9/11 Really Was A Conspiracy… But Not Like That: New York
The Twin Towers
“Controlled demolition” are the words of choice for many who don’t believe the damage done by the planes crashing into the buildings and the ensuing fires were enough to bring down the towers. Is this claim supported the evidence? In order to know we’ll have to consider a few basic facts. Though there were some initial rumblings in the initial 9/11 truth crowd about what actually hit the towers on September 11, 2001 few now disagree that a Boeing 767 hit each one of the Twin Towers which had a steel frame. Steel melts at 2732° Fahrenheit (1500°C) and despite being started by jet fuel the fires couldn’t have reached these temperatures say some doubters[1]. They claim without temperatures of near this level being reached the steel would have maintained structural integrity despite the structural damage indisputably done by the planes that crashed into the towers.
Well the first part is actually agreed upon, the fires didn’t reach temperatures required to melt steel, but they wouldn’t have to in order to bring down the building. What would need to happen to bring down the building from the fire and initial structural damage is the steel frame be sufficiently weakened to expand causing the trusses to sag before that compromise would bow the columns inward causing collapse. After the collapse began a process known as pancaking would begin cause the floors above to slam into those below with progressively more weight leading to what some have seen as giving the impression of a demolition [2]. Official estimates suggest the fires rose as high as 1800°F (1000°C) a temperature well above which the steel columns would have lost most of their strength and at which the heat would deform materials putting additional pressure on the already weakened strained support columns supporting additional weight because of the damage done by the initial collision[3]. Even if you argue it never made it near 1800°F you can literally see that this process of steel weakening leading to floors sagging in pictures like the one below so it’s very difficult to argue this process was not happening.
You can read all about the details of progressive collapse in a peer reviewed paper released by Northwestern University civil engineers in which they concluded that the impact damage of the planes, sagging floor trusses and buckling of some columns due to the ensuing fires resulted in the upper part of towers falling at least one floor height which caused the collapse of the entire building [4]. Additionally Purdue University, with the help of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and The Energetic Materials and Research and Testing Center respectively created a detailed model of the tower collision and ran a real experiment with a steel beam in a jet fuel fire during the National Geographic program 9/11: Science and Conspiracy which both supported the conclusions of the official story[5]. It’s also worth noting some point to buildings like the Madrid Windsor Building which didn’t completely collapse under much longer exposure to fire but not only didn’t it not have the structural damage of the towers it didn’t have a complete steel frame like the towers and the steel frames it did have collapsed[6].
Some people, like physicist Steven E. Jones, still dismiss this evidence insisting nano-thermite was used to bring down the buildings and even claims to have some debris from the site which has the remnants of thermite damage[7]. Thermite, for those who don’t know, is usually composed of aluminum and iron-oxide, otherwise known as rust. Besides the debris he cites admittedly not being from the official collection, meaning there’s no way to verify it actually came from the site or has never been tampered with, he would have to establish that there is no way that could have been there as a natural result of the materials at the site which he hasn’t done this. Moreover the hypothesis of a controlled demolition has been ruled impossible by a different peer reviewed paper published in the Journal of Engineering Mechanics which labeled the idea as “absurd” because of it’s failure to, among other things, fit the video and seismic records, the spread of dust and the loud noises heard during the collapse of the towers[8].
In brief not only do with know that official story of the buildings collapse does fit the evidence and has stood up to testing we know with certainty that the towers were not brought down by demolition.
World Trade Center 7
There’s no denying the collapse of WTC 7 was initially viewed as a mystery. Even though no one disputes the building was indeed struck by debris from the collapse of the towers why exactly would a building so far away from the towers collapse so long after the towers themselves collapsed? It’s often claimed that there simply wasn’t enough damage to the building or the fires inside weren’t large enough to bring down the building and therefore it must have been intentionally demolished. People who say this often show photos revealing limited damage to the building but this is misleading as there are plenty pictures, like the one below, which show the building to have sustained very heavy damage and smoke coming out of nearly the entire south face (building 7 is the red building).
Clearly this is not minor damage but unfortunately due to the focus on the towers there are very few images of the initial damage the building suffered before the fires and few shots of the hole in the building but there are many quotes by those nearby which support the claim there was substantial damage done and that firefighters knew it would collapse long before it did [9][10].
Then we found out, I guess around 3:00 [o’clock], that they thought 7 was going to collapse. So, of course, [we’ve] got guys all in this pile over here and the main concern was get everybody out, and I guess it took us over an hour and a half, two hours to get everybody out of there. (Q. Initially when you were there, you had said you heard a few Maydays?) Oh, yes. We had Maydays like crazy…. The heat must have been tremendous. There was so much [expletive] fire there. This whole pile was burning like crazy. Just the heat and the smoke from all the other buildings on fire, you [couldn’t] see anything. So it took us a while and we ended up backing everybody out, and [that’s] when 7 collapsed…. Basically, we fell back for 7 to collapse, and then we waited a while and it got a lot more organized, I would guess. - William Ryan
They told us to get out of there because they were worried about 7 World Trade Center, which is right behind it, coming down. We were up on the upper floors of the Verizon building looking at it. You could just see the whole bottom corner of the building was gone. We could look right out over to where the Trade Centers were because we were that high up. Looking over the smaller buildings. I just remember it was tremendous, tremendous fires going on. Finally they pulled us out. They said all right, get out of that building because that 7, they were really worried about. They pulled us out of there and then they regrouped everybody on Vesey Street, between the water and West Street. They put everybody back in there. Finally it did come down. From there - this is much later on in the day, because every day we were so worried about that building we didn’t really want to get people close. They were trying to limit the amount of people that were in there. Finally it did come down. - Richard Banaciski
This second quote also highlights the falsehoods around the term “pull” which have sprung up about WTC 7. Every time that term comes up in relation to WTC 7 being pulled down it has always taken out of context and is either actually being used about the fire department pulling it’s firefighters out of a building in fear of collapse or being used to describe what is happening after September 11th to an entirely different building (as seen in the video below).
This evidence is all pointing in the direction that not only was WTC 7 extensively damaged but it was feared to come down long before it actually did but that doesn’t explain how it actually did come down. However a fairly brief peer-reviewed analysis published in Structure magazine does saying that though several factors including the damage and the fires contributed to the collapse the destruction of a single column in the wrong place lead to the fall of the entire building[11]. Additionally the controlled demolition hypothesis suffers from the same issues of no reports of loud explosions which the claims about the towers suffer from while the video evidence of the collapse fits the analysis provided by Structure magazine as the east penthouse on top of the building, the location of the critical missing column, begins to fall well before the rest of the building.
Conclusions
Ultimately not only are the official stories sound but the major claims made by “doubters of the official story” about both the Twin Towers and WTC 7 turn out to be false or misleading. The tangible evidence doesn’t just suggest that official version of events may be correct, it necessitates that it is and this is all done without conjecture or allusion to possible motives of anyone involved. All of this ignores the illogical nature of flying planes into a building if you are going to use a demolition to bring it down and why a proposed demolition on WTC 7 would be done hours after the collapse of the others and many other issues of plausibility regarding these ideas which I’ll address on Sunday when I look at proposed schemes.
Next time I’ll take a Look at Flight 93 and the Pentagon.
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Sources
[1] Edgar, Thomas and Christopher Musso, Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse? Science, Engineering and Speculation, http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/0112/eagar/eagar-0112.html
[2] Popular Mechanics, 9/11 Conspiracy Theories - Debunking the Myths - World Trade Center, http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/news/debunking-911-myths-world-trade-center#steel
[3] FEMA, Limited Metallurgical Examination, http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_apc.pdf
[4] Bazant, Zdenek P. and Mathieu Verdeu, Mechanics of Progressive Collapse http://www.debunking911.com/ProgressiveCollapseWTC-6-23-2006.pdf
[5] National Geographic, 9/11: Science and Conspiracy, http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/9-11-science-and-conspiracy-4067/conspiracy-vs-science#tab-conspiracy-vs-science
[6]The Concrete Centre, The Madrid Windsor Building Fire, http://www.concretecentre.com/default.aspx?page=823
[7] Steven E. Jones, Why Indeed Did the WTC Completely Collapse?, http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200609/WhyIndeedDidtheWorldTradeCenterBuildingsCompletelyCollapse.pdf
[8] Bazant et al, What Did and Did not Cause Collapse of WTC Twin Towers in New York, http://wtc7lies.googlepages.com/Bazant_WTC_Collapse_What_Did__Did_No.pdf
[9] Ryan, William - Interview, http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/Ryan_William.txt
[10] Banaciski, Richard - Interview, http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/Banaciski_Richard.txt
[11]Structure Magazine, Single Point of Failure, http://www.structuremag.org/Archives/2007-11/SF-WTC7-Gilsanz-Nov07.pdf
