THE WORLD TRADE CENTER BUILDINGS' COLLAPSES

5) The greatest loss of life and the greatest psychological impact to U.S. society in general on 9/11/01 came from the collapse of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers. Their fall produced thousands of personal tragedies.

Less than 10 minutes after impact to the South Tower, both Towers were already emitting dark smoke. Dark smoke indicates oxygen-starved, cooling fires. The Towers' smoke continued to darken as time progressed.

The Towers, however, could not have collapsed due to the causes cited by Government officials and almost all media. Temperatures exceeding 1000 degrees Fahrenheit are needed to begin weakening steel (fire-resistant structural steel composed the Twin Towers' extraordinarily massive columns and beams), but actual tests of steel frame structures exposed to prolonged hydrocarbon-fueled fires suggest structural steel never exceeds 680 degrees Fahrenheit in building fires. For a record of such tests, please see J. McMichael's analysis `Muslim Suspend the Laws of Physics' at
http://www.serendipity.li/wot/mslp_i.htm .

In addition, smoke from the fires in both Towers had become dark by the time of their collapses, indicating that those fires had cooled, a progression substantiated by the call from New York Fire Department Batallion Chief Orio J. Palmer for two Engine Companies to join him on the 78th floor of the South Tower less than 10 minutes before that Tower's collapse at 9:59 A.M. For record of Chief Palmer's call, please see the New York Times at
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/09/nyregion/09TOWE.html
?ex=1059105600&en=3a84112d9c0719b9&ei=5070 .

6) Each Twin Tower collapsed entirely in less than 15 seconds, an interval almost equal to free-fall (32 feet per second per second). That is, the Towers collapsed as if any resistance from columns, beams and concrete was removed, floor by floor, from their descending weight. Consistent with this evident reality, photos and video of both Towers' collapse show explosions occurring serially on floors below the disintegrating structure above them.

Also, previously molten steel was discovered 7 levels below ground at the Twin Towers' site and underneath Building 7, showing that temperatures there must have exceeded 2800 degrees Farenheit to produce such melting. Such high temperatures are impossible to explain as the result of the combustion of jet fuel or anything intrinsic to the three collapsed buildings.

7) We who watched each Tower's astounding, sickening collapse repeat on Network TV remember the mushrooming clouds of smoky dust that spewed upward and sideways early in each 110-story building's fall. Some of these explosions radiated more than 500 feet.

How and why could nearly all the non-metallic components of a building explode into dust--most of it consisting of particles no larger than 100 microns in diameter--dust as fine as flour-- a process that started at the very outset of its collapse? Independent scientists have recently shown that the energy required for the pulverization of concrete and for the stupendous expansion of the dust clouds that accompanied both Towers' collapse is as much as 100 times greater than could have been produced from each Tower's gravitational potential energy (that is, the mass throughout each Tower times its height).

In a paper published online on June 13, 2003, `The North Tower's Dust Cloud: Analysis of Energy Requirements for the Expansion of the Dust Cloud Following the Collapse of 1 World Trade Center,' Jim Hoffman cites previous research about pulverization of the concrete. `The gravitational energy of each tower was on the order of 111,000 KWH (kilowatt hours),' he writes. `Of the many identifiable energy sinks in the collapses, one of the only ones that has been subjected to quantitative analysis is the thorough pulverization of the concrete that constituted the floor slabs of the Towers.' Hoffman estimates that the energy required to convert one Tower's estimated 90,000 tons of concrete into dust of 60-micron particle diameter is about 135,000 KWH. This researcher then considers another aspect of the collapse: `There was, however, another energy sink that was many times the magnitude of the gravitational energy: the energy needed to expand the dust clouds to several times the volume of each tower within 30 seconds of the onset of their collapses.'

The dust cloud from the North Tower grew to about 5 times the volume of the building within 30 seconds of the start of the collapse.

Hoffman's paper concludes with this careful statement of his additional finding: `The amount of energy required to expand the North Tower's dust cloud was many times the entire potential energy of the tower's elevated mass due to gravity. The over 100-fold disparity between this estimate and the gravitational energy is not easily dismissed as reflecting uncertainties in quantitative assessments.'

Jim Hoffman's complete paper can be seen at his new and excellent site, wtc7.net, at http://911research.wtc7.net/papers/ .

Of the 2952 people killed in the 2001 World Trade Center atrocities, 129 were passengers or crew aboard the two airliners, 479 were public-service personnel such as firefighters and New York City Police, and 2,334 were office-workers.

Despite the horrific, unprecedented amount of death and destruction in New York City on 9/11/01, the U.S. Government spent only $600,000 for its single study of the causes for the WTC Buildings' collapses (against the $40 million that was spent for investigation of Bill Clinton's activities with Monica Lewinksy in 1988-1999). A 125-year-old trade publication, Fire Engineering, complained in January 2002 that removal of evidence from the WTC site and other factors made the then-proceeding Study a "half-baked farce." (Please see
http://www.rense.com/general18/firefighter.htm
for New York Times and New York Daily News articles). In May of 2002 the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) issued its `World Trade Center Building Performance Study'. FEMA's Study declines to be definitive. Regarding the catastrophe of the Towers' collapse, this Study states: `With the information and time available, the sequence of events leading to the collapse of each tower could not be definitively determined.' Something, however, caused the Twin Towers to collapse and explode as no buildings ever have. Jim Hoffman debunks FEMA's report at
http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/towers/ .

8) World Trade Center Building 7 collapsed at 5:20 P.M. on 9/11/01, 7 hours after the North Tower's fall. Unlike Buildings 3, 4, and 6, no portion of the 47-story structure of Building 7 was crushed by the Towers' debris.

Leaving the adjacent U.S. Post Office and Verizon buildings unscathed, Building 7 collapsed into its own footprint and tidy pile of rubble.

WTC 7 showed only two small areas of fire--on its 7th and 12th floors--in the minutes just before its collapse. It fell straight-down and its barely more than 6-second time of total collapse was almost as fast as free-fall. (An object would take 5.956 seconds to fall from WTC 7's roof in a vacuum.)

Building 7 mid-way through its 6-second collapse. Note that the building's center was falling ahead of its perimeter and that streamers of smoke emerged from its facade. Both of these features are characteristic of a controlled demolition's implosion.

Building 7's fall is a picture-perfect example of how a controlled demolition should look. It was the first structural-steel building to ever collapse with fire alone as its explaining cause.

Building 7 held offices of the FBI and CIA. Occupying its 23rd floor was the Emergency Command Center that New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani created.

On the morning of 9/11/01 Rudolph Giuliani told ABC News's Peter Jennings about the temporary headquarters that he and staff had set up at 75 Barkley Street: "We were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center building was gonna collapse." How this Mayor would know about an impending collapse that even firefighters inside the Twin Towers did not anticipate is yet another question unaddressed by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks.

For a great deal more about the World Trade Center Buildings and their fall, please see:
(a) http://www.911-strike.com/demolition_explosive.htm
(b) http://www.plaguepuppy.net/public_html/collapse%20update/
(c) http://www.sfcall.com/issues%202002/11.01.02/paul_11_01_02.htm