So still think the towers were brought down without bombs?

[ChumpDumper]

Well, technically, at that point they were no longer rescuers.

Well, technically, why did you use the word rescuers?

And you still have no idea when that picture was taken.

[Nbadan]

Why do you keep bringing up a building that is only one seventh the height of 7WTC and has a completely different construction? There is no way to compare the two whatsoever.

What? you think that taller buildings are naturally weaker, but that's not necessarily the case. There were support columns at all ends of WTC7, besides the penthouse's dropping first is a clear indication of catastrophic internal column failure, but no one here has provided a realistic scenario of how that could have come about.

[Nbadan]

Two mechanical penthouses falling on top of columns hundreds of feet below that had already been weakened by other falling debris, fire and transformer explosions -- yeah, that's a crazy scenario alright.

What was your scenario again?

Maybe, but the penthouses clearly went first.

[Nbadan]

Let's look at other tall building fires:

Exhibit C:

Catastrophic fire, no collapse

[Phenomanul]

Let's look at other tall building fires:

Exhibit C:

Catastrophic fire, no collapse

OK let's go through this again....

WTC7
Fire: Check
Major Structural Damage: Check
High Center of Gravity: Check
Collapse: Yes

Murrah Building
Fire: Check
Major Structural Damage: Check
High Center of Gravity: No
Collapse: No

Building in 'Exhibit C'
Fire: Check
Major Structural Damage: ??? (not likely otherwise we would know about it)
High Center of Gravity: Check
Collapse: No


Any Questions???

[FromWayDowntown]

[narrator] Here's another fine example of how the conspiracy theorist dodges an important question by simply pretending that it was never asked [/narrator]

[ChumpDumper]

What? you think that taller buildings are naturally weaker, but that's not necessarily the case.

I think a building with 47 floors is heavier than one with 7 floors. If you won't acknowledge the fires in the north side of 7 WTC, would you at least acknowledge that 7 WTC is larger than the Murrah building?

There were support columns at all ends of WTC7, besides the penthouse's dropping first is a clear indication of catastrophic internal column failure, but no one here has provided a realistic scenario of how that could have come about.

North tower falls into 7 WTC, damaging internal columns on upper floors and lower floors -- eyewitness accounts cite holes deep in the building all down its southern face. Fires throughout the building further weaken the structure. Weakened upper internal columns can no longer support the load transferred to them from the damaged ones and the mechanical penthouse collapses into the building, knocking out all manner of columns on the way down, preciptating a total collapse that begins in the originally damaged south side of the building and the building falls in that direction.

Now I'm no engineer, but that seems just as plausible if not moreso than any conspiracy theory you haven't come up with. I say you haven't come up with any because your half-assed conjectures don't even merit the le of theory. You never come up with suspects, motive, means -- anything that a real theory would require.

[xrayzebra]

I cant believe this thread is still going on. This subject has
been hashed and rehashed at least four times that I can
remember right off hand.

[ChumpDumper]

Maybe, but the penthouses clearly went first.

Right, that's exactly what I said. There's no need to restate my argument.

[ChumpDumper]

Well, here's another guy that probably isn't a structural engineer -- he's only a firefighter who was at the scene at 7 WTC.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HLDgjYuRHk

I'll go ahead and quote him since you probably won't click the link:

"You see where the white smoke is? You see this thing leaning like this? It's definitely coming down. There's no way to stop it. Cause you have to go up in there to put it out and it already - the structural integrity is just not there in the building. It's tough, it's.. it's.. You know we can handle just about anything, this is beyond..."

If this guy and all the other firefighters knew this building was going to come down by itself without the aid of explosives and got the out of the way hours before it happened, why would any explosives be needed to bring it down?

This is the most basic common sense question that has to be answered by anyone who is going to refute the firefighters who were there at the scene.

[FromWayDowntown]

[narrator]Again, we see a perfect example of how the conspiracy theorists cut and run when their arguments are debunked; they lay in wait, hoping for another day to offer their unfounded contentions, praying that the voices of reason will be unaware of their attempts to sway the gullible.[/narrator]

[Nbadan]

I think a building with 47 floors is heavier than one with 7 floors. If you won't acknowledge the fires in the north side of 7 WTC, would you at least acknowledge that 7 WTC is larger than the Murrah building?

Blah, the fires you posted are insignificant. Show me a fire like the fire in the building that I posted and I might start to believe you. Why have you ignored my question about there not appearing to be fire below the 10th floor?

[johnsmith]

Blah, the fires you posted are insignificant. Show me a fire like the fire in the building that I posted and I might start to believe you. Why have you ignored my question about there not appearing to be fire below the 10th floor?

Why haven't you answered half of the questions directed towards you in this thread?

I'm beginning to believe that it was actually Dan that brought the towers down on that day and he's trying to cover it up now.


Hey, it's as believable as his side of the story.

[Nbadan]

Well, here's another guy that probably isn't a structural engineer -- he's only a firefighter who was at the scene at 7 WTC.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HLDgjYuRHk

I'll go ahead and quote him since you probably won't click the link:

"You see where the white smoke is? You see this thing leaning like this? It's definitely coming down. There's no way to stop it. Cause you have to go up in there to put it out and it already - the structural integrity is just not there in the building. It's tough, it's.. it's.. You know we can handle just about anything, this is beyond..."

Ok, but he really didn't qualify what he meant in his statement by 'it's coming down', did he mean the entire building's coming down, or just that southern end of the building that appears to have received most of the fascade damage from falling Tower debris. Why didn't any of the building surrounding WTC7 collapse? Don't you think they would have received equally catastrophic damage?

[johnsmith]

Ok, but he really didn't qualify what he meant in his statement by 'it's coming down', did he mean the entire building's coming down, or just that southern end of the building that appears to have received most of the facade damage from falling debris.

What questions are those?

Oh, wait, you were serious on that?

[Nbadan]

Oh, wait, you were serious on that?

No, it's all context Johnny, if you know politics, you should know that by now.

[xrayzebra]

Give it a rest dan. You lost the argument.
Not just once but how many damn times.

[Nbadan]

[narrator]Again, we see a perfect example of how the conspiracy theorists cut and run when their arguments are debunked; they lay in wait, hoping for another day to offer their unfounded contentions, praying that the voices of reason will be unaware of their attempts to sway the gullible.[/narrator]

Man, I'm with you most of the time FWD,T but no-one has debunked anything here yet.

[ChumpDumper]

Ok, but he really didn't qualify what he meant in his statement by 'it's coming down', did he mean the entire building's coming down, or just that southern end of the building that appears to have received most of the fascade damage from falling Tower debris.

Are you kidding me?

Here's part of an interview with a fireman from Ladder Company 22:

They told us to get out of there because they were
worried about 7 World Trade Center, which is right behind [the Verizon building],
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.
That's when they let the guys go in. I just remember we
started searching around all the rigs.

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html...ki_Richard.txt

Here's the Chief of Department:

The most important operational decision to be made that
afternoon was the collapse had damaged 7 World Trade
Center, which is about a 50 story building, at Vesey
between West Broadway and Washington Street. It had very
heavy fire on many floors and I ordered the evacuation of
an area sufficient around to protect our members, so we
had to give up some rescue operations that were going on
at the time and back the people away far enough so that if
7 World Trade did collapse, we wouldn't lose any more
people.

We continued to operate on what we could from
that distance and approximately an hour and a half after
that order was given, at 5:30 in the afternoon, World
Trade Center collapsed completely.

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html...gro_Daniel.txt

Here's Chief Frank Cruthers:

A. ....Early on, there was concern that 7 World Trade Center might have been both impacted by the collapsing tower and had several fires in it and there was a concern that it might collapse. So we instructed that a collapse area --

Q. A collapse zone?

A. Yeah -- be set up and maintained so that when the expected collapse of 7 happened, we wouldn't have people working in it.

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html...C/Cruthers.txt

Here's part of a Firehouse magazine interview with FDNY Captain Cris Boyle:

Firehouse: Did that chief give an assignment to go to building 7?

Boyle: He gave out an assignment. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but he told the chief that we were heading down to the site.

Firehouse: How many companies?

Boyle: There were four engines and at least three trucks. So we’re heading east on Vesey, we couldn’t see much past Broadway. We couldn’t see Church Street. We couldn’t see what was down there. It was really smoky and dusty."

"A little north of Vesey I said, we’ll go down, let’s see what’s going on. A couple of the other officers and I were going to see what was going on. We were told to go to Greenwich and Vesey and see what’s going on. So we go there and on the north and east side of 7 it didn’t look like there was any damage at all, but then you looked on the south side of 7 there had to be a hole 20 stories tall in the building, with fire on several floors. Debris was falling down on the building and it didn’t look good.

But they had a hoseline operating. Like I said, it was hitting the sidewalk across the street, but eventually they pulled back too. Then we received an order from Fellini, we’re going to make a move on 7. That was the first time really my stomach tightened up because the building didn’t look good. I was figuring probably the standpipe systems were shot. There was no hydrant pressure. I wasn’t really keen on the idea. Then this other officer I’m standing next to said, that building doesn’t look straight. So I’m standing there. I’m looking at the building. It didn’t look right, but, well, we’ll go in, we’ll see.

So we gathered up rollups and most of us had masks at that time. We headed toward 7. And just around we were about a hundred yards away and Butch Brandies came running up. He said forget it, nobody’s going into 7, there’s creaking, there are noises coming out of there, so we just stopped. And probably about 10 minutes after that, Visconti, he was on West Street, and I guess he had another report of further damage either in some basements and things like that, so Visconti said nobody goes into 7, so that was the final thing and that was abandoned.

Firehouse: When you looked at the south side, how close were you to the base of that side?

Boyle: I was standing right next to the building, probably right next to it.

Firehouse: When you had fire on the 20 floors, was it in one window or many?

Boyle: There was a huge gaping hole and it was scattered throughout there. It was a huge hole. I would say it was probably about a third of it, right in the middle of it. And so after Visconti came down and said nobody goes in 7, we said all right, we’ll head back to the command post. We lost touch with him. I never saw him again that day.

http://www.firehouse.com/terrorist/9.../gz/boyle.html

They also interviewed deputy Chief Peter Hayden:

Hayden: Yeah. There was enough there and we were marking off. There were a lot of damaged apparatus there that were covered. We tried to get searches in those areas. By now, this is going on into the afternoon, and we were concerned about additional collapse, not only of the Marriott, because there was a good portion of the Marriott still standing, but also we were pretty sure that 7 World Trade Center would collapse. Early on, we saw a bulge in the southwest corner between floors 10 and 13, and we had put a transit on that and we were pretty sure she was going to collapse. You actually could see there was a visible bulge, it ran up about three floors. It came down about 5 o’clock in the afternoon, but by about 2 o’clock in the afternoon we realized this thing was going to collapse.

Firehouse: Was there heavy fire in there right away?

Hayden: No, not right away, and that’s probably why it stood for so long because it took a while for that fire to develop. It was a heavy body of fire in there and then we didn’t make any attempt to fight it. That was just one of those wars we were just going to lose. We were concerned about the collapse of a 47-story building there. We were worried about additional collapse there of what was remaining standing of the towers and the Marriott, so we started pulling the people back after a couple of hours of surface removal and searches along the surface of the debris. We started to pull guys back because we were concerned for their safety.

Firehouse: Chief Nigro said they made a collapse zone and wanted everybody away from number 7— did you have to get all of those people out?

Hayden: Yeah, we had to pull everybody back. It was very difficult. We had to be very forceful in getting the guys out. They didn’t want to come out. There were guys going into areas that I wasn’t even really comfortable with, because of the possibility of secondary collapses. We didn’t know how stable any of this area was. We pulled everybody back probably by 3 or 3:30 in the afternoon. We said, this building is going to come down, get back. It came down about 5 o’clock or so, but we had everybody backed away by then.

http://www.firehouse.com/terrorist/9...gz/hayden.html

Also from Firehouse:

WTC Building 7 appears to have suffered significant damage at some point after the WTC Towers had collapsed, according to firefighters at the scene. Firefighter Butch Brandies tells other firefighters that nobody is to go into Building 7 because of creaking and noises coming out of there. [Firehouse Magazine, 8/02]

Battalion Chief John Norman later recalls, "At the edge of the south face you could see that it is very heavily damaged." [Firehouse Magazine, 5/02]

Heavy, thick smoke rises near 7 World Trade Center. Smoke is visible from the upper floors of the 47-story building. Firefighters using transits to determine whether there was any movement in the structure were surprised to discover that is was moving. The area was evacuated and the building collapsed later in the afternoon of Sept. 11.

http://www.firehouse.com/911/magazine/towers.html

Now do you want me to add links to the videos of the Aaron Brown saying the building has collapsed or will collapse and Brian Williams saying what we have feared would happen has happened the moment after it did go down?

Or is this enough to convince you?

[ChumpDumper]

Why didn't any of the building surrounding WTC7 collapse? Don't you think they would have received equally catastrophic damage?

Here's the Banker's Trust building that was across the street from the south tower:



Fortunately, it didn't catch fire and was contructed completely differently too boot.

Here's the Verizon building which was next to 7 WTC:



Stuff hit it. Just not as much.

Here's the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center to the west:



So other buildings were damaged.

[FromWayDowntown]

Man, I'm with you most of the time FWD,T but no-one has debunked anything here yet.

I don't buy that.

You offer nothing but idle speculation dan, which strikes me as being unsupported by and wholly contrary to the plentiful known and objective facts about the condition of the buildings on 9/11 and the physics that will support collapse in those cir stances.

You conflate the many factors that went into the collapse of the Twin Towers into a singular argument that fire hasn't brought down a steel structure -- you somehow ignore the fact that nobody is arguing that the collapse was caused entirely by fire.

You state, as facts supporting your unsubstantiated opinions, things that have been affirmatively disproven by photographic evidence in this thread. Rather than acknowledging that, you simply change the "facts" upon which you are relying.

It's easy to say that something remains possible (or that it hasn't been debunked) if you take that sort of a stilted view of the facts or refuse to accept the consequences that flow from things that are proveable.

It's easier still when you don't make any argument whatsoever and rely on innuendo that changes with each page of posts.

[Nbadan]

Let's see what the scientists say...

NIST "anticipated that a draft report will be released by early 2007".[8][9] NIST released a progress report in June 2004, outlining its working hypothesis, which was that a local failure in a critical column, caused by damage from either fire or falling debris from the collapses of the two towers, progressed first vertically and then horizontally to result in "a disproportionate collapse of the entire structure".[10][11] In a New York magazine interview in March 2006, Dr S. Shyam Sunder, NIST's lead WTC disaster investigator, said, of 7 World Trade Center, "We are studying the horizontal movement east to west, internal to the structure, on the fifth to seventh floors”; he added "But truthfully, I don’t really know. We’ve had trouble getting a handle on Building No. 7".[12]

Despite FEMA's preliminary finding that fire caused the collapse, conspiracy theorists believe the collapse was the result of a controlled demolition. When asked about controlled demolition theories, Dr. Sunder said, "We consulted 80 public-sector experts and 125 private-sector experts. It is a Who’s Who of experts. People look for other solutions. As scientists, we can’t worry about that. Facts are facts."[13] In answer to the question of whether "a controlled[-]demolition hypothesis is being considered to explain the collapse", NIST said that, "[w]hile NIST has found no evidence of a blast or controlled demolition event, it would like to determine the magnitude of hypothetical blast scenarios that could have led to the structural failure of one or more critical elements."[9]

As reported by the New York Times,[14] the building had had some extreme renovative work done to it in 1989 to accommodate the needs of a new major tenant, the brokerage firm Salomon Brothers. Most of three existing floors were removed as tenants continued to occupy other floors, and then more than 350 (US) tons of steel were added to construct three double-height trading floors. Nine diesel generators were also installed on the fifth floor as part of a back-up power station. "Essentially, Salomon is constructing a building within a building - and it's an occupied building, which complicates the situation," said a district manager of Silverstein Properties. The unusual task was possible, said Larry Silverstein, because it was designed to allow for "entire portions of floors to be removed without affecting the building's structural integrity, on the assumption that someone might need double-height floors

WIKIPEDIA

[Nbadan]

Let's see what Scholars say about WTC7:

Another expert at the hearings, Glenn Corbett, a fire science expert from John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, stated, "The lack of significant amounts of steel for examination will make it difficult, if not impossible, to make a definitive statement as to the specific cause and chronology of the collapse." Investigators at the time stated that they did not have the authority to preserve the wreckage as evidence.

Public access to blueprints of the three destroyed skyscrapers - the Twin Towers and WTC Building 7 - has been a long-standing goal of the 9/11 research community. The inability to access data on the structural design of the buildings has been an impediment to further investigation of the theory, these researchers say. One goal they have is to remodel the collapses and see if NIST's findings can be replicated.

"A key element of the scientific method is reproducibility - can others repeat the experiment and get the same results?" Jim Hoffman said, investigator and creator of www.wtc7.net . "Without the original data, findings cannot be examined scientifically. Even the most prominent scientists and engineers in history have made mistakes. But without the ability to try to replicate others' findings, we might keep on making the same mistakes over and over."

Groups releasing the plans cite support for the demolition theory in their organizations and elsewhere by a variety of professionals including structural and civil engineers, architects, and physicists. Supporters point to several features which they say cannot be explained by a gravity-driven collapse, including the speed, symmetry, explosiveness, thoroughness of pulverization, and totality of these events, and numerous reports of molten metal pools in the debris piles.

The research of physicist Steven E. Jones has focused on the molten metal pools found in basement areas under rubble piles of the Twin Towers and Building 7. He states in his paper "Why Indeed Did the World Trade Center Buildings Completely Collapse," that the observations of molten metal "are consistent with the use of high-temperature cutter charges such as thermite . . . routinely used to melt/cut/demolish steel."

Neither of the government-sponsored engineering studies of the Twin Towers' destruction - FEMA's and NIST's - disclose core column dimensions - dimensions now apparent in the blueprints. Hoffman believes these studies minimized the strength of the cores and their structural role, as did the Commission Report. "The Commission Report denied the existence of the core columns," he says, "describing each Tower's structural core as 'a hollow steel shaft.'"

Hoffman says that the newly released blueprints show what analysis of independent investigators have long held on the basis of construction photographs and scattered reports in journals, such as the Engineering News Record, from the era of the Towers' construction: "The Towers contained 47 large core columns, more than a dozen of which retained dimensions of 54 x 22 inches through the 66th floor, and tapered in stages on higher floors. The core columns around the South Tower's crash zone were about twice as heavy as those in the North Tower's crash zone."

Hoffman's associate editor, Gregg Roberts, sees the NIST Final Report as a whitewash. "The refusal by NIST to fully disclose its computer models, its assumptions, and the conflicts of interest of the many defense contractors who assisted in this whitewash of an investigation reveal the true intentions behind the Report."

Groups investigating the Towers' destruction also cite the case of the collapse of WTC Building 7. In 2004 during the 9/11 Commission hearings, the 9/11 Family Steering Committee (FSC) asked of the Commission, "On 9/11, no aircraft hit WTC 7. Why did the building fall at 5:20 PM that evening?" The group formed in the fall of 2001 to demand an independent investigation into the attacks. However, 70 percent of the questions were either not sufficiently addressed or not addressed at all by the Commission. NIST has not yet released a final report on the proposed cause for the collapse of WTC 7, nor did the Commission mention that building in its Final Report. The newly released blueprints do not include WTC 7, built 10 years after the main World Trade Center complex.

Dr. Steven Jones has described the type of investigation he would like to see. He states in his paper, "A truly independent, cross-disciplinary, international panel should be formed. Such a panel would consider all viable hypotheses, including the pre-positioned-explosives theory, guided not by politicized notions and constraints, but rather by observations and calculations, to reach a scientific conclusion."

Critics of the Bush Administration's secretive policies have claimed that the alternative accounts of the attack have thrived in part because of the lack of information such as the WTC blueprints.

Scholars for 911 truth and justice

[ChumpDumper]

Why is your answer to everything changing the subject?

I just gave you SEVEN eyewitness accounts saying they thought the building was going to collapse. what do you do in reponse? Give some writing from a physics professor who was in Utah on 9/11.

I want you to comment on the six additional eyewitness accounts from firemen on the scene.

[Extra Stout]

Did you actually read that, or just cherry-pick for things that kind of sounded a little bit like what you wanted to believe? Because Dr. Sunder just destroys you.

"We consulted 80 public-sector experts and 125 private-sector experts. It is a Who’s Who of experts. People look for other solutions. As scientists, we can’t worry about that. Facts are facts."

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

it was designed to allow for "entire portions of floors to be removed without affecting the building's structural integrity, on the assumption that someone might need double-height floors

Interestingly, dan, a floor is not the same thing as a support column. First of all, floors are horizontal. In a skyscraper, they are stacked up one on top of another. Meanwhile, support columns are vertical. They support the weight of things like floors, because there is a force between masses called gravity that tends to make things like floors fall towards the earth.

So far, other posters have been discussing how these columns had been compromised, leading to collapse; here, you have gotten the columns confused with floors. I hope my explanation clears that up.