: "It was damage from the planes + the fires that triggered the free-fall collapse."
There are many angles we can attack this argument from. The most obvious is to point out the towers were designed to withstand the impact of a 707. Although the 707 is slightly smaller than a 767, it has a higher top speed. As such, a 707 traveling at top speed would actually hit with more force and do more damage than the planes that struck the towers.
The problem with the "obvious" response is it leaves too much wiggle room. It leaves the door open to silly arguments about fireproofing being dislodged, (read up on the Windsor buildings' "fireproofing" to crush that argument) the circumstances under which designers expected a 707 would impact the towers, (some have argued the architects only planned for a collision if a plane was lost in fog and traveling at reduced speeds) etc, etc.
To rid ourselves of all these diversions and get right to the heart of what is wrong with the way in which the two towers collapsed, we're going to throw the apologists for the official theory a bone.
Better than dislodged fireproofing, super duper jet fuel, or miscalculations about plane velocity, we're prepared to offer up absolute and utter devastation. We're not talking about some bending or melting of steel, or a few knocked out columns in the planes path; we're talking about the complete vaporization of EVERYTHING in the impact zone. -Poof, gone!
In this case we'll use the North Tower for our example. We know that the North Tower was struck between the 93rd and 98th floor. Per our guidelines, we'll assume those floors were completely vaporized instantaneously. -If this were the case, what would we be looking at?
Working our way from the ground up we'd see a 93 story tower followed by 5 missing floors, and ending with an intact section measuring 12 floors high "suspended" above the 5 story gap. (Of course in the real world, a 12 story chunk of building can't "hover" above a 5 story section of nothing; but for the sake of making a point, we're going to leave it hang there for a minute.)
Right next to our tower we're going to use a crane to raise another 12 story section to the same height as the "hovering" 12 story section. If you're having a hard time visualizing all this, here is a picture of what we're looking at:
Simple question: If both sections are dropped at the exact same time, which section do you think will hit the earth first? Or maybe a better question would be: Who in their right mind could possibly believe the chunk of debris on the left (with the intact 93 stories beneath) would hit the earth at the same time as the chunk of debris on the right (with nothing but air to brake its fall?)
Even using our very generous "5 missing floors" scenario (where the upper debris can literally free-fall for approximately 60 feet) the debris will only achieve a speed of roughly 40 miles per hour before colliding with the remaining 1,116 + feet of structural steel below. -are we really to believe continued free-fall acceleration through 1,116 feet of structural steel is possible?
-Of course our "generous" 5 missing floors scenario isn't real. Those 5 floors WERE in the way and surely would have prevented the mass of falling debris from attaining anything near a 60 foot free-fall speed. Knowing this, cut the rate of descent in half (and multiply the absurdity of the governments' assertion by 5.)
For the scientists out there: What kind of Gs would the falling debris achieve at roughly 20 miles per hour? Better question: How many g's would be required to not only overcome the built in "5 times rated weight" redundancy of the supporting structure below, but permit the continued free-fall acceleration of debris as if it were traveling through nothing more than 1,116 feet of air?
Call 'em crazy, but these are some of the reasons why a growing circle of physicists, engineers, scientists, high ranking government officials and everyday citizens are rejecting the government's "fire initiated collapse" theory. Buildings don't magically disintegrate at free-fall speed...it isn't rocket science. -If it was only a matter of lighting a few strategic fires to bring down high-rise structures (into nice neat little piles) there's little doubt demolition companies around the world would be saving themselves a fortune (per demolition) by doing just that.
In closing, here is a short clip of a "demo gone wrong." Note what happens when only PART of the structure is blown out from under the building.
Video 1 (.mov) Video 2 (.wmv)
The entire Essay (1-Hour Guide to 9/11) can be found here. This essay CAN be copied and distributed for NON profit purposes, provided authorship is noted (Joseph Plummer) and / or a link is provided back to this page. To Print and make copies, please use the PDF file below.
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