Photographic Analysis of the WTC7 Hole - NIST Debunked

About a month ago, I started a thread analysing the only known photograph of the south face damage to WTC7:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

A few of us concluded that the damage shown in the photo was the south west corner damage and not the massive hole alleged to be in the center of the south face which is mentioned in one or two eye witness accounts and in NIST's damage guesstimates based on those accounts. Immediately after, 911mthys.com and debunking911.com changed their articles on the photo to insist that the damage in the photo is indeed the hole in the center of the south face, perhaps in response to the thread here on ATS.

First here are the articles from the debunker sites:

www.debunking911.com...

www.911myths.com...


Here is the photo (reproduced with permission from the photographer, Steve Spak):



A wider, smaller version cropped a little at the bottom:



NIST's floor plan of WTC7 showing 14 columns along the south face, including the corners:



And below is a map I reconstructed of the south face of WTC7:



Column numbers are listed along the top and floors along the left corner. Blue lines denote columns that were visible, yellow denotes columns that are estimated.

The full image with vanishing point and clearer lines can be viewed here.

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There may be some contention as to my mapping method and accuracy, so here's the process summarized. You can skip this if you want.

Comparing the soot smudge in Steve's photo and in the below NIST report photo, the smudge marks the 22nd floor, assuming NIST's 18th floor reference is correct.




I further confirmed the smudges in both photos to be the same one based on the height of the Post Office roof visible in the background of Steve's photo, analysis posted here.

I used the windows on the Verizon Building and the face of WTC7 to establish the right hand horizon vanishing point.

You can see the light-coloured peaks on the second floor windows in the below photo of the Verizon:



These peaks (as well as the light pole) are also barely visible in Steve's photo (enhanced below):



Using this I filled in and estimated the placement of the ground floor of the Verizon Building in Steve's photo, which also equates to the approximate placement of the ground floor of WTC7.

I place blue lines over the visible columns, including the SW and SE corners, and placed yellow lines where the remaining columns would be, estimating spacing by established columns and taking vertical and horizontal perspective into account.
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NIST's damage estimates were based on video, photographs, and eye witness testimony, and unless they are withholding photographs from publication in their report, then the estimation of the damage to the south face was based entirely on eye witness accounts. The report can be found here:

Here is NIST's estimate of the damage from that report:



As you can see, they have marked out a quite small area of south west corner damage, not even reaching the first column from the edge, and they have marked out the south face center damage as taking out a huge portion of the building. This is important because part of NIST's working hypothesis for the collapse of WTC7 is that columns 79, 80, and 81 on the right side of the building failed as a result (or combination) of direct damage, thermal load, or overloading from damage to the floor spans/trusses in that area. However from Steve's photo, we can see that the south west corner damage is more extensive than their markings, but the center face if quite clean. It appears that NIST may have confused the eye witness reports and assumed that the damage to the south west corner and the damage to the central facade were two separate things, since previously the only photo they had of the SW corner damage was the one above looking down from North of the building.

Eye Witness Reports
Let's look at the eye witness reports of the damage to WTC7 available in the public realm, which it is assumed NIST's damage estimates were based on:

www.firehouse.com... Chief John

From there, we looked out at 7 World Trade Center again. You could see smoke, but no visible fire, and some damage to the south face. You couldn’t really see from where we were on the west face of the building, but at the edge of the south face you could see that it was very heavily damaged.

Norman describes heavy damage to the SW corner, and "some damage" to the south face. This account conflicts with NIST's analysis.

www.firehouse.com...
Captain Chris Boyle

Boyle: ...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.

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.

Boyle describes a hole 20 stories high in the building, right in the middle of the south face, but Steve's photo clearly shows that there is no 20 storey hole in center of the face. However, the damage to the SW corner reached from the 8th up to the 18th floor, i.e. about the same height as the hole in Boyle's description. NIST and Boyle's account conflict with the photgraphic evidence, unless Boyle's description of the location of the hole was mistaken.

graphics8.nytimes.com...
..Captain Varriale told Chief Coloe and myself that 7 World Trade Center was badly damaged on the south side and definitely in danger of collapse. Chief Coloe said we were going to evacuate the collapse zone around 7 World Trade Center, which we did.

A mention of damage, but no mention of exact location on the south face.

www.firehouse.com...
Deputy Chief Peter Hayden
...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.

Again, mention of the south west corner, but no mention of the alleged massively huge, half the building carved out damage to the middle of the south face which NIST has been pushing.


Debunking911.com Analysis

The "Debunking 9/11 Exclusive!" says:

www.debunking911.com...
If you count the columns which are visible, you can see this is NOT the corner damage in the FEMA photo below.

www.debunking911.com...

Below is a graphics from the initial World Trade Center 7 report. This might change when the final report becomes available.

img461.imageshack.us...

Note the amount of columns on the south face. There are 14 columns on the south face. Also note the columns on the ends are spaced out farther apart. Spak's image shows 5. We can assume the clearing at the end where daylight is visible is the end of the building. We can then fill in the columns to get a better idea where this hole is...

DB911 tells us to count the columns which are visible and from this we will see that it is the center hole we are looking at, not the SW corner damage. Yet his own map of the facade shows 9 or 10 columns to the right of the hole, which only leaves the 4 - 5 columns on the left of the south face, and Steve's photo clearly shows that the SW corner damage covers 4 - 5 columns. The NIST damage estimate he provides to support his argument marks out damage across 6 columns of the face, right across the very spot where he has just marked out INTACT columns.

He goes on to show this image:



And he states: "[Above] is another image which seems to show damage inline with the hole in Spak's image."

Again, the damage in Steve's photo is clearly on the SW corner, and NIST's photo shows it reaches as high as the 18th floor, but the damage at the top of the building in the above DB911 photo is a little to the left of the center, not "inline" at all. In their report, NIST described this damage as "South face damage between two exterior columns - roof level down 5 to 10 floors, extent not known"

This image of the top of WTC7 would seem to indicate that the damage did not scoop out any major portions of the building:



Regardless, damage to the top part of the face of the building would have negligible bearing on the integrity of the structure, and WTC7 as we all know collapsed from the base, not from the top.

In conclusion, unless NIST can provide some photgraphic evidence that we haven't yet seen, it would appear that their interpretations of the damage to the south face of WTC7 were at best, erroneous, and at worst, deliberately modified in favour of their hypothesis for the collapse of the building.



[edit on 2006-9-14 by wecomeinpeace]

Wow no comments on this??

Where is everyone at?

Good job on that WCIP, excellent work. well done.

Originally posted by ThichHeaded
Wow no comments on this??

Where is everyone at?

Good job on that WCIP, excellent work. well done.

Cough* Cough*... I called it.

Nice job putting ALL of the "evidence" to gether here WCIP...

The "orange blobs" the NIST drew on their "blueprint" are pretty funny....

SHOW ME THE GASH NIST!

[edit on 15-9-2006 by Slap Nuts]

WTC7 is pretty much the root of my doubt to the official story, but I'm not creative enough to analyze it the way you did. Damn good work.

Nicely done, WCIP.

I pointed the same out to the owner of Debunking911.com in email conversations between us, and that's when he stopped responding. He even began counting the columns on his own site, but I guess failed to realize what exactly he was implicating. Maybe now he'll have to go back and edit that page again now that the information is more explicitly available.

Originally posted by bsbray11
and that's when he stopped responding.

Sorry, haven't seen one of these in a while on here.

[edit on 15-9-2006 by Slap Nuts]

Yes, thanks Slap Nuts for originally pointing out the obvious to me in the original thread. The thing that threw me was I thought those were window frames along the south face, when in fact they are columns visible after the windows have busted out. There were about 50 windows along the original face but only 14 columns, so the photo just bent my poor little brain every time I tried to make sense of the perspective.

I still can't get over the blatant ridiculousness of NIST's orange "blob", as Slap Nuts so eloquently puts it. If they don't know the extent of the damage, particularly the depth into the building, and their guesstimates are based solely on conflicting witness accounts, then they should mark out dotted lines across the face only and annotate the depth as "unknown". But the blob seems to have grown more solid and gotten bigger with each successive publication from them, reaching farther and farther in towards critical components deep in the building.

Maybe NIST is on to something...maybe The Blob ate building WTC7!

Very good analysis! If I could give you my abovetopsecret award, i would have done so!

I can't give you a WATS vote, so I'll just give you...





a 21 thumb salute.

Thanks for the hard work, and for sharing.

Great job, nothing to add and this is basically a bump for your hard work

Originally posted by wecomeinpeace
But the blob seems to have grown more solid and gotten bigger with each successive publication from them, reaching farther and farther in towards critical components deep in the building.

They need the blob to be big enough to affect "transfer trusses" #1 and #2 for their upcoming half assed theory to even look half assed to a half wit.

The blob on the SW corner is too small in ther drawing and the center blob should bot exist at all IMHO.

[edit on 18-9-2006 by Slap Nuts]

I always knew they gave you mod status for a reason WCIP. Good analysis and work. I haven't seen any debunkers try and debunk this....wonder why?

I guess we can now place NIST in the liar group then Slap Nuts? Seems a pretty important lie to me.

Originally posted by Griff
I always knew they gave you mod status for a reason WCIP. Good analysis and work. I haven't seen any debunkers try and debunk this....wonder why?

I guess we can now place NIST in the liar group then Slap Nuts? Seems a pretty important lie to me.

Yes, I have been compiling a group of photos/drawings by them that are very suspect... enough to place them on the list of liars..

The Cores
The Blobs
The WTC 2 Tilt

They aer really close .. but they are SLIPPERY little bastards, like a bluegill.

I know why NO ONE from the "other viewpoint" wants to touch this. . .

It's because if you can't explain WTC 7 collapse as anything short of a CD, then you have to believe they knew they were gonna "PULL IT", and if they knew that, then they knew that WTC 1 & 2 were gonna fall & shell WTC 7 with debris that they could use as an excuse, ( along with all the diesel that supposedly was being pumped up to the 5th floor & causing major fires - Oops! I'm sorry - it was almost all accounted for - my bad ), to blow up the building, and if they knew that, then they must have known that the towers were gonna get hit by planes, and if they knew that, then they would have had to know that 19 terrorists were gonna hijack those 4 aircraft, and if they knew that then they must have let them do it, and they must have told NORAD to stand down, and if they could do that, could they let another flight hit the Pentagon, and could they have shot down flight 93 cuz it wasn't needed anymore because the targets had been hit & the mission accomplished. . .

It creates a house of cards for the whole story. . .

That's why they won't touch it

Really great job WCIP! You did a great job on this!

The official story is just falling apart like a cheaply made zoot suit...

Great work WCIP!

I don't know how anyone could still claim fires and damage caused the collapse of WTC7 after this, but we'll see eh? I'm sure someone will try.

"Debunkers" may not be responding to this thread, but how many of you want to bet that they won't hesitate to reference the supermassive hole in the South face next time WTC7 comes up anyway? As if this post never existed.

NIST has thousands of photographs and video segments. In their report of WTC7 thus far, how many times have we seen the South face? How many times have we seen it after the collapses in general?

Here is the first photo showing a large amount of the South face, and already the implications are huge. There could not have been any massive hole, or surely we would be staring at it in that image. No wonder NIST is outsourcing this one. Their lies are a bit too blatant to be totally their responsibility on this one.

Originally posted by bsbray11
"Debunkers" may not be responding to this thread, but how many of you want to bet that they won't hesitate to reference the supermassive hole in the South face next time WTC7 comes up anyway? As if this post never existed.

I will be here.

I will remember.

I will bring this post back to the top for them...

nice hiccup from the wcip.

great stuff.

i hate that debunking911 site. it has more holes in it than a world trade centre.

i would like to point by point pull the whole site apart with, say, a debunking debunking 911 site, but i like to think that the phrase 'res ipso loquitur' still speaks for itself.

I wanted to bump this thread so we can get some debunkers in here. I have yet to see anyone who claimed the super massive hole in the south face say anything yet. This information is too important to just let slip into the darkness.

One logical question: Why would the evil gubmint want to spoil all that extremely elaborate plan involving lots of people (none of which would speak) by demolishing a building that wasn't hit?