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.
=====================================================================
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.
=====================================================================
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]