\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/td><\/tr><\/table>
\r\nThe Collapse: An Engineer's Perspective
\r\nThis piece by \"professor\" Eagar and student Musso has to be some sort of record for the greatest number of lies, and points of misdirection, ever strung together in an \"engineering\" article. Comment is highlighted in red.\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\nIt wasn't until Dr. Thomas Eagar saw Building 7 of the World Trade Center implode late on the afternoon of September 11th that he understood what had transpired structurally earlier that day as the Twin Towers disintegrated. A professor of materials engineering and engineering systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Eagar went on to write an influential paper in the journal of the Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society entitled \"Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse? Science, Engineering, and Speculation\" (JOM,<\/i> December 2001). In this interview, Eagar explains the structural failure, what can be done within existing skyscrapers to improve safety, and what he believes the most likely terrorist targets of the future may be.\r\n
\r\nOn the left above, is an animated graphic of the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7. This is clearly a controlled demolition. I guess that Eagar realized this too, and concluded that the twin towers were also deliberately demolished. This is probably what he meant when he said that seeing Building 7 implode lead him to understood what had transpired structurally earlier that day as the Twin Towers disintegrated. However, he is not allowed to tell you this. So he produces this piece of misinformation to mislead you. On the right is a graphic of the initial north tower collapse. As you can see, Eagar is correct, both collapses are remarkably similar. Click on the pictures for further information.\r\n
\r\n\r\n| \r\n<\/td><\/tr> | \r\nAnimation of a floor truss in the World Trade Center giving way.\r\n<\/td><\/tr><\/table>\r\nEagar claims that the collapse of the twin towers was primarily due to failure of certain structural components (pictured in the animated graphic on the left) used to support sections of the concrete floor slabs. He refers to them as trusses. However, the word truss generally refers to the diagonal reinforcement of a rectangular frame, and so can be applied to a wide variety of structures. The items in question, are more correctly called \"open web joists\" or \"bar joists\".\r\n
\r\nEagar supposes, contrary to all evidence, that the fires at the World Trade Center on September 11 were so incredibly hot that the trusses softened and failed as indicated in the animated graphic. It is of utmost importance to his theory, that the fires were considerably hotter than your average office fire, as your average office fire was (by law) considered and planned for by the building designers and, of course, they designed a structure that would not collapse in such a fire. \r\n
\r\nOn February 23 1975, their design was put to the test. For on that day an intense fire broke out on the 11th floor of the north tower of the World Trade Center. The fire subsequently spread down to the 9th and up to the 19th floor, but this fire did not cause failure of the trusses (or any other major structural feature). Here is a quote from a news report:\r\n
\r\n\"The fire department on arrival (at the World Trade Center) found a very intense fire. There were 125 firemen involved in fighting this fire and 28 sustained injuries from the intense heat and smoke. The cause of the fire is unknown.\"<\/i>\r\n
\r\nA fatal flaw in Eagar's theory, is that the tops of the trusses were embedded in the concrete slab, so even if a truss was heated to the point of failure, even if it was dripping molten steel, the concrete slab would still hold the truss up and it could not possibly fall as indicated in the animation. If one truss failed, its load was redistributed to the concrete slab and all the remaining trusses associated with that slab. So the failure of one, or even many trusses, does not lead to overall failure. There is absolutely no way that the trusses could collapse one after the other, as claimed by Eagar. Here is a quote from (a section on the WTC in) Multi-Storey Buildings in Steel [1], by Godfrey\r\n
\r\n\"Composite action between the concrete and the steelwork is ensured by extending the diagonal web members of the joists (trusses) through the steel decking and embedding them in the (concrete) slab.\"<\/i>\r\n
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\r\n\r\nAbove is a photo of a number of 45 feet (13.5m) long trusses and a buckled steel column after the Broadgate Phase 8 fire (the WTC towers had 35 and 60 foot trusses). The fire occurred while the 14-story high-rise was under construction. Little of the steel was fire protected and the sprinkler system and other active measures were not yet operational. Even though a number of trusses and columns buckled, due to thermal expansion, no collapse was observed at Broadgate.\r\n
\r\nThe system of design of the World Trade Center Towers is called tubular framing, since the perimeter frames of the building are designed to act as a cantilevered tube in resisting lateral forces. This design concept (the so-called tube within a tube architecture) has been employed in the construction of many of the world's tallest buildings. These include the John Hancock Center (1105 ft), the Standard Oil of Indiana Building (1125 ft) and the Sears Tower (1450 ft). In fact, it is the standard design for tall buildings. Vital to the structural integrity of these buildings are the composite floor slabs. In fact, if the floors were not composite, the buildings would eventually collapse. \r\n
\r\nEagar totally ignores the fact that the floor slabs were composite (that is, studs or projections from the steel beams were embedded in the concrete slab) preferring to believe the fiction that the floors just rested upon the beams supporting them.\r\n
\r\nNOVA:<\/b> After the planes struck and you saw those raging fires, did you think the towers would collapse?<\/i>\r\n
\r\nEagar:<\/b> No. In fact, I was surprised. So were most structural engineers. The only people I know who weren't surprised were a few people who've designed high-rise buildings. \r\n
\r\nThis second statement will only be true because designers of high-rise buildings would know for certain that the buildings were deliberately demolished and would consequently, \"not be surprised.\"<\/i>\r\n
\r\nNOVA:<\/i><\/b> But you weren't surprised that they withstood the initial impacts, is that correct?<\/i>\r\n
\r\nEagar:<\/b> That's right. All buildings and most bridges have what we call redundant design. If one component breaks, the whole thing will not come crashing down. I once worked on a high-rise in New York, for example, that had a nine-foot-high beam that had a crack all the way through one of the main beams in the basement. This was along the approach to the George Washington Bridge. They shored it up and kept traffic from using that area.\r\n
Some people were concerned the building would fall down. The structural engineers knew it wouldn't, because the whole thing had an egg-crate-like construction. Or you can think of it as a net. If you lose one string on a net, yes, the net is weakened but the rest of the net still works.\r\n
\r\n
Earlier skyscrapers (top) had columns spaced evenly across every floor. The World Trade Center (bottom) broke with tradition by having columns only in the central core and along the exterior walls.<\/td><\/tr><\/table>\r\nThat's essentially how the World Trade Center absorbed an airplane coming into it. It was somewhat like the way a net absorbs a baseball being thrown against it. \r\n
\r\nThis is deliberate misdirection. It would be more accurate to say that the towers absorbed the impact of the planes as a sheet of glass absorbs the impact of a bullet. Note that a baseball does more damage to a window than a bullet (even if we arrange that both have the exactly the same momentum). As we all know, the bullet will make a neat little bullet hole while a baseball will smash most of the glass out.\r\n
\r\nIt is the speed (and shape) of the projectile that determines whether the impact damage is localized or spread across a large area. The faster the projectile, the more localized the damage. Other common examples illustrating this effect are, the driving of a nail through a piece of wood, and the firing a bullet through a fencepost. Both are done at speed and thus do only local damage. In both of these examples, the wood just a centimeter or two from the impact point, is essentially undamaged. Similarly, the aircraft impacts were at great speed and severe damage localized to a few floors. \r\n \r\n
\r\nIf you lose a couple of the columns, that's not the end of the world. It will still stand up.\r\n
NOVA:<\/i><\/b> The World Trade Center was also designed to take a major wind load\r\nhitting from the side.<\/i>\r\n
\r\nEagar:<\/b> Yes. A skyscraper is a long, thin, vertical structure, but if you turned it sideways, it would be like a diving board, and you could bend it on the end. The wind load is trying to bend it like a diving board. It sways back and forth. If you've been on the top of the Sears Tower in Chicago or the Empire State Building on a windy day, you can actually feel it. When I was a student, I visited the observation deck of the Sears Tower, and I went into the restroom there, and I could see the water sloshing in the toilet bowl, because the wind load was causing the whole building to wave in the breeze.\r\n
NOVA:<\/i><\/b> Are skyscrapers designed that way, to be a little flexible?<\/i>\r\n
\r\nEagar:<\/b> Absolutely. Now, there are different ways to design things. For example, Boeing designs their aircraft wings to flap in the breeze, while McDonnell Douglas used to design a very rigid wing that would not flex as much. You can design it both ways. There are trade-offs, and there are advantages to both ways.\r\n
\r\n\"Most buildings are
\r\ndesigned to sway
\r\nin the breeze.\"<\/td><\/tr><\/table>\r\nMost buildings are designed to sway in the breeze. In fact, one of the big concerns in the early design of the World Trade Center, since it was going to be the tallest building in the world at the time, was that it not sway too much and make people sick. You can get seasick in one of these tall buildings from the wind loads. So they had to do some things to make them stiff enough that people wouldn't get sick, but not so rigid that it could snap if it got too big a load. If something's flexible, it can give; think of a willow tree. If you have a strong wind, you want the building, like the tree, to bend rather than break.\r\n
\r\nNOVA:<\/i><\/b> Brian Clark, one of only four people (at least 18 survived from the impacted floors or above) to get out from above where United 175 hit the South Tower, says that when the plane struck, the building swayed for a full seven to 10 seconds in one direction before settling back, and he thought it was going over.<\/i>\r\n
\r\nEagar:<\/b> That estimate of seven to ten seconds is probably correct, because often big buildings are designed to be stiff enough that the period to go one way and back the other way is 15 or 20 seconds, or even 30 seconds. That keeps people from getting sick.\r\n
\r\n
\r\nUpper floors pancaked down onto lower floors, causing a domino effect that left each building in ruins within ten seconds.<\/td><\/tr><\/table>\r\nNOVA:<\/i><\/b> The Twin Towers collapsed essentially straight down. Was there any chance they could have tipped over?<\/i>\r\n
\r\nEagar:<\/b> It's really not possible in this case. \r\n
\r\nThis statement by Eagar is utterly amazing. It is a wonder MIT has not fired him. Given that the south tower did in fact tip over (and quite visibly so). This shows Eagar's desperation. One thing is certain, all buildings, even the World Trade Center towers, will tip over if enough lateral (sideways) force is applied to them. \r\n
\r\nIn our normal experience, we deal with small things, say, a glass of water, that might tip over, and we don't realize how far something has to tip proportional to its base. The base of the World Trade Center was 208 feet on a side, and that means it would have had to have tipped at least 100 feet to one side in order to move its center of gravity from the center of the building out beyond its base. \r\n
\r\nThe laws of physics do not change. The same laws of physics that tell you a glass of water will tip over, also tell you that (if enough lateral force is applied) large buildings like the World Trade Center towers, will in fact, tip over. You must ask yourself why Eagar chooses to lie about this (he certainly knows the physics, but chooses to tell the world a transparent lie).\r\n
\r\nWhat Eagar says about the center of gravity is true, however, it does not imply that the building would come straight down, so his statement is just another piece of misdirection. His implication is clearly wrong, as shown by the fact that the south tower did in fact tip over (videos of the south tower collapse clearly show that the top 30, or so, floors tipped over, but this section was being demolished as it fell, so after a few seconds it was reduced to rubble and no longer fell as a unit). \r\n
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\r\nPicture of the World Trade Center south tower tipping over.
\r\nNOVA:<\/i><\/b> Was there any chance they could have tipped over?<\/i>\r\n
Eagar:<\/b> It's really not possible in this case. \r\n
\r\nThat would have been a tremendous amount of bending. In a building that is mostly air, as the World Trade Center was, there would have been buckling columns, and it would have come straight down before it ever tipped over.\r\n
Have you ever seen the demolition of buildings? They blow them up, and they implode. Well, I once asked demolition experts, \"How do you get it to implode and not fall outward?\" They said, \"Oh, it's really how you time and place the explosives.\" I always accepted that answer, until the World Trade Center, when I thought about it myself. And that's not the correct answer. The correct answer is, there's no other way for them to go but down. They're too big. With anything that massive -- each of the World Trade Center towers weighed half a million tons -- there's nothing that can exert a big enough force to push it sideways<\/b>.\r\n
\r\nEagar makes a real ass of himself in this article. To see how much of a fool Eagar is making of himself and his profession, think through the following thought experiment. Take the WTC and remove ten floors, but only say, the eastern half of each floor (so you have a situation analogous to a lumberjack cutting a slot half way through a tree), and imagine how the WTC (tree) would fall. One things for sure, it would not fall straight down. By Eagar's \"logic\" a tree that is extremely massive must fall down through itself, rather than tip over (because a tree is made of atoms and atoms are mostly empty space). What a dope. \r\n
\r\n
Even traveling at hundreds of miles an hour, the planes that struck the World Trade Center did not have enough force to knock the towers over.<\/td><\/tr><\/table>\r\nNOVA:<\/i><\/b> I think some people were surprised when they saw this massive 110-story building collapse into a rubble pile only a few stories tall.<\/i>\r\n
\r\nEagar:<\/b> Well, like most buildings, the World Trade Center was mostly air. It looked like a huge building if you walked inside, but it was just like this room we're in. The walls are a very small fraction of the total room. The World Trade Center collapse proved that with a 110-story building, if 95 percent of it's air, as was the case here, you're only going to have about five stories of rubble at the bottom after it falls.\r\n
NOVA:<\/i><\/b> You've said that the fire is the most misunderstood part of the World Trade Center collapse. Why?<\/i>\r\n
\r\nEagar:<\/b> The problem is that most people, even some engineers, talk about temperature and heat as if they're identical. In fact, scientifically, they're only related to each other. Temperature tells me the intensity of the heat -- is it 100 degrees, 200 degrees, 300 degrees? The heat tells me how big the thing is that gets hot. I mean, I could boil a cup of water to make a cup of tea, or I could boil ten gallons of water to cook a bunch of lobsters. So it takes a lot more energy to cook the lobsters -- heat is related to energy. That's the difference: We call the intensity<\/i> of heat the temperature, and the amount<\/i> of heat the energy.\r\n
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\r\nWatch an animation of the Boeing 767 aircraft hitting the North Tower and the\r\nrapid spread of the resulting fireball through the building.\r\n\r\n<\/td><\/tr><\/table>\r\nNOVA:<\/b> So with the World Trade Center fire, the heat was much greater than might\r\nhave been expected in a typical fire?
\r\nEagar:<\/b> Right. We had all this extra fuel from the aircraft. Now, there have\r\nbeen fires in skyscrapers before. The Hotel Meridien in Philadelphia \r\nhad a fire, but it didn't do this kind of damage. \r\n
\r\nEagar is referring to the One Meridian Plaza fire of February 23-24, 1991, which burnt for 19 hours. Strange how Eagar manages to \"forget\" the 1975 World Trade Center north tower fire. When he says \"it (the One Meridian Plaza fire) didn't do this kind of damage\"<\/i> he means that One Meridian Plaza did not collapse. So here is another example (the first being the World Trade Center North Tower in 1975) of a skyscraper that endured much more serious fires than those of September 11, without collapsing. In fact, before September 11, no steel framed skyscraper had ever collapsed due to fire. However, on September 11, it is claimed that three steel framed skyscrapers (both towers and World Trade Center Seven) collapsed mainly, or totally, due to fire.\r\n
\r\nThe above graphic provides us with yet another example of misinformation. The World Trade Center towers were 208 feet wide. Hence, from the graphic we can calculate that the wingspan of the pictured plane is 224 feet, however the actual wingspan of a Boeing 767 is 156 feet. Every trick in the book must be tried to convince the gullible that the aircraft strikes plus fire bought down the towers, otherwise the true culprits behind 9-11 may be discovered. \r\n
\r\nThe real damage in the World Trade Center resulted from the size<\/i> of the fire. Each floor was about an acre,\r\nand the fire covered the whole floor within a few seconds. Ordinarily, it would\r\ntake a lot longer. If, say, I have an acre of property, and I start a brushfire\r\nin one corner, it might take an hour, even with a good wind, to go from one\r\ncorner and start burning the other corner.\r\n
\r\nThat's what the designers of the World Trade Center were designing for -- a\r\nfire that starts in a wastepaper basket, for instance. By the time it gets to\r\nthe far corner of the building, it has already burned up all the fuel that was\r\nback at the point of origin. So the beams where it started have already started\r\nto cool down and regain their strength before you start to weaken the ones on\r\nthe other side.
\r\nOn September 11th, the whole floor was damaged all at once, and\r\nthat's really the cause of the World Trade Center collapse. There was so much\r\nfuel spread so quickly that the entire floor got weakened all at once, whereas\r\nin a normal fire, people should not think that if there's a fire in a high-rise\r\nbuilding that the building will come crashing down. This was a very unusual\r\nsituation, in which someone dumped 10,000 gallons of jet fuel in an\r\ninstant.\r\n
\r\nThere are a number of major problems with Eagar's claims.\r\n
\r\n(1) One complaint is that much of the jet fuel burnt outside the buildings. This was particularly true in the case of the south tower. After the impact nearly all of the jet fuel would have been spread throughout the area as a flammable mist. When this mist ignited it would have emptied the building of almost the entire fuel load, which then \"exploded\" outside the building. This is exactly what was seen on the videos of the impacts.\r\n
\r\n(2) If any quantity of liquid jet fuel did manage to accumulate in the building, then its volatility would lead to large amounts of it being evaporated and not burnt (pyrolysed) in the interior of the building. This evaporated fuel would burn on exiting the building, when it finally found sufficient oxygen.\r\n
\r\n(3) The jet fuel fires were brief. Most of the jet fuel would have burnt off or evaporated within 30 seconds, and all of it within 2-3 minutes (if all 10,000 gallons of fuel were evenly spread across a single building floor as a pool, it would be consumed by fire in less than 5 minutes). The energy, from the jet fuel, not absorbed by the concrete and steel within this brief period, would have been vented to the outside world.\r\n
\r\nThis means that the jet fuel fire did not heat the concrete slabs or fire protected steel appreciably. Large columns such as the core columns would also not heat appreciably, even if they had lost all their fire-protection. Unprotected trusses may have experienced a more sizeable temperature increase. The jet fuel fire was so brief that the concrete and steel simply could not absorb the heat fast enough, and consequently, most of the heat was lost to the atmosphere through the smoke plume.\r\n
\r\n(4) Even if the fire-rated suspended ceilings and spray on fire-protection from the trusses was removed by the impacts and the trusses were heated till they had lost most of their room temperature strength, we know from the Cardington tests and real fires like Broadgate, that the relatively cold concrete slab will supply strength to the structural system, and collapse will not occur. Remember, that at Broadgate and Cardington, the beams\/trusses were not fire-protected.\r\n
\r\n(5) Since the jet fuel fire was brief, and the building still stood, we know that the composite floor slab survived and continued to function as designed (until the buildings were demolished one or two hours later). After the jet fuel fire was over, burning desks, books, plastic, carpets, etc, contributed to the fire. So now we have a typical office fire. The fact that the trusses received some advanced heating will be of little consequence. After some minutes the fires would have been indistinguishable from a typical office fire, and we know that the truss-slab combination will survive such fires, because they did so in the 1975.\r\n
\r\n(6) Of course, most of the weight of the building was supported by the central core columns. Eagar doesn't bother to tell us how these 47 massive columns might have failed (at least in the case of the north tower, some of these columns, perhaps two or three, would have been displaced by the impacts). We know that the jet fuel fire was too brief to heat them appreciably. Since the central core area contained only lift shafts and stairwells, it contained very little flammable material. This meant that the core columns could only have been heated by the office fire burning in the adjacent region. Consequently, the core columns would have never got hot enough to fail. But we already know this because they did not fail in the 1975 WTC office fire. \r\n
\r\n(7) You should consider that it has been calculated that if the entire 10,000 gallons of jet fuel from the aircraft was injected into just one floor of the World Trade Center, that the jet fuel burnt with the perfect efficency, that no hot gases left this floor and that no heat escaped this floor by conduction, then the jet fuel could have only raised the temperature of this floor to, at the very most, 536°F (280°C). You can find the calculation here.\r\n
\r\n(8) Another reason that we know the fires were not serious enough to cause structural failure, is that witnesses tell us this. The impact floors of the south tower were 78-84. Here are a few words from some of the witnesses:\r\n
\r\nStanley Praimnath was on the 81st floor of the south tower: The plane impacts. I try to get up and then I realize that I'm covered up to my shoulder in debris. And when I'm digging through under all this rubble, I can see the bottom wing starting to burn, and that wing is wedged 20 feet in my office doorway.<\/i>\r\n
\r\nDonovan Cowan was in an open elevator at the 78th floor sky-lobby: We went into the elevator. As soon as I hit the button, that's when there was a big boom. We both got knocked down. I remember feeling this intense heat. The doors were still open. The heat lasted for maybe 15 to 20 seconds I guess. Then it stopped.<\/i>\r\n
\r\nLing Young was in her 78th floor office: Only in my area were people alive, and the people alive were from my office. I figured that out later because I sat around in there for 10 or 15 minutes. That's how I got so burned.<\/i>\r\n
\r\nEagar claims temperatures were hot enough to cause the trusses of the south tower to fail, but here we have eye-witnesses stating that temperatures were cool enough for them to walk away.\r\n
\r\nInterestingly, a tape of radio conversations between firefighters exists (but only relatives of the dead men have been allowed to hear it). Kevin Flynn, of the New York Times, reported:\r\n
\r\nChief Orio Palmer says from an upper floor of the badly damaged south tower at the World Trade Center. Just two hose lines to attack two isolated pockets of fire. \"We should be able to knock it down with two lines,\" he tells the firefighters of Ladder Co. 15 who were following him up the stairs of the doomed tower. Lt. Joseph G. Leavey is heard responding: \"Orio, we're on 78 but we're in the B stairway. Trapped in here. We got to put some fire out to get to you.\" The time was 9:56 a.m.<\/i>\r\n
\r\nSo now we know that, just a few minutes before the collapse of the south tower, firefighters did not consider the fires to be that serious, and were in fact able to get right into the impact region without being killed by the heat that was (according to Eagar) so intense that the trusses glowed red-hot and failed.\r\n
\r\nNOVA:<\/b> How high did the temperatures get, and what did that do to the steel\r\ncolumns?
\r\nEagar:<\/b> The maximum temperature would have been 1,600°F or 1,700°F.\r\n
\r\nIt's impossible to generate temperatures much above that in most cases with\r\njust normal fuel, in pure air (\"pure\" air is only 21% oxygen). In fact, I think the World Trade Center fire was\r\nprobably only 1,200°F or 1,300°F.
\r\nEagar randomly settles on a temperature between 1,200°F to 1,300°F. He does this so that his \"estimate\" would be higher than the first \"critical\" temperature for open web steel joists of 1,100°F. He does not differentiate between atmospheric temperatures and steel temperatures. The critical temperature is defined as approximately the temperature where the steel has lost approximately 50 percent of its yield strength from that at room temperature. It turns out, that for composite steel structures, the first \"critical\" temperature, is not really that critical. Here are the critical temperatures adopted by the North American Test Standard (the ASTM E119 standard)\r\n
\r\n\r\n| Steel<\/th> | Critical Temperature<\/th><\/tr>\r\n |
|---|
| Columns<\/td> | 1,000°F<\/td> | (538°C)<\/td><\/tr>\r\n | | Beams<\/td> | 1,100°F<\/td> | (593°C)<\/td><\/tr>\r\n | | Open Web Steel Joists<\/td> | 1,100°F<\/td> | (593°C)<\/td><\/tr>\r\n | | Reinforcing Steel<\/td> | 1,100°F<\/td> | (593°C)<\/td><\/tr>\r\n | | Prestressed Steel<\/td> | 800°F<\/td> | (426°C)<\/td><\/tr>\r\n<\/table>\r\n
\r\nThese critical temperatures are only part of the picture. If individual components are exposed to temperatures in excess of those quoted, then they may fail. However, these same components when incorporated in larger structures can be heated to much greater temperatures before failure occurs. The June 1990 Broadgate fire occurred in a high-rise while under construction. Consequently, little of the steel was fire protected. Even though the fire blazed for 4.5 hours, the building did not collapse and runaway type failures did not occur. To investigate the implications of the Broadgate fire on fire standards, the British Steel and the Building Research Establishment performed a series of six experiments at Cardington on a simulated, eight-story building. Here is a quote from one of the research reports from these experiments.\r\n
\r\nSteel beams in standard fire tests reach a state of deflections and runaway well below temperatures achieved in real fires. In a composite steel frame structure these beams are designed to support the composite deck slab. It is therefore quite understandable that they are fire protected to avoid runaway failures. The fire at Broadgate showed that this (runaway failure) didn't actually happen in a real structure. Subsequently, six full-scale fire tests on a real composite frame structure at Cardington showed that despite large deflections of structural members affected by fire, runaway type failures did not occur in real frame structures when subjected to realistic fires in a variety of compartments. [2]<\/i>\r\n
\r\nAnd here is a quote from the FEMA report into the WTC collapse (Appendix A).\r\n
\r\nIn the mid-1990s British Steel and the Building Research Establishment performed a series of six experiments at Cardington to investigate the behavior of steel frame buildings. These experiments were conducted in a simulated, eight-story building. Secondary steel beams were not (fire) protected. Despite the temperature of the steel beams reaching 1,500-1,700°F (800-900°C) in three of the tests (well above the traditionally assumed critical temperature of 1,100°F (600°C), no collapse was observed in any of the six experiments.<\/i>\r\n
\r\nTo get a feeling for how amazingly fire-resistant composite steel structures really are, consider this:\r\n
\r\nTest 6: The office demonstration test fire at Cardington: \r\n
\r\nA compartment 18m wide and up to 10m deep with a floor area of 135m2, was constructed on the second floor, using concrete blockwork. The compartment represented an open plan office and contained a series of work-stations consisting of modern day furnishings, computers and filing systems. The test conditions were set to create a very severe fire by incorporating additional wood\/plastic cribs to create a total fire load of 9.4 pounds per square foot (46kg per square meter). Less than 5% of offices would exceed this level (mainly office libraries). The fire load was made up of 69% wood, 20% plastic and 11% paper. \r\n
\r\nThe steel columns were fire protected but the primary and secondary beams (and their connections) were not. The maximum atmosphere temperature was 2215°F (1213°C) and the maximum average temperature was approximately 1650°F (900°C). The maximum temperature of the unprotected steel was 2100°F (1150°C) with a maximum average temperature of about 1750°F (950°C). The steel beams would have only have had 3% of their strength at 2000°F (1100°C), with such little remaining strength left in the steel, the beams could only contribute as catenary tension members. It is also clear that the concrete floors were supplying strength to the structural system by membrane action.\r\n
\r\nThe structure showed no signs of collapse. \r\n
\r\nOne of the conclusions derived from the Cardington tests, was that fire protection for the beams (trusses) was not necessary (in a composite steel structure).\r\n
\r\nInvestigations of fires in other buildings with steel have shown that fires\r\ndon't usually even melt the aluminum, which melts around 1,200°F. Most\r\nfires don't get above 900°F to 1,100°F. The World Trade Center fire\r\ndid melt some of the aluminum in the aircraft and hence it probably got to\r\n1,300°F or 1,400°F. \r\n
\r\nThis is almost certainly a lie. It is no surprise Eagar does not give a source for this information.\r\n
\r\nBut that's all it would have taken to trigger the\r\ncollapse, according to my \"back of the envelope\" analysis.
\r\nNOVA:<\/b> You've pointed out that structural steel loses about half its strength at\r\n1,200°F, yet even a 50 percent loss of strength is insufficient, by\r\nitself, to explain the collapse.
\r\nEagar:<\/b> Well, normally the biggest load on this building was the wind load (actually the biggest load was the gravity load), trying to push it sideways and make it vibrate like a flag in the breeze. The\r\nWorld Trade Center building was designed to withstand a hurricane of about 140\r\nmiles an hour, but September 11th wasn't a windy day, so the major\r\nloads it was designed for were not on it at the time.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\"You can't explain the collapse just in terms of temperature.\"\r\n<\/td><\/tr>\r\n<\/table>\r\nAs a result, the World Trade Center, at the time each airplane hit it, was only\r\nloaded to about 20 percent of its capacity. That means it had to lose five\r\ntimes its capacity either due to temperature or buckling -- the temperature\r\nweakening the steel, the buckling changing the strength of a member because\r\nit's bent rather than straight. You can't explain the collapse just in terms of\r\ntemperature, and you can't explain it just in terms of buckling. It was a\r\ncombination.\r\n
\r\nEagar claims that the exterior columns buckled. The exterior columns were visible from outside the building. There was no visible evidence that these columns buckled before the collapse. There is also no visible evidence that these columns were very hot. Photographs of these columns in the debris heap, showed no indications of thermal buckling (I guess the conspirators will claim that the reason no photographs showed thermal buckling of the exterior columns, was that they made sure that such columns were the first to hauled away and melted down). Eagar jumps from buckled columns to buckled beams in a few more lines, mixing up the two as if they are essentially the same.\r\n\r\n
\r\nNOVA:<\/b> So can you give a sequence of events that likely took place in the\r\nstructural failure?
\r\nEagar:<\/b> Well, first you had the impact of the plane, of course, and then this\r\nspreading of the fireball all the way across within seconds. Then you had a hot\r\nfire, but it wasn't an absolutely uniform fire everywhere. You had a wind\r\nblowing, so the smoke was going one way more than another way, (by the way, cross ventilation is known to cool a fire) which means the\r\nheat was going one way more than another way. That caused some of the beams to\r\ndistort, even at fairly low temperatures. You can permanently distort the beams\r\nwith a temperature difference of only about 300°F.
\r\nNOVA:<\/b> You mean one part of a beam is 300°F hotter than another part of the\r\nsame beam?
\r\nEagar:<\/b> Exactly. If there was one part of the building in which a beam had a\r\ntemperature difference of 300°F, then that beam would have become\r\npermanently distorted at relatively low temperatures. So instead of being nice\r\nand straight, it had a gentle curve. If you press down on a soda straw, you\r\nknow that if it's perfectly straight, it will support a lot more load than if\r\nyou start to put a little sideways bend in it. That's what happened in terms of\r\nthe beams. They were weakened because they were bent by the fire.\r\n
\r\nEagar is, as usual, incorrect here. Buckling of beams does not necessarily lead to failure, in fact, in fires it is beneficial. For example, a laterally restrained beam (that will buckle at relatively low temperatures due to the lateral restraint) will not suffer runaway till around 900°C, whereas, a simply supported beam carrying the same loads (that will not buckle) will suffer runaway at around 450°C. So the beam that undergoes buckling is much preferred in a fire situation. Here are two more quotes from a research papers examining the Cardington experiments.\r\n
\r\nIn structures such as the composite steel frame at Cardington, the slab strongly restrains the thermal expansion strains and consequently develops large membrane compression and tension forces in the composite steel-concrete floor system. The membrane compressions can be limited by the large downward deflections which occur through thermo-mechanical post-buckling effects and thermal bowing (these are nonlinearly additive). The resulting behaviour is then a combination of displacement and force responses. The heated steel part of this composite system, if unprotected, rapidly reaches its axial capacity (through local buckling and strength degradation), and produces a beneficial effect by limiting and then reducing the total membrane compression, so allowing increased expansion of the steel through softening and ductility. This is clearly a desirable behaviour here, as it reduces the force imposed on the structure by the expansion forces and allows the damage to be localized. [3]\r\n
\r\nIn composite floor slabs, buckling of the steel beams as a result of large compressions induced by restrained thermal expansions, is a positive event. The buckle allows the increase in length, as a result of thermal expansion, to be accommodated in downward deflections relieving axial compressions. [4]<\/i>\r\n
\r\n So, in buildings comparable to the World Trade Center, buckling, paradoxically, has a beneficial effect. \r\n\r\n
\r\nBut the steel still had plenty of strength, until it reached temperatures of\r\n1,100°F to 1,300°F. In this range, the steel started losing a lot of\r\nstrength, and the bending became greater. Eventually the steel lost 80 percent\r\nof its strength, because of this fire that consumed the whole floor.
\r\nIf it had only occurred in one little corner, such as a trashcan caught on\r\nfire, you might have had to repair that corner, but the whole building wouldn't\r\nhave come crashing down. The problem was, it was such a widely distributed\r\nfire, and then you got this domino effect. Once you started to get angle clips\r\nto fail in one area, it put extra load on other angle clips, and then it\r\nunzipped around the building on that floor in a matter of seconds.
\r\nNOVA:<\/b> Many other engineers also feel the weak link was these angle clips, which\r\nheld the floor trusses between the inner core of columns and the exterior\r\ncolumns. Is that simply because they were much smaller pieces of steel?
\r\nEagar:<\/b> Exactly. That's the easiest way to look at it. If you look at the whole\r\nstructure, they are the smallest piece of steel. As everything begins to\r\ndistort, the smallest piece is going to become the weak link in the chain. They\r\nwere plenty strong for holding up one truss, but when you lost several trusses,\r\nthe trusses adjacent to those had to hold two or three times what they were\r\nexpected to hold.
\r\nMore crap from Eagar. Does he really believe that the towers were only held together with a couple of rivets and duct tape. Here is a quote from the FEMA report into the WTC collapse (Chapter 2). \r\n
\r\nPairs of flat bars extended diagonally from the exterior wall to the top chord of adjacent trusses. These diagonal flat bars, which were typically provided with shear studs, provided horizontal shear transfer between the floor slab and exterior wall, as well as out-of-plane bracing for perimeter columns not directly supporting floor trusses.<\/i>\r\n
\r\nEagar claims that the trusses were connected to the perimeter wall only by what he calls, \"angle clips\". The truth is that every 160 inches, the perimeter wall was solidly attached to a 24 x 18 inch metal plate that was covered with shear studs and set in the concrete slab. In addition a pair of 6 foot long, flat, steel bars lined with shear studs were welded to the plate and to the top chord of the adjacent trusses. These bars were also set in the concrete slab. Between these plates similar pairs of 6 foot long, flat, steel bars connected directly to tabs on the perimeter columns. So these features, as well as the angle clips, connected the perimeter wall to the concrete slab and hence to the rest of the building. Below, is a picture of these plates and steel bars before the concrete slab was poured. The plates are the dark rectangular objects along the perimeter wall. The steel bars are the V-like features\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n
\r\nThose angle clips probably had two or three or four times the strength that\r\nthey originally needed. They didn't have the same factor-of-five safety as the\r\ncolumns did, but they still had plenty of safety factor to have people and\r\nequipment on those floors. It was not that the angle clips were inadequately\r\ndesigned; it was just that there were so many of them that the engineers were\r\nable to design them with less safety factor. In a very unusual loading\r\nsituation like this, they became the weak link.
\r\nNOVA:<\/b> I've read that the collapse was a near free-fall.
\r\nEagar:<\/b> Yes. That's because the forces, it's been estimated, were anywhere from\r\n10 to 100 times greater than an individual floor could support. First of all,\r\nyou had 10 or 20 floors above that came crashing down. That's about 10 or 20\r\ntimes the weight you'd ever expect on one angle clip. There's also the impact\r\nforce, that is, if something hits very hard, there's a bigger force than if you\r\nlower it down very gently.
\r\nHere is an article that has been posted at various sites on the internet.\r\n
\r\nAll that one needs to know, to be able to conclusively prove that the Twin Towers were demolished, is that the towers fell in roughly 10 seconds, that is, that they fell at about the same rate that an object falls through air. \r\n
\r\nAnyone with a little common sense will realize that the top of a building does not pass through the concrete and steel that comprises the lower portion of the building at the same rate that it falls through air. This just doesn't happen, unless, of course, the lower part of the building has lost its structural integrity (and this is usually due to the detonation of a multitude of small explosive charges as seen in controlled demolitions). \r\n
\r\nThe fact that the towers collapsed in about 10 seconds is a statement that the upper portion of each of the towers passed through the lower portion at about the same rate that it would have fallen through air. The fact that the towers fell this quickly (essentially at the rate of free-fall) is conclusive evidence that they were deliberately demolished. \r\n
\r\nBelieving that there is nothing wrong with the towers collapsing so quickly, is roughly analogous to believing that people pass through closed doors as quickly as they pass through open doors.\r\n
\r\nThe fact that they fell at such a rate means that they encountered essentially no resistance from the supposedly undamaged parts of the structure. That is, no resistance was encountered from any of the immensely strong parts of the structure that had held the building up for the last 30 years. From this one can conclude that the lower undamaged parts were actually very damaged (probably by the detonation of a multitude of small explosive charges as is usual in a controlled demolition).\r\n<\/i>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\nNOVA:<\/b> Miraculously, a number of firefighters survived inside Tower One. They\r\nwere on the third or fourth floor in a stairwell, and immediately after the\r\ncollapse they looked up and saw blue sky above their heads -- their part of the\r\nstairwell survived. How is that possible, with all the force of that\r\n500,000-ton building coming down?
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\"They were very, very fortunate that they happened to be in an area that was somewhat shielded.\"\r\n\r\n<\/td><\/tr><\/table>\r\nEagar:<\/b> Well, you have to understand the stairwells were reinforced areas of the\r\nbuilding. The stairwells were in the central core, which had more steel than\r\nthe outer areas, which were big open floors. So that extra steel formed a\r\nlittle cage to protect them. It's still amazing, though.
\r\nNow, there could have been someone two floors below who could have been\r\ncompletely crushed. It just depends on how the steel buckled. If you take that\r\nsoda straw again, and you push it sideways, it will develop a buckle at some\r\nlocation, probably somewhere in the middle third. Well, if you happen to be\r\nwhere the buckling occurs, that area is going to get smashed, but if you're,\r\nsay, below where the buckling occurred, basically the whole thing can push\r\nsideways. They were very, very fortunate that they happened to be in an area\r\nthat was somewhat shielded and protected by all the extra steel in the central\r\ncore.
\r\nI read one of those people's statements in the paper the other day, and he said\r\nthat if they'd been in the lobby, they'd be gone. I was in the lobby of the\r\nWorld Trade Center years ago, and it was some three or four stories tall. What\r\nwas going to buckle? Well, the lobby had the longest columns, so they were\r\ngoing to buckle. Those firefighters were just above that, so they were\r\nprotected by the buckling underneath, within this sort of steel cage.
\r\nIn fact, that's how they design automobiles for crashworthiness. They try to\r\ndesign the passenger compartment to be a cage, and the hood and trunk are\r\nsupposed to deform and absorb the energy so that you're protected by this\r\nlittle cage of steel that hopefully won't deform.\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\nEngineers have found evidence that the aluminum of the planes' fuselages\r\nand wings may have melted, but there is no evidence that it burned.\r\n\r\n<\/td><\/tr><\/table>\r\nNOVA:<\/b> There's a theory that the aluminum of the planes caught fire.
\r\nEagar:<\/b> Yes, a number of people have tried to reinforce that theory. Now, the\r\naluminum of the planes would have burned just like a flare. Flares are made out\r\nof aluminum and magnesium, so are fireworks, and they burn hot enough to melt\r\nsteel in certain cases.
\r\nHowever, they have had people sorting through the steel from the World Trade\r\nCenter, and no one has reported finding melted steel, which means that we\r\ndidn't have that aluminum flare. In any case, burning aluminum would have been\r\nwhite-hot, about 4,000°F, and someone would have seen it even through that\r\ndense black smoke.
\r\nOf course, aluminum can burn. That's what demolished the [British destroyer]\r\nSheffield<\/i> in the Falklands War [when it was struck by an Argentinian\r\nmissile]. It wasn't the Exocet missile that destroyed the superstructure of the\r\nSheffield<\/i>. The missile wasn't big enough, just like the plane wasn't big\r\nenough to bring down the World Trade Center. That Exocet missile did damage the\r\nSheffield,<\/i> but what doomed the Sheffield<\/i> was the aluminum\r\nsuperstructure caught fire and burned. So you suddenly had something like 1,000\r\nor 10,000 times as much fuel as you had in that Exocet missile.
\r\nNow, this is not<\/i> a type of fire we have to worry about in buildings. We\r\ndon't have anywhere close to those types of conditions. And we didn't have\r\nthose in the World Trade Center, in my opinion.
\r\nNOVA:<\/b> How soon will a definitive report of the causes of the collapse be\r\nreleased?
\r\nEagar:<\/b> Well, there's some very sophisticated analysis that various people in\r\nthe government, at universities, and at structural engineering firms are doing\r\nto understand it. Most of those people have not yet published any conclusions.\r\nTo do a good job of research on something like this can typically take one to\r\ntwo years. I don't expect to see any conclusive reports probably until about\r\nthe first anniversary of the attack.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\"There will still be people worrying about this ten years from now.\"\r\n\r\n<\/td><\/tr><\/table>\r\nThere are different levels of analysis. You can do the back-of-the-envelope,\r\nwhich was what I and other people did early on. But to do the full analysis\r\nwill take much longer. I suspect there will still be people worrying about this\r\nten years from now.
\r\nNOVA:<\/b> In your back-of-the-envelope analysis, you concluded the World Trade\r\nCenter was not defectively designed, but not everyone apparently accepts that\r\nconclusion.
\r\nEagar:<\/b> A lot of people said, Well, the building failed. That's true, but\r\nnothing is indestructible. The question is, why did it fail? In this case, as\r\nI've explained, it was the fire covering the whole floor in a few seconds that\r\nmade this different from any other fire that anyone had ever designed for.\r\n
\r\nIf people say, Well, couldn't we have designed it for this, I say, Yes, we\r\ncould have. We could build buildings that could survive a jet running into them\r\nwith a full fuel load. In fact, the military does. But they're bunkers. We\r\nbuild these things for the President and the rest of the 150 leaders of the\r\ncountry to go to as a secure area. You can do that, but your building costs go\r\nup by a factor of about 100. Well, do we want to have 100 times fewer homes for\r\npeople to live in? Do we want to have 100 times fewer roads?
\r\nIf we were to harden everything against a terrorist attack, we'd push ourselves\r\nback into the first half of the 19th century in terms of living\r\nstyle. Now, some people might consider that an improvement, but not everybody,\r\nso society has some important tradeoffs here. There's got to be some middle\r\nground where we can make things more secure but not destroy our standard of\r\nliving.
\r\nNOVA:<\/b> Anything we should do now to retrofit existing skyscrapers like the Sears\r\nTower?
\r\nEagar:<\/b> Well, one of the things that's really important and is relatively\r\ninexpensive is a public communication system. I've been in high-rises when the\r\nfire alarm goes off, and everyone looks around the room and decides, Should we\r\njust continue meeting and ignore the fire alarm, or should we evacuate?\r\nFortunately, in most cases -- and I've had to be the person in a few of those\r\ncases -- people say, Look, it's a fire alarm. We don't know if it's real.\r\nEvacuate. So you need better public-address systems to inform people that this\r\nis not a test, this is not a false alarm, you'd better get out of the\r\nbuilding.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\nBetter communications systems may have\r\nallowed more people to escape the towers before they collapsed, Eagar\r\nbelieves. For instance, if more people had known that Stairway A \r\nin the South Tower, shown here in green, had survived the impact, \r\nmore people may have gotten out before the building collapsed.\r\n\r\n<\/td><\/tr><\/table>\r\nSurvivors from the World Trade Center have said that some people took four or\r\nfive minutes to figure out there was something more than just some false alarm.\r\nOther people started moving immediately. Obviously, the quicker people started\r\nto move, the better chance they had of reaching safety.
\r\nNOVA:<\/b> How about improving the fire safety of the building or putting in extra\r\nstairwells?
\r\nEagar:<\/b> These are very difficult things to redesign into current buildings. They\r\ncan and will be added to future buildings. The simplest thing is the\r\ncommunication system. And better training of firefighters. Those things will\r\ndefinitely be done.
\r\nIf you look at the World Trade Center disaster, it would have been greatly\r\nminimized if the safety personnel had been aware of the danger they were in.\r\nThey didn't realize it was going to collapse. As I said earlier, there are only\r\na few engineers in the country who had ever designed skyscrapers like this who\r\nwould have realized, but they couldn't communicate within that first hour with\r\nthe people at ground zero. Nobody could call to New York City at that\r\ntime.
\r\nSo better communication. The military's known that for years. They've invested\r\ntremendous amounts of money in better communications. That's been one of the\r\ndifferences in having fewer lives lost on the American side in recent wars.\r\nWe've got much better C3I -- Command, Control, Communications, and\r\nIntelligence. They've spent billions of dollars, and it's saved thousands and\r\nthousands of lives in the military. We can do that on the civilian side as well\r\nfor these big structures, though, in my opinion, skyscrapers are not the\r\nproblem anymore.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\"A terrorist is not going to attack the things you\r\nexpect him to attack.\"\r\n\r\n<\/td><\/tr><\/table>\r\nNOVA:<\/b> What is?
\r\nEagar:<\/b> I think the terrorist danger will be other things. A terrorist is not\r\ngoing to attack the things you expect him to attack. The real problem is\r\npipelines, electrical transmission, dams, nuclear plants, railroads. A\r\nterrorist's job is to scare people. He or she doesn't have to harm very many\r\npeople. Anthrax is a perfect example. If someone could wipe out one electrical\r\ntransmission line and cause a brownout in all of New York City or Los Angeles,\r\nthere would be hysteria, if people realized it was a terrorist that did\r\nit.
\r\nFortunately, we have enough redundancy -- the same type of redundancy we talk\r\nabout structurally in the World Trade Center -- in our electrical distribution.\r\nWe have that redundancy built in. I shouldn't say this, but this was how Enron\r\nwas able to build up a business, because they could transfer their energy from\r\nwherever they were producing it into California, which was having problems, and\r\nmake a fortune -- for a short period of time.
\r\nNOVA:<\/b> Gas pipelines don't have redundancy built in, though.
\r\nEagar:<\/b> No, but one advantage of a gas pipeline is the damage you can do to it\r\nis relatively limited. You might be able to destroy several hundred yards of\r\nit, but that's not wiping out a whole city. The bigger problem with taking out\r\na gas pipeline is if you do it in the middle of winter, and that gas pipeline\r\nis heating 20 percent of the homes in the Northeast. Then all of a sudden you\r\nhave 20 percent less fuel, and everybody's going to have to turn the thermostat\r\ndown, and you're going to terrorize 30 million people.
\r\nThe lesson we have to learn about this kind of terrorism is we have to design\r\nflexible and redundant systems, so that we're not completely dependent on any\r\none thing, whether it's a single gas pipeline bringing heat to a particular\r\narea or whatever.
\r\nRemember the energy crisis in 1973? That terrorized people. People were sitting\r\nin long lines at gas pumps. It takes five or 10 years for society to readjust\r\nto a problem like that. What happened in the energy crisis in 1973 was we had\r\nessentially all our eggs in one basket -- the oil basket. But by 1983, electric\r\ngenerating plants could flip a switch and change from oil to coal or gas, so no\r\none could hold a gun to our head like they did before.
\r\n\r\n\r\n| <\/td>\r\n | <\/td>\r\n | \r\nThomas Eagar is Thomas Lord Professor of Materials Engineering and Engineering\r\nSystems at MIT. He was recently nominated to serve on a National Research\r\nCouncil committee on homeland security. To see Eagar's article, \"Why Did the\r\nWorld Trade Center Collapse? Science, Engineering, and Speculation,\" which was\r\ncoauthored by MIT graduate student Christopher Musso, go to\r\nwww.tms.org\/pubs\/journals\/JOM\/0112\/Eagar\/Eagar-0112.html<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/table>\r\n
\r\nThomas Eagar is employed by MIT. He blackens the good name of MIT as well as his own.\r\n
\r\nInterview conducted by Peter Tyson, editor in chief of NOVA Online\r\n
\r\n\r\n[1] Multi-Storey Building in Steel, GB Godfrey (Editor), Collins, London, England, 1985. \r\n
\r\n[2] Behaviour of Steel Framed Structures under Fire Conditions; School of Civil & Environmental Engineering; The University of Edinburgh.\r\n
\r\n[3] Structural Performance of Redundant Structures under Local Fires; J.M.Rotter, A.M.Sanad, A.S.Usmani and M.Gillie; Proceedings of Interflam99 - Edinburgh.\r\n
\r\n[4] The Behaviour of Multi-storey Composite Steel Framed Structures in Response to Compartment Fires; Susan Lamont. PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2001.\r\n
\r\nhttp:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wgbh\/nova\/wtc\/collapse.html\r\n
\r\n<\/td><\/tr><\/table>\r\n\r\n\n","contact":"","link":"","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/html","summary":"This article reviews the well known interview of professor Thomas Eagar (of MIT) by Peter Tyson (chief editor of NOVA) concerning the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. It points out many of the errors contained in this interview. In fact, the errors in the interview are so many that one has to conclude that the article is deliberate deception.","numcomment":17,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/","filesize":null,"article_url":"\/news\/2003\/07\/73564.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[{"id":73565,"heading":"MM","article":"Send a copy of this to Eagar.","author":"Send a copy of this to Eagar.","parent_id":73564,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-07-21 22:36:52","modified":"2003-07-21 22:36:52","fileurl":""},{"id":73579,"heading":"Implosion?","article":"Just for giggles, let's say the rebuttal of Professor Eagar's analysis is correct. How do you conspiracy theorists propose that the towers fell? First, let me ask these two questions: Did they actually fall? If so, did planes really crash into them?\r\n\r\nBack to the main question. I will assume that you imagine the buildings were demolished via a controlled implosion. Do any of you know how much work goes into the preparation and placement of the various explosives and detonators of a building a fraction of the size of the towers? Do you think anybody would have noticed that, for weeks and weeks, people were drilling holes and placing dynamite and cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine into the towers' steel support structure? \r\n\r\nI look forward to your response.\r\n\r\n\r\n","author":"Reality Check","parent_id":73564,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-07-21 23:54:53","modified":"2003-07-21 23:54:53","fileurl":""},{"id":73586,"heading":"hehehe","article":""I look forward to your response. "\r\n\r\nDon't hold your breath.\r\n\r\nBesides, only a "paid shill" would have the audacity to ask such questions.","author":"fresca","parent_id":73564,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-07-22 00:08:40","modified":"2003-07-22 00:08:40","fileurl":""},{"id":73615,"heading":"Easy Answers","article":"Do any of you know how much work goes into the preparation and placement of the various explosives and detonators of a building a fraction of the size of the towers? Do you think anybody would have noticed that, for weeks and weeks, people were drilling holes and placing dynamite into the towers' steel support structure?<\/i>\r\n
\r\nOn the 23rd July, 2001, just seven weeks previous to the World Trade Center demolitions, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey signed a deal with a consortium (Larry Silverstein, Westfield America Inc and Lloyd Goldman) led by Larry Silverstein for a 99 year lease of the World Trade Center complex. The leased buildings included WTCs One, Two, Four, Five and 400,000 square feet of retail space. The Marriott Hotel (WTC 3), U.S. Customs building (WTC 6) and Silverstein's own 47-story office building (WTC 7) were already under lease. Silverstein is seeking $7.2 billion from insurers for the destruction of the center.\r\n
\r\nSeven weeks total control of the WTC complex by Silverstein and friends is ample time to lace the central core with explosives (even if they only worked in the wee hours of the morning when everyone was asleep).<\/font>\r\n
\r\nThe World Trade Center Towers collapse as an Enormous Insurance Scam.<\/a>\r\n
\r\nAccording to the demolition expert Van Romero ...\r\n
\r\nWithin hours Romero was telling the Albuquerque Journal that the collapse of the twin towers could have been caused by a small amount of explosive put in more than two points in each of the towers. \r\n
\r\n"My opinion is, based on the videotapes, that after the airplanes hit the World Trade Center there were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse," Romero said. \r\n
\r\nAnd Romero should know. After all Van is a demolition expert and a former director of the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center at Tech, which studies the effects of explosions on buildings. <\/font>\r\n
\r\nhttp:\/\/www.abqjournal.com:80\/news\/aqvan09-11-01.htm (you now have to pay)\r\n","author":"Easy Answers","parent_id":73564,"mime_type":"text\/html","created":"2003-07-22 01:12:21","modified":"2003-07-22 01:12:21","fileurl":""},{"id":73619,"heading":"Dumb, Dumber, and Dumberer -- And even dumber than that","article":"Easy Answers = Dumb and Dumber\r\n\r\nHow ridiculous can you get? Obviously you have no limits on ridiculous.\r\n\r\nListen up dumbo. We have live video of those hijacked airplanes being flown into the twin towers by those Muslim fanatics. Live Video! \r\n\r\nTry to get your brain in gear however difficult that may be.","author":"Bush Admirer","parent_id":73564,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-07-22 01:18:22","modified":"2003-07-22 01:18:22","fileurl":""},{"id":73621,"heading":"Nobody noticed?","article":"The WTC didn't close in the wee hours. And security didn't stop monitoring the place in the wee hours. Try again.\r\n----------\r\n\r\nYou forget this part of the Van Romero story -- the follow-up article 10 days later. \r\n\r\nhttp:\/\/www.abqjournal.com\/terror\/pmvan09-21-01.htm \r\n\r\nSeptember 21, 2001 \r\n\r\n\r\nFire, Not Extra Explosives, Doomed Buildings, Expert Says \r\n\r\n\r\nBy John Fleck \r\nJournal Staff Writer \r\nA New Mexico explosives expert says he now believes there were no explosives in the World Trade Center towers, contrary to comments he made the day of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. \r\n"Certainly the fire is what caused the building to fail," said Van Romero, a vice president at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. \r\nThe day of the attack, Romero told the Journal the towers' collapse, as seen in news videotapes, looked as though it had been triggered by carefully placed explosives. \r\nSubsequent conversations with structural engineers and more detailed looks at the tape have led Romero to a different conclusion. \r\nRomero supports other experts, who have said the intense heat of the jet fuel fires weakened the skyscrapers' steel structural beams to the point that they gave way under the weight of the floors above. \r\nThat set off a chain reaction, as upper floors pancaked onto lower ones. \r\nRomero said he believes still it is possible that the final collapse of each building was triggered by a sudden pressure pulse caused when the fire reached an electrical transformer or other source of combustion within the building. \r\nBut he said he now believes explosives would not have been needed to create the collapse seen in video images. \r\nConspiracy theorists have seized on Romero's comments as evidence for their argument that someone else, possibly the U.S. government, was behind the attack on the Trade Center. \r\nRomero said he has been bombarded with electronic mail from the conspiracy theorists. \r\n"I'm very upset about that," he said. "I'm not trying to say anything did or didn't happen." \r\n\r\n","author":"Reality Check","parent_id":73564,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-07-22 01:19:16","modified":"2003-07-22 01:19:16","fileurl":""},{"id":73622,"heading":"Nuh Uh","article":""We have live video of those hijacked airplanes being flown into the twin towers by those Muslim fanatics."\r\n\r\nNo you don't.","author":"worm","parent_id":73564,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-07-22 01:20:22","modified":"2003-07-22 01:20:22","fileurl":""},{"id":73639,"heading":"Reality Check = MORON","article":"<>\r\n\r\nYeah sure DOPE. Silverstein's security boys. \r\n\r\nReality Check = THICK","author":"Reality Check = MORON","parent_id":73564,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-07-22 02:07:14","modified":"2003-07-22 02:07:14","fileurl":""},{"id":73649,"heading":"The conspiracy widens","article":"Oh, I see. Now you've included a few hundred working class security guards into the government conspiracy. Brilliant.\r\n\r\n\r\n","author":"Reality Check","parent_id":73564,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-07-22 02:33:20","modified":"2003-07-22 02:33:20","fileurl":""},{"id":73682,"heading":"van romero's unconvincing recantation","article":">>>URL - http:\/\/emperors-clothes.com\/news\/albu.htm \r\nJoin our email list at http:\/\/emperor.vwh.net\/MailList\/index.php\r\nEmperor's Clothes rarely sends out more than one email per day\r\n\r\nClick here to email the link to this article to a friend.\r\n\r\nwww.tenc.net * [Emperor's Clothes]\r\n\r\n=======================================\r\nBATTLE: AN EXPERT RECANTS ON WHY WTC TOWERS COLLAPSED \r\nBy John Flaherty and Jared Israel \r\n\r\n[Originally posted 14 September 2001 under the title, "'Explosives Planted In Towers,' New Mexico Tech Expert Says. Updated 26 December 2001 Revised 26 August 2002] \r\n\r\n=======================================\r\n\r\nEmperor's Clothes has not commented on the debate over the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers. \r\n\r\nSome argue that the towers were brought down by explosives. Others (including defenders of the official story on 9-11) insist that the towers collapsed because fire weakened the steel support structure. \r\n\r\nOn September 14th we did post an interesting article from the Albuquerque Journal concerning the WTC towers. \r\n\r\nIt is based on an interview with Van Romero, the director of research at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. \r\n\r\nAccording to the article, Mr. Romero: \r\n\r\n'studies explosive materials and the effects of explosions on buildings, aircraft and other structures.' \r\n\r\nHis Institute: \r\n\r\n'assists in forensic investigations into terrorist attacks, often by setting off similar explosions and studying the effects.' \r\n\r\nThe Institute is funded, at least in part, by grants from the Pentagon. \r\n\r\nVan Romero reported that he had studied the videos of the WTC collapse and concluded that the towers were most likely destroyed by carefully placed demolition charges. He told the 'Journal': \r\n\r\n"It would be difficult for something from the plane to trigger an event like that." \r\n\r\nFROM EXPERT OPINION TO 'SUPPORT' STATEMENT \r\n\r\nWe posted the Journal story with a link to its Web address. But when you go that address, you don't see the original story. You see a rebuttal, entitled, "Fire, Not Extra Explosives, Doomed Buildings, Expert Says." \r\n\r\nIt's a rebuttal to the original story. Unless you read almost to end of the rebuttal, you won't see that the original story is posted below it. Very odd. \r\n\r\nHere's the address: \r\nhttp:\/\/www.abqjournal.com\/aqvan09-11-01.htm \r\n\r\nThe original article and the rebuttal have a very different 'feel.' \r\n\r\nReading the original article, it is clear that Romero is motivated by a desire to understand what happened. This is not surprising; after all he studies how buildings collapse. He isn't thinking about political implications; he's thinking about science. He doesn't have an axe to grind. He explains himself clearly and he is quoted frequently. \r\n\r\nIn the retraction, Romero is only quoted twice. Instead of letting the man speak for himself, the reporter keeps repeating the official explanation of why the WTC buildings collapsed, informing us that Romero accepts it. \r\n\r\nAnd regarding that word, "supports," doesn't it suggest a political rather than a scientific act? Consider:\r\n\r\n"Romero [now] *supports* other experts, who have said the intense heat of the jet fuel fires weakened the skyscrapers' steel structural beams to the point that they gave way under the weight of the floors above. \r\n\r\nWhy didn't the Journal let this researcher, who "assists in forensic investigations into terrorist attacks," explain for himself what new information caused him to change his expert opinion? \r\n\r\nWhat did he learn between 9-11 and 9-21, the date of the retraction, from "conversations with structural engineers"? \r\n\r\nHow could someone who has spent years researching "explosive materials and the effects of explosions on buildings, aircraft and other structures" not know about the steel beams in the WTC? \r\n\r\nOr has Mr. Romero confined his research to older buildings, i.e., those constructed prior to 1972? Before agreeing to do forensic work on a building blown up by terrorists, does he ask, "When was it built?" And if the answer is, "After 1972," does he turn down the investigation?\r\n\r\nIn the retraction, Romero is quoted twice: \r\n\r\nThe first quote is short: "Certainly the fire is what caused the building to fail." \r\n\r\n"Certainly"?! \r\n\r\nWhy would an experimental scientist, commenting on anyone's previous conclusion - in this case, his own - demean the original assessment as "certainly" wrong? \r\n\r\nWouldn't that mean Romero "certainly" assessed this most important terrorist attack without first getting the facts? Doesn't that make Romero a sloppy scientist? \r\n\r\nHow humiliating for a man who acts as an expert witness in courts of law. \r\n\r\nAnd consider the second quote: \r\n\r\nSecond quote: "Romero said he has been bombarded with electronic mail from the conspiracy theorists. 'I'm very upset about that,' he said. 'I'm not trying to say anything did or didn't happen.'" [End quote] \r\n\r\nNote that the Journal dismisses those who doubt the official story as "conspiracy theorists." This newspaper has become a public relations service for Washington. And note the suggestion of desperation in Romero's comment that, "I'm not trying to say anything did or didn't happen.'" \r\n\r\nHe's not? \r\n\r\nBut in the original piece, he was quoted saying the WTC most likely collapsed due to demolition charges. And in the retraction he is quoted saying he "certainly" was wrong. \r\n\r\nMoreover, isn;t deciding whether "anything did or didn't happen" the goal of all of Romero's research. He "studies explosive materials and the effects of explosions on buildings, aircraft and other structures" in order to determine what "did or didn't happen." \r\n\r\nIt seems that in both quotes Van Romero negates himself, first as incompetent, then as irrelevant. Or perhaps his second comment, that "I'm not trying to say anything did or didn't happen," may be seen in a different light. We shall return to that. \r\n\r\nWhy did Mr. Romero recant? Consider the following paragraph from the original story: \r\n\r\n"Romero said he and another Tech administrator were on a Washington-area subway when an airplane struck the Pentagon. He said he and Denny Peterson, vice president for administration and finance, were en route to an office building near the Pentagon to discuss defense-funded research programs at Tech. [New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, where Romero is Vice President for research.]" \r\n\r\nHere is our hypothesis. \r\n\r\nRomero gave the original interview right after the WTC attacks. He said what he thought, unaware he was stepping on a land mine. \r\n\r\nBut the powers-that-be were aware. \r\n\r\nThe paymaster of Romero's research institute is the Pentagon. Directly or indirectly, pressure was brought to bear, forcing Romero to retract his original statement. But perhaps expressing his exasperation with this pressure, he added, "I'm not trying to say anything about what did or did not happen." In this way, perhaps, he refused to recant entirely. \r\n\r\nIf our hypothesis is right, it illustrates three features of the new American Empire. \r\n\r\nFirst: it has great wealth, which it wields shamelessly. (And often to ludicrous effect. Consider the hyperbole with which the Bush administration praised Pakistan for 'cooperating' in crushing the Taliban, which is, by the way, the collective child of the covert services of Pakistan, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. And consider how - immediately afterwards! - the Bush administration announced that Pakistan would receive millions of dollars in aid and cancellation of debt.) \r\n\r\nSo the first fact about the U.S. empire is: it pays for virtue. \r\n\r\nSecond: from the virtuous it demands servility. If the virtuous should err, so must the virtuous grovel. Otherwise, no cash. \r\n\r\nThird: despite all its weapons and money, the U.S. Empire still has difficulty getting human beings to grovel. Thus, it may have been in order to hold onto some integrity that Van Romero said, "I'm not trying to say anything about what did or did not happen." The man relies on the Pentagon for funding; yet perhaps the man resists. \r\n\r\nIn an email to Emperor's clothes, Joan T., a reader, wrote: "What good is money without freedom?" \r\n\r\nWhat good indeed. \r\n\r\n- John Flaherty and Jared Israel \r\n\r\n*** \r\n\r\nThe following is the original article from the 'ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL'. We suggest you read it first, then the second JOURNAL article, the rebuttal, which is now the first article on the page http:\/\/www.abqjournal.com\/aqvan09-11-01.htm (We'll repost that url at the end) >>>\r\n\r\n\r\n","author":"van romero's unconvincing recantation","parent_id":73564,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-07-22 12:32:56","modified":"2003-07-22 12:32:56","fileurl":""},{"id":73992,"heading":"What about some comment","article":"What about some comment on the article?","author":"What about some comment","parent_id":73564,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-07-24 00:57:02","modified":"2003-07-24 00:57:02","fileurl":""},{"id":74317,"heading":"Q","article":"No constructive comment at all from the locals. No big surprise there.","author":"No constructive comment at all from the local","parent_id":73564,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-07-25 09:05:36","modified":"2003-07-25 09:05:36","fileurl":""},{"id":74341,"heading":"Well let me think, it was the fucking arabs","article":"Just how fucking stupid can you be. It was done by arabs who were following moohamheads teaching in that terrorist training manual, the koran.\r\n\r\n"There may be moderate Muslims, but Islam itself is not moderate. There is no difference between Islam and Islamic fundamentalism. At most there is a difference of degree but not of kind." \r\n\r\n-- Ibn Warraq, executive director of the Institute for the Secularization of Islamic Society\r\n","author":"WHY!? CAN YOU SAY MUSLIMS?","parent_id":73564,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","created":"2003-07-25 12:50:22","modified":"2005-08-15 01:36:48","fileurl":"\/usr\/local\/www-domains\/la.indymedia.org\/public\/uploads\/2003\/07\/22.jpggdzsvv.jpg","image":{"original":"\/usr\/local\/www-domains\/la.indymedia.org\/public\/uploads\/2003\/07\/22.jpggdzsvv.jpg"}},{"id":74345,"heading":"logical fallacy","article":".>> It was done by arabs>>:\r\n\r\nunsubstantiated allegation.\r\n\r\ntry Logic for east coast shills. ","author":"debate coach","parent_id":73564,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-07-25 13:13:33","modified":"2003-07-25 13:13:33","fileurl":""},{"id":74439,"heading":">> It was done by JEWS>>","article":">> It was done by JEWS>>\r\nunsubstantiated allegation.\r\ntry Logic for east coast shills","author":">> It was done by JEWS>>","parent_id":73564,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-07-25 19:11:24","modified":"2003-07-25 19:11:24","fileurl":""},{"id":74753,"heading":"Jews did 9-11","article":"Jews did 9-11. I agree, get Silverstein and friends into court.","author":"Jews did 9-11","parent_id":73564,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-07-26 22:31:19","modified":"2003-07-26 22:31:19","fileurl":""},{"id":74841,"heading":"XXX","article":"Hang Silverstein, Lowry and Goldman.","author":"Hang Silverstein, Lowry and Goldman.","parent_id":73564,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-07-27 23:30:09","modified":"2003-07-27 23:30:09","fileurl":""}]} | | | | | | | | | |
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