WTC Building 7 Anomalies

[Trippy]

In fact this statement:

How did they know, that quickly in advance that the towers were coming down?

I'd have to do some digging to find it, but I've seen at least one guy who's involved in building forensics, or engineering or something along those lines who has stated that there came a point where collapse became inevitable - I don't remember all of the details, but it had to do with the lean of the upper part of the building, or something similar.

Apparently there's some critical angle for most/all buildings that if the lean exceeds that point, collapse becomes a matter of 'when' rather than 'if'.

Anyway, the point is maybe they made judgement calls based on the evidence they had available to them, and came to the conclusion that global collapse was inevitable.

I seem to recall camera crews in helicopters saying the same thing, or something similar anyway.

Was referring (exclusively) to Towers 1 and 2, that 7 may have been on a lean occured to me as an afterthought whilst replying to your (Arthurs) comments about Tower 7 (while commenting on the above post).

 

[Syzygys]

what kind of question is this?
i would have to have inside information to answer it and besides do you seriously believe that i would tell you if i did?

I dunno, logical?? After all you came up with a theory that has never happened in real life. You seriously consider that thousands of people work in a rigged building???

Nevertheless you seem to think this as a plausible scenario...

Oh yeah, your scenario is specially stupid, because the "demolition" didn't come around 11 am, when officials were still in panic but late in the afternoon when everything was mostly clear and there was no need to panic and blow the sensitive material...

 

[The Esotericist]

I have not heard anywhere, from any source that they had thought the towers were going to collapse after they had been hit, who had said that while they were burning or anything about a lean. . . could you please substantiate this with a source?

 

[Syzygys]

Here the quote from the PBS show

OK I remember it now. It does sound suspicious, but let's try to come up with a plausible explanation:

1. He simply misspoke.
2. He meant by "pull", that they let it burn down, without putting up further effort to save the building.
3. Official explanation: "when Mr. Silverstein was recounting these events for a television documentary he stated, “I said, you know, we've had such terrible loss of life. Maybe the smartest thing to do is to pull it.” Mr. McQuillan has stated that by “it,” Mr. Silverstein meant the contingent of firefighters remaining in the building."

That the fire marshal decided and executed a demolition of this size is not plausible....

 

[adoucette]

Yeah, I'd like a link to some explanation of how they knew, that day, that hour, that the twin towers were coming down. Who knew, how they knew, when they knew, etc. It's always putting the burden of proof on the skeptical, but really, it's the commission report that is unbelievable.

What a bunch of BS.

They didn't know that the towers were coming down.
That's why 421 First Responders were killed when the towers came down.

Buildings like that just don't fall. The never have, and never will.

It didn't just fall, planes ran into each of the towers creating massive structural damage, shaking off the critical sprayed on insulation, severing the water supply to the fire supression system and starting massive multi-floor fires with thousands of gallons of jet fuel.

Yes, tall steel framed buildings that have that happen to them will probably always come down, or if like Windsor or WTC 7, if you let them burn, they will also probably collapse (but of course different designs might not, in WTC 7's case it was the design of the connections for the long horizontal beams that couldn't handle the lateral forces from thermal expansion that helped to precipitate the collapse).

Yet they pulled the rescue personnel out. It doesn't make sense.

NO THEY DIDN'T, they did give the order to leave WTC 1 even before WTC 2 failed, but it takes a long time to walk down all those stairs, so again a lot didn't make it (they don't know which or how many responders died in which tower though).

WTC 7 was completely unoccupied

Yeah, because it was a 47 story building, with visible severe damage and with fires burning all through it and with no water pressure in the standpipes after WTC 1 went down there was NO WAY TO FIGHT THE FIRES. Once they were sure that no one was in the building they abandoned it because there was really nothing they could do.

and the in twin towers, they were telling the fire fighters to abandon it, when there are reports from some fire fighters that they were getting the blaze under control.

No they weren't telling them to abandon it.
WTC 2 came down without any warning issued, indeed firefighters had JUST got to the LOWER fire floors when it came down.

So what gives. Who made that call, and how did they come to that conclusion?

Battalion chief Orio Palmer along with firefighters who had made it to the lowest fire floor (78 in WTC 2) said they thought they could knock back that fire in the Sky Lobby with a few hoses, they said that just a few minutes before the towers came down.

They all died.

Their last radio comments in no way indicates that the fires could have been put out in the whole tower as by that time they were a raging inferno.

Arthur

 

[adoucette]

In fact this statement:
Was referring (exclusively) to Towers 1 and 2

Each of the twin towers did have a slight lean after the impact, but that wasn't itself critical to the failures of either tower.

I might take the time to find the actual dimensions, but the WTC 1 tower leaned to the North and about 7% of the gravity loads shifted from the South wall.

In WTC 2 the damage was more severe and asymetric, and the East walls loads went up 24% and the displacement was 7" off of vertical, and it was the East wall that failed due to the heavily loaded perimeter columns being pulled in and buckling.

 

[adoucette]

I have not heard anywhere, from any source that they had thought the towers were going to collapse after they had been hit, who had said that while they were burning or anything about a lean. . . could you please substantiate this with a source?

The police helo pilots said that because they could see the side bowing in 8 minutes before WTC 2 went down but due to different frequencies they couldn't reach the fire fighters and get the word out.

 

[The Esotericist]

But they were told on the ground before even tower one came down to get their people out of there. Who did they get the order from above and who gave it then? How did they know if they were on different frequencies? Who told the people in charge to tell the command on the ground?

 

[adoucette]

But they were told on the ground before even tower one came down to get their people out of there. Who did they get the order from above and who gave it then? How did they know if they were on different frequencies? Who told the people in charge to tell the command on the ground?

The person who gave the command to evacuate the WTC 1 tower did it because of the unsafe conditions in the tower, not because he thought it was going to collapse:

Assistant Chief Callan: "Approximately 40 minutes after I arrived in the lobby, I made a decision that the building was no longer safe. And that was based on the conditions in the lobby, large pieces of plaster falling, all the 20 foot high glass panels on the exterior of the lobby were breaking. There was obvious movement of the building, and that was the reason on the handy talky I gave the order for all Fire Department units to leave the north tower. Approximately ten minutes after that, we had a collapse of the south tower, and we were sort of blown up against the wall in the lobby of the north tower, and we gathered together those of us who were still able to."

About the same time NY Police Helocopter pilots were seeing the worsening conditions on WTC 2 and indeed said they thought it was going to collapse.

police chopper pilots reported seeing the warning signs - an inward bowing of the building facade - at least eight minutes before it collapsed at 10:29 a.m.

But emergency responders inside the tower never got the order to evacuate due to faulty communications equipment and garbled lines of command, investigators with the National Institute of Standards and Technology said in its second interim report on the collapse's causes.

http://www.skyscrapersafety.org/html/article_20040619.html

The fact is what they saw proves it WASN'T explosives that brought the towers down, as explosives wouldn't cause that bowing in of the towers.

But that is indeed characteristic of FIRE damage.

Arthur

 

[The Esotericist]

They didn't know that the towers were coming down.
That's why 421 First Responders were killed when the towers came down.

Q. Was debris still falling?
A. Debris was falling. It looked like birds.
There were people falling from the towers or jumping,
whatever it was they were doing. Abdo and I went into
No. 7, activated OEM, placed calls to EMS Citywide,
RCC, to tell them we were there and we were activated.
Maybe five, ten minutes, not even ten minutes
later, a rep from OEM came into the main room and said
we need to evacuate the building; there's a third plane
inbound. That was the only thing I really heard
because I said, Abdo, we've got to go, and we made it
down to the lobby of the building, street level, met up
with Chief Peruggia in the lobby of the building. He
said that there was no third plane but we needed to
5
R. ZARRILLO
re-establish OEM right there so we can coordinate what
was going on. He had already been to the command post,
so he told us, and he was trying to release people back
to be operational. He was looking for the Fire guy to
go back in. He was there with Captain Yakimovich. In
OEM with Captain Nahmod and I was Chief Maggio, who is
now retired, and another firefighter from the 1st
Division. We were really trying to establish OEM and a
treatment sector in the lobby of the building because
there were people coming around us.
Again, times are a little fuzzy initially for
me. A few minutes later, John came to me and said you
need to go find Chief Ganci and relay the following
message: that the buildings have been compromised, we
need to evacuate, they're going to collapse. I said
okay. I went down Vesey Street towards West.
Q. You were by yourself?
A. I was by myself, me and my helmet and my
radio. I got to the corner of Vesey and West. I found
some EMS vehicles. I think I saw Chief Gombo there.
I'm not really sure. I mentioned to the EMS people
there, again, not knowing who they were, I said you
need to get away from here, the building might
collapse, we need to leave this spot.
6
R. ZARRILLO
As I was walking towards the Fire command
post, I found Steve Mosiello. I said, Steve, where's
the boss? I have to give him a message. He said,
well, what's the message? I said the buildings are
going to collapse; we need to evac everybody out. With
a very confused look he said who told you that? I said
I was just with John at OEM. OEM says the buildings
are going to collapse; we need to get out.
He escorted me over to Chief Ganci. He said,
hey, Pete, we got a message that the buildings are
going to collapse. His reply was who the fuck told you
that? Then Steve brought me in and with Chief Ganci,
Commissioner Feehan, Steve, I believe Chief Turi was
initially there, I said, listen, I was just at OEM.
The message I was given was that the buildings are
going to collapse; we need to get our people out. At
that moment, this thunderous, rolling roar came down
and that's when the building came down, the first tower
came down.
The command post was situated right in front
of 3 World Financial, the American Express Building.
The garage was open and as that rumble started and we
saw it was coming down, the firemen that were in the
command area, I believe most of the chiefs, we all ran
7
R. ZARRILLO
into the garage of that building. It became dark, hard
to breathe. Nobody had any equipment because most of
the firemen dropped everything as they were running.
It became an obstacle course to get into the garage.
Again, it's sketchy with time, but it may
have been anywhere from ten to 20 minutes by the time
we found an emergency exit to get out of the building.
It was dark. There was no light.

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110161.PDF?scp=1&sq=OEM%20wtc&st=cse
I love eyewitness reports from everyday people, don't you? They are so non-political and non-biased. They don't have an agenda. If you don't understand that NIST and the 9/11 commission does, you don't understand the affairs of kings and men.

 

[adoucette]

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110161.PDF?scp=1&sq=OEM%20wtc&st=cse
I love eyewitness reports from everyday people, don't you? They are so non-political and non-biased. They don't have an agenda. If you don't understand that NIST and the 9/11 commission does, you don't understand the affairs of kings and men.

Yeah, I'm well aware of that, but Callan himself says he didn't think it was going to collapse and he was only asking for an evac of WTC 1, but he's supposedly the source.

No big surprise though, on a day like that do you really think that messages were all relayed accurately and correctly?

Callan's warnings about the north tower, WTC 1, reached the Office of Emergency Management, OEM. Other people learned from OEM that the WTC buildings were going to collapse. EMT Richard Zarrillo was told to deliver the message.

http://www.representativepress.org/BowingDebunksExplosives2.html

Again, Callan was in WTC 1 and it didn't come down for quite a while after that, they didn't know WTC 2 was just about to come down or they wouldn't have had firefighters going up the stairways when it did.

(note WTC 1 was the first tower hit but the last to fall)

Arthur

 

[AlexG]

It is now the year 2011. Which means that the WTC attacks were ten years ago. And for the last ten years, there have been innumerable copies of this thread.

The concpiracy woo-woos are always going to make the same arguments, and countering them with fact and logic has never worked. They still just post the same stuff. They don't know because they don't want to know. They are concpiracy nuts enthusiasts.

 

[Trippy]

But they were told on the ground before even tower one came down to get their people out of there. Who did they get the order from above and who gave it then? How did they know if they were on different frequencies? Who told the people in charge to tell the command on the ground?

Easier than I thought:

FDNY Assistant Chief Joseph Callan: "Approximately 40 minutes after I arrived in the lobby, I made a decision that the building was no longer safe. And that was based on the conditions in the lobby, large pieces of plaster falling, all the 20 foot high glass panels on the exterior of the lobby were breaking. There was obvious movement of the building, and that was the reason on the handy talky I gave the order for all Fire Department units to leave the north tower.​

Source

Callan: "For me to make the decision to take our firefighters out of the building with civilians still in it, that was very tough for me, but I did that because I did not think the building was safe any longer, and that was just prior to 9:30."​

Source

EMS Division Chief John Peruggia: "I was in a discussion with Mr. Rotanz and I believe it was a representative from the Department of Buildings, but I'm not sure. Some engineer type person, and several of us were huddled talking in the lobby and it was brought to my attention, it was believed that the structural damage that was suffered to the towers was quite significant and they were very confident that the building's stability was compromised and they felt that the north tower was in danger of a near imminent collapse.

I grabbed EMT Zarrillo, I advised him of that information. I told him he was to proceed immediately to the command post where Chief Ganci was located. Told him where it was across the street from number 1 World Trade Center. I told him "You see Chief Ganci and Chief Ganci only. Provide him with the information that the building integrity is severely compromised and they believe the building is in danger of imminent collapse." So, he left off in that direction."​

According to Shyam-Sunder, the concave bowing of the steel was seen on the sides of the towers opposite where the planes hit them. At 10:06 a.m. that morning, an officer in a police helicopter reported that ``it's not going to take long before the north tower comes down.'' This was 20 minutes before it collapsed. In another radio transmission at 10:21 a.m., the officer said he saw buckling in the north tower's southern face, Shyam-Sunder said​

Source

10:21: NYPD aviation unit reports that the north tower is buckling on the southwest corner and leaning to the south. NYPD officer advises that all personnel close to the building pull back three blocks in every direction.​

NIST NCSTAR1-8 p.37

On the 56th floor, an architect believes the building was failing structurally.
Architect Bob Shelton had his foot in a cast; he'd broken it falling off a curb two weeks ago. He heard the explosion of the first plane hitting the north tower from his 56th-floor office in the south tower. As he made his way down the stairwell, his building came under attack as well. "You could hear the building cracking. It sounded like when you have a bunch of spaghetti, and you break it in half to boil it." Shelton knew that what he was hearing was bad. "It was structural failure," Shelton says. "Once a building like that is off center, that's it."​

Source

Around 9:15, Drohan heard (Port Authority WTC Construction Manager Frank) DeMartini over the walkie-talkie.
"Any construction inspector at ground level."
Drohan acknowledged that he was on the street.
"Can you escort a couple of structural inspectors to the 78th floor?" DeMartini asked.
DeMartini had seen something in the steel–Drohan was not sure what–that he did not like. The drywall had been knocked off parts of the sky lobby, exposing the elevator shafts, and revealing the core of the building. That had prompted his first radio alert, warning that the elevators might collapse. Now DeMartini wanted inspectors from a structural engineering firm to come up to the 78th-floor sky lobby and take a look.​

102 Minutes, p. 147

And so on and so forth.

People believed the towers were going to come down because the evidence was there in front of them suggested that they were severly damaged.

 

[adoucette]

If you look at those quotes, you'll note that most of the focus was unfortunately on the North Tower, the first tower hit.

It was only the NYPD Helo pilots that were warning about the South Tower, and that info wasn't getting through to the NYFD, so when Callan says to evacuate the tower he was talking about WTC 1 only, which is why they were still going up the stairs on WTC 2 when it came down (it only lasted 56 minutes after impact till it fell).

Arthur

 

[Trippy]

If you look at those quotes, you'll note that most of the focus was unfortunately on the North Tower, the first tower hit.

It was only the NYPD Helo pilots that were warning about the South Tower, and that info wasn't getting through to the NYFD, so when Callan says to evacuate the tower he was talking about WTC 1 only, which is why they were still going up the stairs on WTC 2 when it came down (it only lasted 56 minutes after impact till it fell).

Arthur

Yes, I know.

 

[adoucette]

It is now the year 2011. Which means that the WTC attacks were ten years ago. And for the last ten years, there have been innumerable copies of this thread.

The concpiracy woo-woos are always going to make the same arguments, and countering them with fact and logic has never worked. They still just post the same stuff. They don't know because they don't want to know. They are concpiracy nuts enthusiasts.

Yeah, debating them is much like playing Whack A Mole

 

[The Esotericist]

Interesting. Ok, fine, you've convinced me. Sure.

 

[adoucette]

Need another WHACK?

 

[Trippy]

South Tower:

FDNY Battalion Chief Steve Grabher: "There was - somebody was insinuating that there had been a structural collapse and this is probably 15 to 30, 15 to 20 seconds before the building came down. I was hearing this. There was some collapse."

Q. "It might have been an interior collapse happening prior to the exterior?"

A. "Yes."

Q. "Nobody knew exactly what was going on. But you are saying you are pretty sure it was Ladder 4, the roof man."

A. "I'm almost positive it was Ladder 4 roof. I remember him saying his name. This guy was calm as a cucumber. I'm thinking this guy is about to die and he is as calm as a cucumber."

Q. "He didn't know it, I don't think."

A. "Then he said I'm losing consciousness."​

Claiborne Johnston: "It seemed we were walking down very calm, very orderly . . . and all of a sudden you felt like the ground was falling out from under you," said Claiborne Johnston, who escaped from the 64th floor of the south tower. "You knew the structure had been altered severely, and the rest of the way down you could feel that."​

FDNY EMS EMT Mary McMillan: As I was gathering it, I was saying to Mala, that I'm looking up at the building and I said to her, this is going to fall. I said we should get out of here. This is going to fall. She says I know. I think we are in the wrong place. I tried to tell Chief Grant and Chief McCracken I think it's going to fall, but they were so busy talking among themselves, I didn't have a chance to tell them what I was feeling. I think I should have shared with everyone, but when I felt that way, I looked around me. I gathered the resources, but I'm thinking what do I do when this thing falls. I looked around me and I saw this building on my right. It had the glass bottom doors and I just made reference to it in case god forbid, anything happened, my plan would be to run behind that building, grab my jacket over my head and just stay there for a while.

Sure enough, after my thoughts traveled through my head, all I heard was run and I heard the sound, a sound -- I can't really describe it. It was an unusual sound. Then they are saying run, so I started to run and I looked back and I saw this white smoke just moving in this boiling motion towards us and I was like oh, my god, what's going on. I was scared, I was frightened and I'm running and everybody's running​

"At 9:37, a civilian on the 106th floor of the South Tower reported to a 911 operator that a lower floor – the '90-something floor' – was collapsing."​

9/11 Commission Report, pg. 304

Stanley Praimnath & Brian Clark: It was like steel bending and creaking. It made this -- I can't explain the sound, but it's like -- it was an eerie sound.

CLARK: And we heard this boom, boom, boom.

OKWU: As the tower collapsed, Stanley Praimnath and Brian Clark were watching from less than a 100 yards away, just before they ran, two of the very last people to get out alive.​

Source

Note that many witnesses describe an eerie sound before global collapse begins, some are unable to describe it beyond that, others will refer to it as metal breaking or tearing.

Tommy Castaldi: "Police and firefighters were coming in to the building when we reached the lobby," Castaldi said. "The building was swaying, burning and shaking. But they went up, not back to the street...."​

Source

Jaede Barg: The lights in the staircase went out. There were cracks in the stairwell walls with exposed pipes breaking through the plaster. The building was forcefully swaying, enough to require significant balancing. I recall the incredible sound of twisting metal with each sway of the building.​

Source

 

[Trippy]

One of the pieces I was specifically thinking of:

Among the dozens of people I have spoken to recently who are experts in the construction of tall buildings (and many of whom witnessed the events of September 11th as they unfolded), only one said that he knew immediately, upon learning, from TV, of the planes' hitting the buildings, that the towers were going to fall. This was Mark Loizeaux, the president of Controlled Demolition Incorporated, a Maryland-based family business that specializes in reducing tall buildings to manageable pieces of rubble. "Within a nanosecond," he told me. "I said, 'It's coming down. And the second tower will fall first, because it was hit lower down.' "

Before September 11th, the largest building ever to be imploded by accident or design was the J. L. Hudson department store, in Detroit, with 2.2 million square feet of floor space, which C.D.I. "dropped" on October 24, 1998. To do their work, Mark Loizeaux and his brother Doug need to understand the same forces and formulas that structural engineers study, but instead of using that knowledge to erect buildings they use it to take them down. They are structural undertakers, which may explain why Mark, when confronted with the spectacle of the crippled buildings, lacked the sentiment that builders feel for their creations--that innate sympathy which helped blind the engineers of the World Trade towers to the reality of what was about to occur. "I thought, Somebody's got to tell the Fire Department to get out of there," Loizeaux told me. "I picked up the phone, dialled 411, got the number, and tried it--busy. So I called the Mayor's Office of Emergency Management"--which was in 7 World Trade. "All circuits were busy. I couldn't get through."​

Source

When all is said and done, those two buildings did their jobs, and they did them well, the fact that they did so well is a testimant to their design. They withstood the initial impacts, and stayed standing long enough for most of the people to evacuate.

Addendum:

Another of the pieces I was thinking of:

My Thayer School engineering training came back, and I realized that with that intensity of heat in a building in which the steel girders were insulated with asbestos, it had to collapse within one hour. I called the fire department, police, etc. and told them the building was guaranteed to collapse. I was told that 911 was only for emergencies, and I should callsomewhere else.

After about 40 minutes, as I saw (I have telescopes, binoculars, etc.) the top segment of the building listing about 3 degrees, I left my apartment and went out to walk in the street. Buidlings collapse if they list more than 3 degrees. As I walked down Bleecker Street, people gasped as the building collapsed. Like Lord Jim, my imagination surpasses any reality. I should have stayed and watched. I did for the second tower.

...We watched the second building, and I noticed it was more than 3 degrees, but as the telescope revealed, that was because the beams were buckling on both sides. A building like the WTC does not 'break off in the middle' and fall like a tree.​

Source

Is that enough, or do you want more?