WTC fires that burned for 100 days

Originally posted by CameronFox
You may say...well it was chaos...etc...but in reality...there were I believe hundreds of firefighters standing around waiting...to see if 7 goes down. The search and rescue efforts for that area were suspended for the fear of WTC7 collapsing. Good thing though..not one person died during the collapse.

CameronFox,

Have you found any quotes about WTC 4, 5 or 6? Were operations suspended around those buildings as well? There was plenty of structural damage and fire in those buildings also. Were the firefighters watching those buildings and waiting for them to collapse also? If not, it would seem rather strange. I'll try looking for quotes myself.

Originally posted by CameronFox
Good thing though..not one person died during the collapse.

Do they really know this for a fact? How can they be absolutely sure of this with all the chaos of the day? If the search and rescue was abandoned some time before the collapse, how do they know that someone wasn't trapped in the collapse zone when it came down?

I don't think the firefighters ever reported all the "further collapse" events that FEMA showed seismic records of, either. I guess those never really happened.

And they never mentioned the penthouse collapsing first. Guess we were imagining that, since the firefighters didn't tell us about it.

Never heard any firefighter reports about the diesel tanks spraying fuel everywhere or exploding. Guess that never happened too.

And I could've sworn that all those images of WTC7 on fire showed absolutely no raging infernos, and even those have never brought steel buildings down. Steel doesn't break from heat; it sags. And all the impact damages were on the back facade, yet the whole building all starts falling at once. Unless you count the penthouse, which was on the completely opposite side of the impact damage. But like I said, the firefighters never reported that either so I guess it never happened.

Originally posted by Griff
That makes sense. Also, I was thinking about it after I posted that. You've said before that your brother was part of the cleanup. I guess I'd be a little more interested in this stuff myself if I had a family member involved. Sorry if it sounded like I was accussing you of anything. It was really just a question.

My brother was a grief counselor for the EMS. Most of the stories he heard from the firefighters were the horrors of watching their "brothers" die. My brother was used to going to firehouses where there was one firefighters life lost...and he would talk to the entire department. He said 9-11 was nothing of what he imagined...we would talk to only ONE firefighter...becasue the rest of his crew were dead. They spoke of having to drive their fire trucks over dead bodies (from the jumpers)..just gory stuff like that.
Unfortunatly when I picked up my brother at the train station, he was a changed man becasue of what he had seen and heard. He actually was diagnosed with PTSD (post traumantic stress disorder) a few months after his return. He actually saw his best friend die as a victim of a back draft a couple years prior ..So after seeing what he saw on 911, he couldn't handle it. He had a breakdown and ended up having to leave his wife and 4 kids for a few days to a "facility". The summer after 911 he was like a freakin zombie...he wold just sit there and space out. (meds) Anyway..he tells me he still has nightmares, but he is 99% better than he used to be.

Mods... sorry we strayed off topic.

My prayers go out to your brother. Glad to hear he's doing better now.

Back on topic. Any luck with firefighter quotes about wtc 3, 4, 5 or 6? I can't find anything yet, but I'm the worst at Googling.

And I could've sworn that all those images of WTC7 on fire showed absolutely no raging infernos, and even those have never brought steel buildings down. Steel doesn't break from heat; it sags. And all the impact damages were on the back facade, yet the whole building all starts falling at once. Unless you count the penthouse, which was on the completely opposite side of the impact damage. But like I said, the firefighters never reported that either so I guess it never happened.

Bsbray, I'm not sure where you are going with this. I have posted several different quotes from different interviews, from different firefighters that were there. Of ALL of them that I read, I could not find ONE that stated that the fires were minimal just prior to collapse. True, the fires started out small. With minimal firefighting efforts going on, this building was able to burn out of control for HOURS until its collaspe.

We all know the initial FEMA report had some flaws in it. As far as disel spraying..I read that the tanks were recovered and that the entire disel theory was just that...a theory. ( i could be worong)

I will look for anything in regards to the penthouse sag. The firefighters were backed up to stay safe....but was it back far enough to see the penthouse of an alomst 50 story building? Think about how far back you have to be from a skyscraper to see the roof. Your one of the smarter people in here Bsbray, but your sarcastic comments don't help your argument.

There are some interviews from firefighters in the other buildings...not too many though. Remember...the "sexy" stories are from the firemen that were fighting the Towers fires/ collaspe surviviors... ( by sexy, I mean what the journalists wanted to report)

I will find them and post them as soon as I can.

Originally posted by Griff

Originally posted by CameronFox
Good thing though..not one person died during the collapse.

Do they really know this for a fact? How can they be absolutely sure of this with all the chaos of the day? If the search and rescue was abandoned some time before the collapse, how do they know that someone wasn't trapped in the collapse zone when it came down?

Could calling off the search and rescue around the collase zone contributed to the death of someone already trapped? I believe so. What they didn't want to happen was MORE EMS crews beign trapped or killed by another collapse....so was it a fact FURTHER people did not become trapped...yes. My opinion is that is was the right thing to do.

I have interviews with firefighters that tried to get back to the debris piles to keep searching after the collaspe zone was set up. They were all turned away from the Chiefs. It was gut wrenching for them to just basically stand there....which alot of them did.. Check out this photo from Shepard Sherbell: ( if you havent already seen it)



I have found a couple interviews from Firefighters that were in the Marriot at the time of the first collapse...and one that was from another building. Not sure which building. Let me see what I can find.

[edit on 12-1-2007 by CameronFox]

Originally posted by CameronFox
I will look for anything in regards to the penthouse sag. The firefighters were backed up to stay safe....but was it back far enough to see the penthouse of an alomst 50 story building? Think about how far back you have to be from a skyscraper to see the roof.

Actually not as far back as you'd think. Here's some photos I found.

files.abovetopsecret.com...

That's the Chase tower in Indianapolis. It is 49 stories high. The photo looks to be about a block or two away. I can see the penthouses on that building.

I would imagine that the firefighters were to stay at least a block away.

files.abovetopsecret.com...

The middle building in that picture is the Sears tower in Chicago. Notice the building to the left. I can see the penthouse and it appears that the photographer is about 1 to 2 blocks away.


Edit: Darn it, why can't I ever figure out how to post pics and such? Time for a crash course in ATS thanks to Springer et al.

I think I figured it out.



[edit on 1/12/2007 by Griff]

[edit on 1/12/2007 by Griff]

Thanks Griff... I don't want to spend too much time on specualting the view point of the firefighters had. I did however found an interview where the firefighters became aware the building was coming down becasue they saw the marble popping off the side of the building.

I don't know if the penthouse could have been seen in the proximity they had.

thunderbay.indymedia.org...

Originally posted by CameronFox
I did however found an interview where the firefighters became aware the building was coming down becasue they saw the marble popping off the side of the building.

Could you post that please? I'd like to read what they said. Thanks.

I will have to go through some more....I did find this one:

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 hose line 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 Brandeis 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 Magazine: 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?
There was a huge gaping hole and it was scattered through there. It was a huge hole. I would say it was
probably 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. – Capt. Chris Boyle /e7bzp

I know this isn't what you asked for...i just though you would find it interesting.

Sorry...had to go through MANY interviews to find this one....

During that time a couple of the members felt like we were being useless just standing around. We wanted to do something. So we started trying to walk down, trying to get into the pile. We kept on being turned around from chiefs, because they didn't want us near Seven. As we were walking, we had to actually get a little closer to Seven. So we turned and looked at Seven, and that's when all the marble siding started popping off the side because it was starting togo down.
–Firefighter Thomas Donato
graphics8.nytimes.com...

Thanks CameronFox. One question I have though. I thought the WTC 7 was clad in granite panels, not marble? I could be wrong, I've been trying to find out, but with anything related to the construction of the WTC complex, it's hard to find.

I know it's semantics but just want to be sure.

Edit: Also, the quote says that the marble was falling because the building was starting to collapse. Going by what you were saying, I thought it was suppossed to be the other way around? That they knew the building was going to collapse because of the marble cladding falling?

[edit on 1/12/2007 by Griff]

Originally posted by Griff
Thanks CameronFox. One question I have though. I thought the WTC 7 was clad in granite panels, not marble? I could be wrong, I've been trying to find out, but with anything related to the construction of the WTC complex, it's hard to find.

I know it's semantics but just want to be sure.

Edit: Also, the quote says that the marble was falling because the building was starting to collapse. Going by what you were saying, I thought it was suppossed to be the other way around? That they knew the building was going to collapse because of the marble cladding falling?

Granite / Marble.. not sure this particular firefighter knew the difference at the time.

I said: posted on 12-1-2007 at 10:38 AM (post id: 2873163)

Thanks Griff... I don't want to spend too much time on specualting the view point of the firefighters had. I did however found an interview where the firefighters became aware the building was coming down becasue they saw the marble popping off the side of the building.

not sure what you mean though?

Originally posted by CameronFox
Of ALL of them that I read, I could not find ONE that stated that the fires were minimal just prior to collapse.

So what? All that means is that the fires got worse as time went on. Doesn't mean that suddenly all the steel became so super-heated that, by some miracle, all the columns failed at the base of the building and then the rest of the building's structure all failed symmetrically and instantaneously and so the building came straight down into its footprint at free-fall speed.

Did you ever look at the Cardington tests I posted about? They tested the effects of intense office fires upon steel for over a decade, and released a report in 2000 or so, not long before 9/11, saying that the concept of runaway collapses from fire in steel structures is completely unfounded, and that steel never breaks loose at the bolts or any such nonsense no matter how intense the heat.

The heat just causes sagging, twisting, and warping, and all of these things must occur over time, exposed to great heat. And for simultaneous, instantaneous failures like WTC7's all across a single floor, to cause a symmetrical drop (tilting inward onto itself to control debris spread, no less! This is a FORTY-SEVEN STORY, SKINNY BUILDING), is something that defies all logic in regards to how astronomically improbable it would be for the fire to have weakened all of these columns to the same temperature at the same time and had them fail similarly enough all at the same time so that they would fail as observed.

And that's just for the FIRST FLOOR to fail. I'm not even going to give the time of day to the nonsense people can come up with to explain how the global collapse then resulted without explosives, free-fall accelerating into a big mound in its own footprint, totally symmetrically the whole way down. And I don't want to hear the trivial B.S. that people spit out about that tall, thin building tilting just some 5 degrees out into Vesey street, either, or how it wasn't just in its own footprint cause some debris rolled out and fell around the sides and therefore the incredible symmetry it fell with isn't anything to be concerned with after all. Anybody that even has to resort to that crap to prevent themselves from thinking clearly here needs to be slapped. Really hard. In the face. It's a well-known fact of engineering that nothing is 100% accurate and as planned on paper. Ever! If you knit-pick small enough things will ALWAYS be off, and increasingly so the smaller you go. Including 5 degree tilts into Vesey, or a couple tons of debris rolling out into other property.

I will look for anything in regards to the penthouse sag. The firefighters were backed up to stay safe....but was it back far enough to see the penthouse of an alomst 50 story building?

Well did they say that there were backed up that far specifically?

If not then I guess they never were, right?

Your one of the smarter people in here Bsbray, but your sarcastic comments don't help your argument.

I don't even care to argue anymore; that's not why I even post half the time. I just get more and more annoyed with people clinging to things that are more in the realm of sociology than any quantitative science to defend the official story. What do you think you're proving when we can look at it from a scientific angle and make damningly improbable deductions, and you're beating it all down with the fact that FIREFIGHTERS said the fire got worse (which is RELATIVE to how "bad" it was to start with) before the building fell down. Gee whiz, guys, that's what happens when you don't fight the freaking thing. But since when does it cause steel buildings to fall?

Sorry for the rant. Has to happen from time to time I guess.

Originally posted by CameronFox
Granite / Marble.. not sure this particular firefighter knew the difference at the time.

That's why I said it's just semantics. It really makes no difference.

not sure what you mean though?

What I'm trying to get at is: What would cause the cladding to start to fall if it wasn't the building starting to fall itself? Stone panels are usually constructed with steel clips attaching the stone to the structural elements of the building. It would have to be the building falling to cause these to come off. Or there was something else that happened internally to cause these panels to come loose from their supports.

It does make a difference. One is an effect of the building falling, the other an effect of something causing the cladding to come loose. Am I making sense?