WTC Challenge

Originally posted by HowardRoark
Remember also that it wasn't nessessary to melt the steel, just heat it up enough so that it started to buckle. Given the impact damage and the redistribution of building loads as a result of the impact damage, it would not have taken much to critically weaken the structure.

Sorry, thats total bunk.
First it was the Jet Fuel spreading down the elevator shafts and coating the place in fuel creating an inferno, now it's the office fires getting so hot the steel started to 'buckle' and the building was so damaged by the plane that it just couldn't take it anymore. Right.

Forget that firefighters reported containment of fires, forget they reported bombs because although that does fit with NIST saying their test office was ASH in 33 minutes, around the time these firefighters were reporting containment - it won't fit with your story so instead we'll 'ASSUME' that the office fire burnt fast but just not fast enough to allow the integrity of the steel to stand the heat it was well rated beyond because a few floors were damaged so badly that people could stand in the gapping holes after it happened.

In you view it's about steel starting to buckle that brought the towers down on themselves yet buckling steel doesn't give out evenly at all points on all floors so they ALL come down evenly at the same time. Are you suggesting the fire was at an even temperature across the entire building and the steel gave out at the same time? You believe the fires were just by chance exactly pointed on the parts of the floor that needed to give way? For some reason the many tons of steel in the buildings structure didn't spread the heat as anyone that's heated any kind of metal understands?
There was no drooping in the steel? No slowly sagging steel which rested on other parts of the building first that actually lowered the load pressure of a collapsing floor?
No??
The heated steel ignored all of that and just dropped at once in your superior knowledge of physics, science and chemistry??
Come on, have some self respect!

If the 'steel buckling' story is going to fit, you'll have to come up with some mathamatics which can disprove NISTs claim that the buildings came down in 'under 12 seconds' because steel getting soft, buckling and then dropping a floor onto another which is repeated over 90 times until all concrete is reduced to powder and the building collapses on itself, is never going to happen in under 12 seconds when gravity alone can't bring a free falling object to the ground from that height in much less than 10 seconds - Besides the fact it shouldn't happen at all and never has before or after 9/11.

The more we bait you the more holes are becoming clearer in your version of events Howard. You may think we ask dumb questions and you have all the answers but you have no idea what's really going on.

You know that is a particularly callus and insensitive comment to make about a picture of someone who is about to die in a most horrifying manner.

You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself.

And yet why she died, apparently, is not worthy of discussion. After all, this picture is a piece of evidence as to what actually transpired on that day. I don't really think she would mind.



Notice how severe those raging fires are! They surely brought down those entire buildings! Look at the massiveness of that building, and then look at the fires. Then think back to the other steel-framed skyscraper fires. This is virtually common sense.

Yeah it missed the core completely IF IT HAD REMAINED INTACT. You're talking about a plane that blew apart into a lot of pieces, some pretty substantia. They're NOT going to stay in a perfectly straight line and shape of the plane. They're going to go flying in all different directions, bouncing off of things and causing damage to whatever is in their path.

And so now the cores were taken out by bouncing shards of metal? Bouncing shards of debris from a 767, going to take out steel core columns. That's pretty foolhardy, man. The fuselage of the plane was what would have delt any substantial damage. Those core columns were barely scratched.

Originally posted by bsbray11

Actually, the caloric value (or fuel load) of office furnishings, paper, etc. is in the same range as jet fuel.

Can you provide any third-source information to confirm that office furnishings and jet fuel will produce fires of similar outputs of heat energy? That is to say, that a fire fed by the contents of the WTC offices would produce as much heat as a fire fed by jet fuel? I tried looking this up on Google but couldn't find anything to verify it.

You have to google the right terms. Try "fire load" or "Workstation fire test"

irc.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca...

This one Doesn't have a lot of specific data, but it is good in a general sense, Also, I used to have an office in the building on the cover of the report!


about halfway down on this one.


and this one:


The 1-megawatt intensity was chosen to simulate a fire in an office workstation. Recent National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) research indicates such workstation fire energies can typically range from 2 to 6 megawatts.





Burning office workstation rapidly reaches high temperatures. Extracted from Old Wives Tales About Fire Causes and Methods. Tests have shown that as little as seven minutes can elapse between time of open flame to time that a room is brought to flashover conditions. The photographs here illustrate a live-burn conducted by NFPA. Several office fires investigated by our office in New York City and in Atlanta bear out this speed of fire spread.

www.arson-codes.com...

Originally posted by HowardRoark
If you are going to show the picture of the woman, then show the whole picture.

Or watch the video:
italy.indymedia.org...

There's no 'raging' fire. There's a lot of orange flames and black smoke but that's not anything more than an office burning out at a low tempurature.
Fire fighters had the building contained upto the 78th floor

An account by Brian Clark, an 84th floor survivor:
"You could see through the wall and the cracks and see flames just, just licking up, not a roaring inferno, just quiet flames licking up and smoke sort of eking through the wall." BBC Horizon]

www.whatreallyhappened.com...

Transcript of firefighters' tape extract
Excerpts from The Memory Hole transcript

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 (Ambulance needed)."

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."

Battalion Seven Chief: "Tower one. Battalion Seven to Ladder 15.

"Fifteen."

Battalion Seven Chief: "I'm going to need two of your firefighters Adam stairway to knock down two fires. We have a house line stretched we could use some water on it, knock it down, kay."

Ladder 15: "Alright ten-four, we're coming up the stairs. We're on 77 now in the B stair, I'll be right to you."

Battalion Seven Operations Tower One: "Battalion Seven Operations Tower One to Battalion Nine, need you on floor above 79. We have access stairs going up to 79, kay."

Battalion Nine: "Alright, I'm on my way up Orio."

There was no inferno below, in or above the crash site because it burned itself out too quickly, people who were in the building have confirmed this.
The WTC was not brought down by office fires or an impact less than what the building was rated for.

Originally posted by bsbray11

You're right in that the structural damage was already done. The twisting of columns, buckling, etc., because of the fire, I don't buy, and that's where the problem with the official reports arises.

There is no evidence that the fires were ever hot enough, and as I've already stated, there were no widespread shatterings of windows from heat, nor did the fires spread to other floors by any means other than the elevator shaft. If the fires were much above 600 degrees Celsius, the windows would have began to shatter extensively throughout the building, and since no such thing happened, we can therefore conclude that the fires could not have been much hotter than 600 degrees Celsius. That's not hot enough to sufficiently damage this kind of structural steel.

Please if you don't read the NIST report, at least look at the photos, There are a number that clearly show the intensity of the fires on various floors.

There are also clear photos of the progression of damage to the building from the fires, from collapsing floors to bowing exterior columns.

The dry weight of the 767 engines alone are pretty big numbers. The fuselage would have done a lot of the damage but the engines are so heavy they would have done a lot of damage too. On top of that the explosion shockwave would have done some damage.

767 engine weights.
CF6-80A2 8,776 pounds
CF6-80C2B2 9,790
CF6-80A 8,776

Those are just the GE engines. They can choose from Rolls Royce, P&W, and GE, depending on customer choice. Not ALL pieces of wreckage are small pieces of metal. There are cargo containers, engines, large chunks of fuselage that all weigh quite a bit when they come apart. The fuselage would cause the biggest part of the damage, you're right, but not ALL the damage. A four ton engine is going to do quite a bit of damage as well as it bounces around, before it come apart.

Originally posted by bsbray11
However, in the reality of these events, even at the peak temperatures of the fires, they were not doing the characteristic things such temperate fires should do if they were actually at the alleged temperatures. So even if they peaked, and then began cooling, it wouldn't matter because they weren't hot enough anyway. If they were, they would surely have also been hot enough to shatter windows on a large scale and spread to other floors. Those things, of course never happened.

Huh????

Did you look at the NIST report? THey clearly demonstrate the intensity of the fires and the spread from floor to floor.


Don't forget that the floor truss spans were particularly vulnerable to the heat, due to the relatively thin cross section of the chords.

"impact less than what the building was rated for"

How do you figure a 707 impact would be stronger than a 767 impact? The 767 is an all around bigger plane, in just about every area. More weight, bigger fuselage, heavier engines, etc.

How do you figure a 707 impact would be stronger than a 767 impact? The 767 is an all around bigger plane, in just about every area. More weight, bigger fuselage, heavier engines, etc.

I don't. It was stated that the buildings could withstand multiple 707 impacts. More than one 707 = much more weight than a 767. The 707 also had a cruise speed over 70 mph faster than the 767 does.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
"impact less than what the building was rated for"

How do you figure a 707 impact would be stronger than a 767 impact? The 767 is an all around bigger plane, in just about every area. More weight, bigger fuselage, heavier engines, etc.

Besides that, Just who exactly "rated" the building for an aircraft impact?

It is a common fallacy that the building was designed to withstand an aircraft impact. The reality is, after the building was designed, the principle engineer calculated the effect of a low speed impact from a 707. His calculation indicated that the building would survive the impact. He did not, however consider the effect of the subsequent fires in his calculations.

Huh????

Did you look at the NIST report? THey clearly demonstrate the intensity of the fires and the spread from floor to floor.

It's not very complicated. Fires that are much above 600 degree Celsius begin to cause a widespread shattering of windows. If the fires were at the alleged temperatures, they would've had no problem blowing out window after window after window. But that never happened. That alone suggests the fires couldn't have been much hotter than 600 degrees Celsius, unless those buildings used some magic glass.

Besides the windows, if the fires were at the alleged temperatures, they would've also spread to other floors.

Please if you don't read the NIST report, at least look at the photos, There are a number that clearly show the intensity of the fires on various floors.

There are also clear photos of the progression of damage to the building from the fires, from collapsing floors to bowing exterior columns.

Various floors, yes. But those floors all had fires in them since impact. The fires spread to no other floors. Again, if they were really at the alleged temperatures, they would've burned through all sorts of materials and made their way onto other floors of the building besides the ones they started on. Again, fires going down the elevator shaft does not count here. The fires never spread to other floors by their own account.

And the third thing suggesting the fires were never hot enough, is that there was never any steel glowing a dull red. If the steel actually reached alleged temperatures, it would glow a dull red. There was absolutely no footage of a single steel beam that was any color than what it would be under very weak temperatures.

You have to google the right terms. Try "fire load" or "Workstation fire test"

I asked for proof that jet fuel and burning office supplies could produce similar temperatures. I don't understand the mega-watt stuff, quite frankly. You'll also notice that those tests weren't done on WTC offices, apparently. By your own logic, they should therefore be thrown out, since you said that since the fireproofing was knocked off the steel, all evidence on that should be thrown out on that system. It's the testing on all-around industrial steel that gives away the steel would've at least have to have been heated to around 1000 degrees or so.

Don't forget that the floor truss spans were particularly vulnerable to the heat, due to the relatively thin cross section of the chords.

It's too bad that the fires were never that hot anyway, or that might matter a little more.

The dry weight of the 767 engines alone are pretty big numbers. The fuselage would have done a lot of the damage but the engines are so heavy they would have done a lot of damage too. On top of that the explosion shockwave would have done some damage.

767 engine weights.
CF6-80A2 8,776 pounds
CF6-80C2B2 9,790
CF6-80A 8,776

Those are just the GE engines. They can choose from Rolls Royce, P&W, and GE, depending on customer choice. Not ALL pieces of wreckage are small pieces of metal. There are cargo containers, engines, large chunks of fuselage that all weigh quite a bit when they come apart. The fuselage would cause the biggest part of the damage, you're right, but not ALL the damage. A four ton engine is going to do quite a bit of damage as well as it bounces around, before it come apart.

And yet nearly every bit of that missed the core columns of the South Tower.

The claim that the towers could withstand multiple 707s (not by some nut, but by the WTC's own on-site construction manager) throws water onto that anyway. You can find comparisons of a 707 and 767 here:

911research.wtc7.net...

Again, keeping in mind that nearly all of it missed the core columns of the South Tower. Also keep in mind that no matter how big you make out a 767 to be, the core columns of the South Tower are inevitably going to be much bigger, and much sturdier. It's simply in the nature of skyscraper support columns. And even the parts thaht did hit the core columns, only skirted around the edge.

Again,



Even in a worst case scenario, there's not a very large portion of those columns that are going to be knocked out. Your 'bouncing shard of metal' seems to be the best attempt at how those columns could possibly have been damaged very much at all, and it doesn't hold much water. And yet, the buildings both fell the same way. Seems to suggest to me that no matter what happened or did not happen to those columns, the buildings would've somehow came down anyway. Hmm....

Besides that, Just who exactly "rated" the building for an aircraft impact?

As I've already stated, the on-site construction manager of the WTC complex made this claim. I'd say he would know what he was talking about in regards to this; at least much more than any of us.

It is a common fallacy that the building was designed to withstand an aircraft impact. The reality is, after the building was designed, the principle engineer calculated the effect of a low speed impact from a 707. His calculation indicated that the building would survive the impact. He did not, however consider the effect of the subsequent fires in his calculations.

And where exactly did you find his exact "calculations," Howard? Or are you speculating on all of this?

The building was designed to have a fully loaded 707 crash into it. That was the largest plane at the time. I believe that the building probably could sustain multiple impacts of jetliners because this structure is like the mosquito netting on your screen door -- this intense grid -- and the jet plane is just a pencil puncturing that screen netting. It really does nothing to the screen netting.

Those were the construction manager's exact words, Howard. His name was Frank Demartini. Unfortunately, he's been missing since the attacks, as he probably died when the buildings were demolished.

Originally posted by bsbray11

How do you figure a 707 impact would be stronger than a 767 impact? The 767 is an all around bigger plane, in just about every area. More weight, bigger fuselage, heavier engines, etc.

I don't. It was stated that the buildings could withstand multiple 707 impacts. More than one 707 = much more weight than a 767. The 707 also had a cruise speed over 70 mph faster than the 767 does.

Um, no it wasn't. It was stated that it would withstand the impact of A 707. I have never seen ANYWHERE that said it could withstand the impact of MULTIPLE 707s. One of the architects himself said A 707.

"Engineers designed the World Trade Center towers to withstand a collision with A Boeing 707."

"Leslie Robertson designed the structural elements of the WTC towers to withstand the impact of the largest airliner then in service, the Boeing 707.

"With the 707 however, to the best of my knowledge, the fuel load was not considered in the design," he told Horizon."

"In one interview, the architect talked about the fact that he had built the building so that it would withstand an impact from a Boeing 707. When the buildings were built, the 707 was the airliner of choice. He anticipated burning fuel, and impact damage. But there was a caveat, he expected an impact to be from a lost plane trying to find the airport in fog. So the weight of the plane (707) would be lessened, as well as the amount of fuel reduced. They never anticipated flying a fully loaded, fully fuelled plane into a buidling at full speed."

Nowhere does it say it was designed to withstand MULTIPLE impacts. I've watched several tv shows that interviewed designers, and engineers, and EVERY ONE of them said it could withstand the impact of A 707, which at the time of design was the biggest plane flying.

Here's an image showing the colors steel will glow at particular temperatures:



Of which, again, none were even seen on 9/11, be it in close-up photos of the holes in the building, or of falling debris. None.

www.beautifuliron.com...

Originally posted by HowardRoark
The reality is, after the building was designed, the principle engineer calculated the effect of a low speed impact from a 707. His calculation indicated that the building would survive the impact. He did not, however consider the effect of the subsequent fires in his calculations.

Now your just making things up Howard.

Leslie Robertson, one of two engineers who designed the World Trade Center, was in Hong Kong when he first learned of Tuesday’s terrorist attacks.

The buildings were designed specifically to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707—the largest plane flying in 1966, the year they broke ground on the project—and Robertson says it could have survived even the larger 767s that crashed into the towers on Tuesday morning.But the thousands of gallons of burning jet fuel finally brought down the noble structures. “As the fire raged it got hotter and hotter and the steel got weaker and weaker,” he says
msnbc.msn.com...

Here's some more:

LESLIE ROBERTSON: We had designed the project for the impact of the, our largest aeroplane of its time, the, the Boeing 707. That is to take this jet aeroplane, run it into the building, destroy a lot of structure and still have it stand up.
www.bbc.co.uk...

Funny that he assume it must of been the jet fuel and raging fires as of Sept 2003 when this was said and it was generally accepted as the official answer.

Yet now in 2005, NIST are positve that it was not the jet fuel because that burned out straight away and it was infact the raging inferno's of a regular office fire which brought the towers down.

But wait on, we have fireman reporting via radio that they only needed two lines to put out the fire at the impact zone and we have survivors from 10 floors above the impact zone that only saw spot fires. There was a lot of black thick smoke, the type you expect from toxic office furniture smoldering but since when does smoke take out a building?

How many holes does it take to fill the Albert Hall?



[edit on 9-7-2005 by TheShroudOfMemphis]

More building comparisons. This one speaks for itself:

========================================================
The Plane That Crashed Into the Empire State Building
history1900s.about.com...

On the foggy morning of Saturday, July 28, 1945, Lt. Colonel William Smith was piloting a U.S. Army B-25 bomber through New York City. He was on his way to Newark Airport to pick up his commanding officer, but for some reason he showed up over LaGuardia Airport and asked for a weather report. Because of the poor visibility the LaGuardia tower wanted to him to land, but Smith requested and received permission from the military to continue on to Newark. The last transmission from the LaGuardia tower to the plane was a foreboding warning: "From where I'm sitting, I can't see the top of the Empire State Building."1

Confronted with dense fog, Smith dropped the bomber low to regain visibility, where he found himself in the middle of Manhattan, surrounded by skyscrapers. At first, the bomber was headed directly for the New York Central Building but at the last minute, Smith was able to bank west and miss it. Unfortunately, this put him in line for another skyscraper. Smith managed to miss several skyscrapers until he was headed for the Empire State Building. At the last minute, Smith tried to get the bomber to climb and twist away, but it was too late.

At 9:49 a.m., the ten-ton, B-25 bomber smashed into the north side of the Empire State Building. The majority of the plane hit the 79th floor, creating a hole in the building eighteen feet wide and twenty feet high. The plane's high-octane fuel exploded, hurtling flames down the side of the building and inside through hallways and stairwells all the way down to the 75th floor.

World War II had caused many to shift to a six-day work week; thus there were many people at work in the Empire State Building that Saturday. The plane crashed into the offices of the War Relief Services of the National Catholic Welfare Conference. Catherine O'Connor described the crash:

The plane exploded within the building. There were five or six seconds - I was tottering on my feet trying to keep my balance - and three-quarters of the office was instantaneously consumed in this sheet of flame. One man was standing inside the flame. I could see him. It was a co-worker, Joe Fountain. His whole body was on fire. I kept calling to him, "Come on, Joe; come on, Joe." He walked out of it.2

Joe Fountain died several days later. Eleven of the office workers were burned to death, some still sitting at their desks, others while trying to run from the flames.

One of the engines and part of the landing gear hurtled across the 79th floor, through wall partitions and two fire walls, and out the south wall's windows to fall onto a twelve-story building across 33rd Street. The other engine flew into an elevator shaft and landed on an elevator car. The car began to plummet, slowed somewhat by emergency safety devices. Miraculously, when help arrived at the remains of the elevator car in the basement, the two women inside the car were still alive.

Some debris from the crash fell to the streets below, sending pedestrians scurrying for cover, but most fell onto the buildings setbacks at the fifth floor. Still, a bulk of the wreckage remained stuck in the side of the building. After the flames were extinguished and the remains of the victims removed, the rest of the wreckage was removed through the building.

The plane crash killed 14 people (11 office workers and the three crewmen) plus injured 26 others. Though the integrity of the Empire State Building was not affected, the cost of the damage done by the crash was $1 million.

More...
======================================================

Originally posted by TheShroudOfMemphis

There's no 'raging' fire. There's a lot of orange flames and black smoke but that's not anything more than an office burning out at a low tempurature.
Fire fighters had the building contained upto the 78th floor
. . .

There was no inferno below, in or above the crash site because it burned itself out too quickly, people who were in the building have confirmed this.
The WTC was not brought down by office fires or an impact less than what the building was rated for.

According to Chapter 9 of the NIST report on the fires in WTC 2, there were fires from the 79th floor on up. The most intense fires appear to have been located on 81, 83 and 83.

There is clear evidence that portions of the floor slabs of 80 and 81 collapsed during the fire, initiating the global collapse.

The photos also show the severe bowing of the exterior wall between 79 and 80.

"The building was designed to have a fully loaded 707 crash into it. That was the largest plane at the time. I believe that the building probably could sustain multiple impacts of jetliners because this structure is like the mosquito netting on your screen door -- this intense grid -- and the jet plane is just a pencil puncturing that screen netting. It really does nothing to the screen netting."

I'm glad to see that the construction manager thinks that. Too bad the ARCHITECTS said that it would withstand ONE 707 impact. You would think that the guys that designed the building would have a good idea of what it could withstand.

Because we all know that a B-25, which is MAYBE HALF the size of a 767, slamming into a solid concrete building, at bout HALF the speed will cause as much damage. Apples and Oranges with that one. Much smaller airplane, at a lower speed, into a totally differently constructed building.

Frank Demartini, on-site construction manager of the WTC complex, said the following, and I quote (and you can verify this with Google),

"The building was designed to have a fully loaded 707 crash into it. That was the largest plane at the time. I believe that the building probably could sustain multiple impacts of jetliners because this structure is like the mosquito netting on your screen door -- this intense grid -- and the jet plane is just a pencil puncturing that screen netting. It really does nothing to the screen netting."

Um, no it wasn't. It was stated that it would withstand the impact of A 707. I have never seen ANYWHERE that said it could withstand the impact of MULTIPLE 707s. One of the architects himself said A 707.

You can now no longer say that.

Yes I can. Because THE ARCHITECT stated that it could withstand ONE 707 impact. And he says "I BELIEVE it could withstand multiple impacts." Believing, and designing for are two different things. The architect designed it to withstand ONE impact, of a plane that was smaller than the one that hit the buildings.

[edit on 9-7-2005 by Zaphod58]