New 911 Footage - Visible Explosion at World Trade Center up close

reply to post by boondock-saint

Has anybody seen the movie backdraft?
If this man had been inside that office
with the door closed and that window was
broken out and there was an oxygen
starved fire on the other side of that
door and the man opened the door,
it could have caused that very effect,
ejected what was standing behind the door
out the window. Which in this case was
the man who opened the door.

I haven't seen the movie backdraft. Could you please explain the physics behind this? My first intuition was that an oxygen starved fire would suck a new source of oxygen into it rather than away from it.

Also, where did the large volume of dust come from?

Remember that the person waving his/her jacket about is standing very near to a jet-fuel fire hot enough to "weaken" steel girders and cause a 'pancake' collapse of equal force at all four corners of the building. Swamp gas? Weather Balloon? Chinese Lantern? Coincidence?

I just bet he/she was wearing some kind of protective fire suit, and was able to wave the jacket around because they were protected by the suit. Otherwise, they'd have been incinerated. Or something.

reply to post by boondock-saint

Wow. Who would have thought I'd be agreeing with you?




It does look to be a man, in a dark business suit.

reply to post by Badgered1


No, he would have had a few walls, windows, and doors between him and the fire. The smoke would have been first, which is all you see in any of the windows broken at or near that level. The smoke would have killed him before the fire would have gotten into that office. And then the heat.
Considering his choice was to either breathe deep to get it over with quickly or jump to have a few moments of life more is beyond "too terrible to comprehend".

reply to post by Azp420

Well, the physics of the burst window is the difference in air pressure. Hot gasses expand.
The fire sucking back is a "backdraft," but I think the oxygen is just a "bonus".
Think of the slo-movies of the A-Bomb experiments. The house, car, trees, or whatever are blown away from the blast, then are blown back the other way, as gasses rush back into the lower air pressure zone caused by the blast. Blast and backdraft.
Don't know how real time you are, but the NatGeo channel show on is a reconstruction of London housing during the Bombing raids. Looks similar to the Abomb films.

I'm really not sure I'm buying into the whole hallway office fire has so much pressure build up that if you open the office door you'll be blown across the office and out the window theory.

Seriously.

Also if that were the case, surely the room would have filled with smoke which would have continuously and slowly streamed out after the initial burst.

Isn't it amazing how the twin towers seem to have an endless supply of air pressure both before and during collapse?

Double post. :S