Originally posted by Master Wu
Excellent Posts!
Heres some more on that Prof's paper...
www.physics.byu.edu...
Some extremely interesting reads going on in this thread.
Here is an interesting story i found about an unscathed credit card from one of the passengers found at ground zero.
rense.com...
Im curious, what do you guys think would happen if the American people found out that their own government was behind 9-11 and not muslims? Interesting to speculate about....
Originally posted by Garden Spider
ShadowXIX, when skeptics here at the forum claim that no steel frame tower has ever collapsed due to fire alone, you are quick to point out that it was fire in conjuction with a large plane impacting the side of the towers which caused their collapse.
Fair enough. I don't agree, but fair enough.
However, would you then please explain how Tower 7 collapsed with no plane impact, due to internal fires?
Boyle:We went one block north over to Greenwich and then headed south. There was an engine company there, right at the corner. It was right underneath building 7 and it was still burning at the time. They had a hose in operation, but you could tell there was no pressure. It was barely making it across the street. Building 6 was fully involved and it was hitting the sidewalk across the street. I told the guys to wait up.
A little north of Vesey I said, we’ll go down, let’s see what’s going on. A couple of the other officers and I were going to see what was going on. We were told to go to Greenwich and Vesey and see what’s going on. So we go there and on the north and east side of 7 it didn’t look like there was any damage at all, but then you looked on the south side of 7 there had to be a hole 20 stories tall in the building, with fire on several floors. Debris was falling down on the building and it didn’t look good.
But they had a hoseline operating. Like I said, it was hitting the sidewalk across the street, but eventually they pulled back too. Then we received an order from Fellini, we’re going to make a move on 7. That was the first time really my stomach tightened up because the building didn’t look good. I was figuring probably the standpipe systems were shot. There was no hydrant pressure. I wasn’t really keen on the idea. Then this other officer I’m standing next to said, that building doesn’t look straight. So I’m standing there. I’m looking at the building. It didn’t look right, but, well, we’ll go in, we’ll see.
So we gathered up rollups and most of us had masks at that time. We headed toward 7. And just around we were about a hundred yards away and Butch Brandies came running up. He said forget it, nobody’s going into 7, there’s creaking, there are noises coming out of there, so we just stopped. And probably about 10 minutes after that, Visconti, he was on West Street, and I guess he had another report of further damage either in some basements and things like that, so Visconti said nobody goes into 7, so that was the final thing and that was abandoned.
Firehouse: When you looked at the south side, how close were you to the base of that side?
Boyle: I was standing right next to the building, probably right next to it.
Firehouse: When you had fire on the 20 floors, was it in one window or many?
Boyle: There was a huge gaping hole and it was scattered throughout there. It was a huge hole. I would say it was probably about a third of it, right in the middle of it. And so after Visconti came down and said nobody goes in 7, we said all right, we’ll head back to the command post. We lost touch with him. I never saw him again that day.
Hayden: By now, this is going on into the afternoon, and we were concerned about additional collapse, not only of the Marriott, because there was a good portion of the Marriott still standing, but also we were pretty sure that 7 World Trade Center would collapse. Early on, we saw a bulge in the southwest corner between floors 10 and 13, and we had put a transit on that and we were pretty sure she was going to collapse. You actually could see there was a visible bulge, it ran up about three floors. It came down about 5 o’clock in the afternoon, but by about 2 o’clock in the afternoon we realized this thing was going to collapse.
Firehouse: Was there heavy fire in there right away?
Hayden: No, not right away, and that’s probably why it stood for so long because it took a while for that fire to develop. It was a heavy body of fire in there and then we didn’t make any attempt to fight it. That was just one of those wars we were just going to lose. We were concerned about the collapse of a 47-story building there. We were worried about additional collapse there of what was remaining standing of the towers and the Marriott, so we started pulling the people back after a couple of hours of surface removal and searches along the surface of the debris. We started to pull guys back because we were concerned for their safety. . . .
Firehouse: Chief Nigro said they made a collapse zone and wanted everybody away from number 7— did you have to get all of those people out?
Hayden: Yeah, we had to pull everybody back. It was very difficult. We had to be very forceful in getting the guys out. They didn’t want to come out. There were guys going into areas that I wasn’t even really comfortable with, because of the possibility of secondary collapses. We didn’t know how stable any of this area was. We pulled everybody back probably by 3 or 3:30 in the afternoon. We said, this building is going to come down, get back. It came down about 5 o’clock or so, but we had everybody backed away by then. At that point in time, it seemed like a somewhat smaller event, but under any normal circumstances, that’s a major event, a 47-story building collapsing. It seemed like a firecracker after the other ones came down, but I mean that’s a big building, and when it came down, it was quite an event. But having gone through the other two, it didn’t seem so bad. But that’s what we were concerned about. We had said to the guys, we lost as many as 300 guys. We didn’t want to lose any more people that day.
Originally posted by HowardRoark
As for the Windsor Tower building.
Note that the tenant area of the top portion of the building which was steel framed, did in fact collapse. The core area which was constructed of reinforced concrete beams and columns did not collapse.
Since this is not a “Steel framed building” but rather a composite steel and concrete structure, it can’t even be used to support or refute the above statement.
Dr. Pal Chana of the British Cement Association demonstrated the relative likelihood of floor collapse in a steel versus concrete framed building, using the vivid example of the Madrid Windsor Tower fire which raged over 26 hours on 14-15 February 2005. This former landmark office block of 30 storeys featured a concrete core throughout, but with concrete columns up to the 21st floor and steel columns between the 22nd and 30th floors. Remarkably, despite the intensity and duration of the fire, the concrete floors and columns remained intact however, the steel supported floors above the 21st floor collapsed, leaving the concrete core in-situ and exposed.
Originally posted by HowardRoark
Dr. Pal Chana of the British Cement Association demonstrated the relative likelihood of floor collapse in a steel versus concrete framed building, using the vivid example of the Madrid Windsor Tower fire which raged over 26 hours on 14-15 February 2005. This former landmark office block of 30 storeys featured a concrete core throughout, but with concrete columns up to the 21st floor and steel columns between the 22nd and 30th floors. Remarkably, despite the intensity and duration of the fire, the concrete floors and columns remained intact however, the steel supported floors above the 21st floor collapsed, leaving the concrete core in-situ and exposed.
www.concretefireforum.org.uk...
The Windsor Tower was nothing like the WTC buildings.
