Where a fire is oxygen starved and in a smouldering state, a sudden in-rush of air, where a door is opened or a window breaks, may create an ‘explosive’ mix in the fire gases leading to a sudden ignition. Such ignitions are normally brief and not sustained. However, where the gases are in plentiful supply they may take several minutes to burn off, creating temperatures in excess of 800 degrees C.

Flashover temperatures rapidly reach a peak of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Your skin will begin to burn at 124 degrees. The black nylon straps holding your SCBA will begin to fail at 300 degrees. At 500 degrees, your facepiece will begin to cloud, then soften and melt.

the interior atmosphere must be lowered from the typical 1500°F of a structure fire

The fire generated atmosphere temperatures of over 1200oC, which resulted in beam temperatures up to 1100oC

The fire load was very high at 95kg/m2 giving a heat output of 15MW and a fire temperature of 1100şC. A partial collapse of the roof occurred

The temperatures attained within the compartments vary according to the construction materials, type and amount of fuel load as well as the ventilation characteristics. Temperatures attained by the atmosphere when wooden cribs are burning are usually around 1000°C although this can be as high as 1200°C with compartments constructed using insulating materials. When plastics are involved in a fire such as those found in modern day offices, atmospheric temperatures easily achieve 1200°C. With regard to steel temperatures, these depend upon the size of the member but for typical unprotected beams and columns these would lag behind the compartment temperatures by around 100°C to 200°C.

For hot rolled structural steel the yield strength reduces as the temperature increases dropping to about 60% of its ambient temperature strength at around 400°C and approximately 10% at 800°C.

Here are a few more tid bits for you to digest, Im sure this is all cooincidences as well, Im not even going to bother continuing on about the temperatures nessecary to weak structural steel, save only to repeat the fact that no major steel structure has even collapsed due to fire, and even at it's hottest burning O2 rich temperatures, is not going to pool steel and keep it hot for months.
This is only scratching the surface of the information I have compiled, and has been compiled by others.

Seismic Evidence Points to Underground Explosions Causing WTC CollapseSeismographs at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, 21 miles north of the WTC, recorded strange seismic activity on September 11 that has still not been explained. The Palisades seismic record shows that — as the collapses began — a huge seismic "spike" marked the moment the greatest energy went into the ground. The strongest jolts were all registered at the beginning of the collapses, well before the falling debris struck the earth. These unexplained "spikes" in the seismic data lend credence to the theory that massive explosions at the base of the towers caused the collapses.

I don't have an account anywhere to post the pics for reference, but FYI i have a jpg of a seismic graph much better illustrated thats hows the precise moments of collapse in correlation to the readings, U2U for pic if interested.

Last WTC survivor recalls horrorGenelle Guzman McMillan was on the 13th floor of WTC 1 when it collapsed:McMillan heard a rumble. "A big explosion," she now calls it. "The wall I was facing just opened up, and it threw me on the other side," she says. McMillan looked for Gonzalez.
"I was still holding Rosa's hand," McMillan says. "But she pulled away." McMillan remembers Gonzalez trying to climb the stairs.
"I got up," McMillan says. "And I tried to go behind her. That's when the rubble just kept coming down."A "big explosion" violently shook WTC 1. The building briefly stabilised before coming to ground.

Fire Engineering has good reason to believe that the "official investigation" blessed by FEMA and run by the American Society of Civil Engineers is a half-baked farce that may already have been commandeered by political forces whose primary interests, to put it mildly, lie far afield of full disclosure. [Fire Engineering - 1/4/2002]

No I'm not making this up.

Following the collapse of the World Trade Center molten steel was found in the basements of the buildings, and thermal hot spots with temperatures in excess of 700°C remained for many days after the collapses.
Source: USGS Spectroscopy Lab
In perfect conditions the maximum temperature that can be reached by hydrocarbons like jet-fuel, burning in air is 1520° F (825° C). When the WTC buildings collapsed the buried fires would have been deprived of oxygen and their temperatures would have significantly decreased.It is implausible that the hot spots found many days after the collapses could have resulted from fires ignited by hydrocarbons due to the high temperatures recorded. There was no inferno in WTC 2 when it collapsed, so what caused the hot spots in the wreckage of this tower?

Maybe it was O2 starved dust and conrete covered office furniture? With mostly burnt jet fuel...Yeah... I think I am going to melt my car with a dusty candle tommorow and test your theory.

WTC Fires All But Defeated
December 19, 2001
Firefighters have extinguished almost all but the last remnants of underground fires that have burned at the World Trade Center site for more than three months since the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. The fires that began with the Sept. 11 attacks had been strong enough that firetrucks had to spray a nearly constant jet of water on them. At times, the flames slowed the work of clearing the site."You couldn't even begin to imagine how much water was pumped in there," said Tom Manley of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, the largest fire department union. "It was like you were creating a giant lake."
It is ludicrous to suggest that conventional fires ignited by hydrocarbons could burn for over three months in these conditions.

Yes it is.

A thermite reaction generates extraordinarily high temperatures (>2500° C) and it provides a credible explanation for the hot spots and molten steel (a byproduct of the thermite reaction) found in the collapsed buildings - they were a result of thermite detonations on 9/11.A thermite reaction also generates large amounts of ultraviolet radiation.On 27 September, the officials ordered 2000 gallons of [Pyrocool FEF], which when added to water produces a slippery, low-viscosity foam.[...]Berger adds that "Pyrocool also contains two powerful ultra-violet absorbers." [New Scientist]

Yeah, office furniture and expended jet fuel...

The Smoke Rising from the WTC Wreckage
on 9/16 was the Wrong Color! Here is the definition of conventional fire smoke:The smoke released by any type of fire (forest, brush, crop, structure, tires, or waste) is a mixture of particles and chemicals produced by incomplete burning of carbon-containing materials. All smoke contains particulate matter (PM or soot). Dark smoke implies the presence of soot. Soot is produced when a fire is oxygen starved, or has just been extinguished. Soot also has a high thermal capacity and may act to rob a fire of heat by carrying it away.... Conventional fires burning under tons of rubble would be oxygen starved, therefore the smoke produced would be black, not white. Also, a lot of soot would have been produced in five days, therefore the temperatures of the oxygen starved fires should have been significantly lower. The fires in the WTC wreckage were not conventional fires....
World Trade Center Hot Spots - September 16, 2001
Hot SpotTemp şC
A727
B557
C627
D517
E437
F427
G747
H547
Source: USGS Spectroscopy Lab

That is some hot office furniture man.

"The heat output from these fires will later be estimated to have been comparable to that produced by a large nuclear generating station. [Civil Engineering Magazine]"

Really hot Office furniture!

Edmund McNally phoned his wife Liz twice following the aircraft impact. Mr McNally said in his second phone call "Liz, this was a terrorist attack. I can hear explosions below me.''
9/11 NBC News broadcast

Somebody say explosions?

"Shortly after 9 o'clock [...] [Albert Turi the Chief of Safety for the New York Fire Department] received word of the possibility of a secondary device, that is another bomb going off. He tried to get his men out as quickly as he could, but he said there was another explosion which took place, and then an hour after the first hit, the first crash that took place, he said there was another explosion that took place in one of the towers here, so obviously according to his theory he thinks that there were actually devices that were planted in the building.One of the secondary devices he thinks that took place after the initial impact he thinks may have been on the plane that crashed into one of the towers. The second device, he thinks, he speculates, was probably planted in the building."

Chief of Safety for the New York Fire Department, yeah I'm sure he's a real consiracy theorist.

When the rescue team reached an area directly in front of Tower Two, Antonio said he'd take over the equipment cart Will had pushed from Building 5. [...] The team moved ahead. Scant minutes passed. Suddenly the hallway began to shudder as a terrible deafening roar swept over them. That's when Will saw the giant fireball explode in the street.Four survived by ignoring words of advice As he left the building, [Ronald DiFrancesco] saw a fireball rolling toward him. He put his arms in front of his face. He woke up three days later at St. Vincent's hospital. His arms were burned. Some bones were broken. His lungs were singed. But he was alive -- the last person out of the south tower.

Fire Ball in the street?

The above eyewitness accounts are corroborated by the following firefighters' transmissions:"Tower two has had major explosion and what appears to be a complete collapse"...the radio transmissions of North Brunswick Volunteer Fire/Ladder Company #3 on 9/11. Numerous reports of an explosion are made in the transmissions...
Official: Battalion 3 to dispatch, we've just had another explosion.
Official: Battalion 3 to dispatch, we've had additional explosion.
Dispatcher: Received battalion command. Additional explosion.
[...]
Dispatcher: Battalion 5, be advised we're trying to contact Battalion 3
at this moment to report north tower just collapsed.

Additional? More Conspiracy theorists sacrificing their lives to save others and fabricating exlosion stories to outlive them while they are at it.

An Eye-Witness Account of the World Trade Center Attacksfrom Neil deGrasse TysonThe following is taken from an email Neil deGrasse Tyson sent to his family and friends on 12 September 2001. Neil witnessed the attacks on the twin towers from his apartment only six blocks from the World Trade Center."As more and more and more and more and more emergency vehicles descended on the World Trade Center, I hear a second explosion in WTC 2...

There's that E word again.

Complete Firefighters Tape moments before the collapse of the South Tower. The firefighters' were on floors 77 and 78 - floors 78-84 were officially being ravaged by an 800şC inferno at this time...Do these men sound like they're facing an 800şC inferno? Do they sound fearful of an impending collapse? No. In fact, the firefighters' on the 78th floor were calmly preparing to move up to the 79th floor. Quick transcript of edited firefighters' tape Excerpts from The Memory Hole transcript
Battalion Seven Chief: "Battalion Seven ... Ladder 15, we've got two isolated pockets of fire. We should be able to knock it down with two lines. Radio that, 78th floor numerous 10-45 Code Ones."Ladder 15: "Chief, what stair you in?"Battalion Seven Chief: "South stairway Adam, South Tower."Ladder 15: "Floor 78?"Battalion Seven Chief: "Ten-four, numerous civilians, we gonna need two engines up here."Battalion Seven Chief: "Tower one. Battalion Seven to Ladder 15."Fifteen."Battalion Seven Chief: "I'm going to need two of your firefighters Adam stairway to knock down two fires. We have a house line stretched we could use some water on it, knock it down, kay."Ladder 15: "Alright ten-four, we're coming up the stairs. We're on 77 now in the B stair, I'll be right to you."Battalion Seven Operations Tower One: "Battalion Seven Operations Tower One to Battalion Nine, need you on floor above 79. We have access stairs going up to 79, kay."Battalion Nine: "Alright, I'm on my way up Orio."

No reports of infernos, fire yes, inferno, no.

ABC shows video of the southern tower of the WTC folding, noting it happened just moments ago. “My God, “ says Jennings, “We’re talking about massive casualties.” Jennings begins to speculate that in order to demolish a building, there must be detonation at its base. He seems to be suggesting further bombs. Reporter Don Dahler steps in to change the direction of the thinking, “The top part was totally involved…the weight at the top collapsed the building…there was no explosion at the bottom.”[...]Peter Jennings says “I’m still confused about what caused the building to collapse,” over powerful, close up video of the first tower breaking apart and falling.

Just a side note.

"I was almost out. I got down to the lobby, right near the Border’s book store. And then there was this explosion. I don’t know, I just got thrown to the ground and all this stuff fell on top of me."9/11 Survivor Stories: Sujo & Mini "So they escorted us thru the exit of World Trade 2 and I had just reached the revolving door of the building that I heard a loud explosion and the whole building collapsed. [...]

You heard a what?

By Curtis L. Taylor and Sean Gardiner
STAFF WRITERS
September 12, 2001
The World Trade Center was destroyed just days after a heightened security alert was lifted at the landmark 110-story towers, security personnel said yesterday.
Daria Coard, 37, a guard at Tower One, said the security detail had been working 12-hour shifts for the past two weeks because of numerous phone threats. But on Thursday, bomb-sniffing dogs were abruptly removed.
"Today was the first day there was not the extra security," Coard said. "We were protecting below. We had the ground covered. We didn't figure they would do it with planes. There is no way anyone could have stopped that."

Here's your super security at work after an unusual weekend power down as well mind you. This is only a piece of a much larger article that was very informative.

PIRMASENS, Germany (Reuters) - German computer experts are working round the clock to unlock the truth behind an unexplained surge in
financial transactions made just before two hijacked planes crashed into New York's World Trade Center on September 11.
Were criminals responsible for the sharp rise in credit card transactions that moved through some computer systems at the WTC shortly before the planes hit the twin towers?
Or was it coincidence that unusually large sums of money, perhaps more than $100 million, were rushed through the computers as the disaster unfolded?... The CONVAR data salvage has made it completely clear that more than $100 million in insider credit card transactions took place in the hours and minutes before the twin towers collapsed. The mainframe computers in the towers processed these transactions; and the credit card data would have been lost forever had it not been for the successful data reconstruction of the CONVAR specialists.
A German company, CONVAR of Pirmasens near the French border, was given more than 400 computer hard drives from the wreckage of the World Trade Center. These are extremely sensitive computer components that went through the collapse of the World Trade Center. Using blue laser technology, CONVAR succeeded in reconstructing all the data from the computer debris.This includes diverse financial data and telecommunication protocols up to a few seconds before the collapse of each tower. (Source: e-mail from CONVAR Germany on October 16, 2003.) The U.S. government’s blatant lie about the allegedly missing black boxes is outright made ludicrous by this fact.
The reconstructed data was given by CONVAR to the FBI. The FBI was held by law to investigate, based on the reconstructed data, who placed the inside transactions. The FBI is doing no such thing. – here
GFP would like to inform, that in June 2002, Ontrack/Convar was aquired by Kroll Inc. (Kroll O'gara Eisenhardt), which has strong with the US Government. One of their former employees, Jerome Hauer, organised a security job for ex-FBI anti-terror chief John O'Neill in the Twin Towers, where he died on Sep11th. – here and here
Kroll O’ Gara Eisenhardt is one of the oldest security companies in the United States and, some say, responsible for every U.S. President since the end of WW2. What does an upstanding, powerful company like Kroll do in its spare time? Why it trains local forces in Saudi Arabia, of course!
One partner of Kroll, Cable & Wireless provides training in Counter-Terrorism and Urban Warfare in Saudi Arabia. In August 2001, former Kroll employee, Jerome Hauer, arranged a security job in the Twin Towers for FBI Agent John O’Neill. At the time, O’Neill had been investigating ENRON’s business deals with the Taliban and was subsequently pulled from that investigation. Neither Kroll nor Hauer was asked to testify about this coincidence.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!!!

Between September 6 and 7, the Chicago Board Options Exchange saw purchases of 4,744 Put Options on United Airlines, but only 396 Call Options. Although there was no news at that time to justify so much "left-handed" trading, United Airlines stock fell 42 percent, from $30.82 per share to $17.50, when the market reopened after the attacks. Assuming that 4,000 of the options were bought by people with advance knowledge of the imminent attacks, these "insiders" would have profited by almost $5 million. Sources tell us that a large amount of the United Airlines "Puts" were purchased through Alex. Brown, Inc., a firm managed until 1998 by the current Executive Director of the CIA, A. B. "Buzzy" Krongard. Upon the merger of Alex. Brown with Bankers Trust Corporation in September 1997, Mr. Krongard became Vice Chairman of the Board of Bankers Trust and served in such capacity until joining the CIA. He also served as Chairman of the Securities Industry Association in 1996 and was named the outstanding executive in the financial services industry in 1995 and 1996 by Financial World. (If you say, "So what?" you are not reading the white part of this page.) On Monday, September 10th, 4,516 Put Options were purchased for American Airlines with only 748 Call Options. No other airlines showed similar trading patterns to those experienced by United and American, the two that were used in the attacks. These two were 600% above the normal day's trades. From 9/6 through 9/10/01, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, et al. also noticed highly abnormal levels of Put Options on these two airline stocks.
--Pat Shannon's Musings

Wow, what an amazing cooincidence.

Here's the complete text of the New York Court's decision denying the press' right to access the complete oral histories/interviews taken of firefighters' and other workers about 9/11 as well as access to phonecalls made to 911 on that day. Before the records of the oral histories are released to the press, all mention of the opinions and recommendations of those interviewed will be deleted first, so the press will only get the interviewees' "personal expressions of feelings". In other words, if a firefighter who was interviewed said, "I heard what sounded like explosions and I think it was bombs that took down those towers, it was all so horrible", the press will merely get the portion that says: "it was all so horrible". Additionally, transcripts of tapes of the calls that people made to 911 on that day will not be released at all because the Court said they would invade the privacy of the surviving families - even though surviving family members indicated to the Court that they waived such rights to privacy. There is one higher court in New York that this decision could be appealed to, the Court of Appeals, but I have seen no reports on whether the New York Times plans on appealing it. These same records will not even make it to the 9-11 Commission without deletions. From what I remember, the deal the Commission made with NYC is that the corrupt Commissioners will be able to view the records in NYC in their entirety but only be able to take back redacted portions and without names of people interviewed, etc., and of course we can't count on the Commission to release to the public even the redacted portions of records they receive. --

www.courts.state.ny.us...
Matter of New York Times Co. v City of New York Fire Dept.
2004 NYSlipOp 00091
Decided on January 8, 2004
Appellate Division, First Department
This opinion is uncorrected and subject to revision before publication
in
the Official Reports.
Decided on January 8, 2004
Nardelli, J.P., Sullivan, Rosenberger, Lerner, Gonzalez, JJ.
2662
[*1]
This opinion is uncorrected and subject to revision before publication
in
the printed Official Reports.
In re The New York Times Company, et al.,
Petitioners-Respondents-Appellants,
v
City of New York Fire Department, Respondent-Appellant-Respondent,
Catherine T. Regenhard, et al., Petitioners-Intervenors-
Respondents-Appellants.
David E. McCraw
John Hogrogian
Norman Siegel
Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Richard Braun, J.), entered February 13, 2003, which, in an article 78 proceeding brought by a newspaper and a journalist against the New York City Fire Department challenging respondent Fire Department's denial of petitioners' Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request for transcripts of interviews that respondent conducted of its employees (oral histories) concerning their activities at the World Trade Center on September ll, 2001 (9/11), and for audio tapes and transcripts of 911 calls made on 9/11,
(1) denied the motion of nine family members of persons who died on 9/11 for leave to intervene as petitioners (Family Members), and (2) directed disclosure of the oral histories albeit redacted to delete the employees' personal expressions of feelings, opinions and recommendations, and (3) directed disclosure of the 911 tapes and transcripts albeit redacted to delete the opinions and recommendations of respondent's employees, and further redacted to delete the words of 911 callers other than those related to the Family Members, unanimously modified, on the law, to grant the motion to intervene, and to direct disclosure of respondent's employees' personal expressions of feeling contained in the oral histories, and otherwise affirmed, without costs.
The motion to intervene should not have been denied simply because the Family Members did not file FOIL requests and therefore are not "person[s] denied access to a record in an appeal determination" under Public Officers ? 89(4)(b). Certainly, the Family Members are interested persons under CPLR 7802(d) to the extent respondent denied disclosure on the basis of the privacy rights of close family relatives of 9/11 victims. Moreover, although the IAS court purported merely to grant the Family Members permission to appear as amici curiae, it effectively accorded them party status by granting them substantive relief in the form of enforcing their desire to waive any right of privacy that respondent was asserting on their behalf. We also note that petitioners support intervention, and that respondent's briefs on appeal do not address the issue. The IAS court correctly held that the material respondent provided to the federal government as relevant to its criminal investigation and prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui should be disclosed, even if it constituted records "compiled for law enforcement purposes" under Public Officers Law ? 87(2)(e) (see John Doe Agency v John Doe Corp., 493 US 146), since respondent did not meet its burden of showing that such disclosure would in fact interfere [*2]with the Moussaoui prosecution or deny him a fair trial. However, substantial portions of those documents should be redacted as falling within FOIL's exception for intra-agency materials (Public Officers Law ? 87[2][g]), namely, the portions of the oral histories containing the opinions and recommendations of those interviewed, and the portions of the 911 tapes containing the opinions and recommendations of the dispatchers and other of respondent's personnel. Such opinions and recommendations are to be distinguished from factual material, which respondent concedes must be disclosed. Not falling within the intra-agency exception are the personal expressions of feelings contained in the oral histories, and we accordingly modify to direct disclosure of such expressions. That such expressions do not fit within any of the four exceptions to the intra-agency exemption does not by itself establish that such expressions are intra-agency material. Nor do such expressions, or the words of respondent's personnel in the 911 tapes, fall within FOIL's personal privacy exemption (Public Officers Law ? 87[2], ? 89[2][iv]). However, concerning the tapes, the IAS court correctly held that the personal privacy exemption does apply to the words of the callers. Disclosure of the highly personal expressions of persons who were facing imminent death, expressing fear and panic, would be hurtful to a reasonable person of ordinary sensibilities who is a survivor of someone who made a 911 call before dying (see Matter of Empire Realty Corp. v New York State Div. of Lottery, 230 AD2d 270, 273). The anguish of these relatives, as well as the callers who survived the attack, outweighs the public interest in disclosure of these words, which would shed little light on public issues.
THIS CONSTITUTES THE DECISION AND ORDER OF THE SUPREME COURT,
APPELLATE DIVISION, FIRST DEPARTMENT.
ENTERED: JANUARY 8, 2004

CLERK

Ah who wants to hear from the firefighters anyway, what would they know about melting structural steel, or O2 starved hydrocarbon fuel fires, and who cares if they wanted an independent investigation. Besides they think they heard explosions, nut cases... Nothing to see here either.

ol. 9, No. 2021 - The American Reporter - January 20, 2003
SECRECY SURROUNDS A BUSH BROTHER'S ROLE IN 9/11 SECURITY
by Margie Burns
Washington, D.C. WASHINGTON, Jan 19, 2003 -- A company that provided security at New York City's World Trade Center, Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C., and to United Airlines between 1995 and 2001, was backed by a private Kuwaiti-American investment firm with ties to a brother of President Bush and the Bush family, according to records obtained by the American Reporter. Two planes hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001 were United Airlines planes, and another took off from Dulles International Airport; two, of course, slammed into the World Trade Center. But the Bush Administration has never disclosed the ties of a presidential brother and the Bush family with the firm that intersected the weapons and targets on a day of national tragedy. Marvin P. Bush, a younger brother of George W. Bush, was a principal in the company from 1993 to 2000, when most of the work on the big projects was done. But White House responses to 9/11 have not publicly disclosed the company's part in providing security to any of the named facilities, and many of the public records revealing the relationships are not public. Nonetheless, public records reveal that the firm, formerly named Securacom, listed Bush on its board of directors and as a significant shareholder. The firm, now named Stratesec, Inc., is located in Sterling, Va., a suburb of Washington, D.C., and emphasizes federal clients. Bush is no longer on the board. Marvin Bush has not responded to repeated telephoned and emailed requests for comment on this story.
The American Stock Exchange delisted Stratesec's stock in October 2002.
Securacom also had a contract to provide security at Los Alamos National
Laboratories, notorious for its security breaches and physical and intellectual property thefts. According to its present CEO, Barry McDaniel, the company had an ongoing contract to handle security at the World Trade Center "up to the day the buildings fell down." Yet instead of being investigated, the company and companies involved with it have benefited from legislation pushed by the Bush White House and rubber-stamped by Congressional Republicans. Stratesec, its backer KuwAm, and their corporate officers stand to benefit from limitations on liability and national-security protections from investigation provided in bills since 9/11.
HCC Insurance Holdings, Inc., a reinsurance corporation on whose board Marvin Bush sat as director until November 2002, similarly benefits from terrorism insurance protections. (Bush's first year on the board at HCC coincided with his last year on the board at Stratesec.) HCC, formerly Houston Casualty Company, carried some of the insurance for the World Trade Center. It posted a loss for the quarter after the attacks of Sept. 11 and dropped participation in worker's compensation as a result. Bush remains an adviser to the chairman and the Board of Directors, as well as a member of the company's investment committee. The former CEO of Stratesec is Wirt D. Walker III, who is still chairman of the board. Although he has also been the managing director of KuwAm for several years, Walker states definitively in phone interviews that there was no exchange
of talent between Stratesec and KuwAm during the World Trade Center and other projects.
As Walker put it, "I'm an investment banker." He continued, "We just owned some stock." The investment company "was not involved in any way in the work or day-to-day operations" of the security company. He explained clearly and pleasantly that there was no sharing of information or of personnel between the two companies.
In December 2000 - when the outcome of the U.S. presidential election was determined - Stratesec added a government division, providing "the same full range of security systems services as the Commercial Division," the company says. Stratesec now has "an open-ended contract with the General Services Administration (GSA) and a Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) with the agency that allows the government to purchase materials and services from the Company without having to go through a full competition."
The company lists as government clients "the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S Air
force, and the Department of Justice," in projects that "often require
state-of-the-art security solutions for classified or high-risk government
sites." In 2000, the U.S. Army accounted for 29 percent of the company's earned revenues, or about $6.9 million.
The White House opposed an independent commission to investigate 9/11 until after the terrorism insurance protections and protections for security companies had safely passed Congress. It has also quietly intervened in lawsuits against United Airlines in New York, brought by relatives of the victims. Marvin Bush joined Securacom's Board of Directors in 1993, as part of new management hired when the company separated from engineering firm Burns and Roe. The new team was capitalized by KuwAm, the D.C.-based Kuwaiti-American investment company. Bush also served on the Board of Directors at KuwAm, along with Mishal Yousef Saud al-Sabah, Chairman of KuwAm and also a Director on Securacom's (Stratesec's) board.
The World Trade Center and the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority - which operates Dulles - were two of Securacom's three biggest clients in 1996 and 1997. (The third was MCI, now WorldCom.)
Stratesec (Securacom) differs from other security companies which separate the function of consultant from that of service provider. The company defines itself as a "single-source" provider of "end-to-end" security services, including everything from diagnosis of existing systems to hiring subcontractors to installing video and electronic equipment. It also provides armored vehicles and security guards.
When, following the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey began its multi-million-dollar, multiyear revamping of security in and around the Twin Towers and Buildings 4 and 5, Securacom was among numerous contractors hired in the upgrade. The companies doing security jobs received due mention in print, in security industry publications and elsewhere. The board membership of a son of former President Bush went unnoticed, at least in print. According to SEC filings, Securacom/Stratesec acquired the $8.3 million World Trade Center contract in October 1996. The project generated 28 percent of all revenues for the company in 1996. SEC filings indicate that revenues from the World Trade Center project commenced in 1996 at $1.6 million, peaked in 1997 at $6.6 million ($4.1 million in the first half), and diminished in 1998 to less than $1 million.
A key concept in security is "access control." In hindsight, as the security
industry's reportage on the World Trade Center precautions makes clear, further attacks would have to come from the air. Unfortunately, such detailed reports did not convey that message at home. Nobody thought outside the box enough to deduce that a jumbo jet could overcome even the extraordinary controls at the World Trade Center. With 20-20 hindsight, it is obvious that the intricate procedures in the building's lobbies and on its perimeters were useless in trying to stop a 767 loaded with jet fuel. Barry McDaniel, CEO of the company since January 2002, declines on security grounds to give specific details about work the company did at the World Trade Center. According to McDaniel, the contract was ongoing (a "completion contract"), and "not quite completed when the Center went down." The company designed a system, but - as he points out - that obviously "didn't have anything to do with planes flying into buildings." The key words "access control" are less feeble and irrelevant, however, in regard to airports and airlines. Had the hijackers failed on the ground, they would have lost their airborne weapon.
Two of the hijacked planes were United Airlines planes, and another took off from Dulles International. Two hit the Twin Towers, leading to a collapse of both buildings that killed nearly 3,000 people.
McDaniel makes clear that Securacom's contract with United Airlines was a
single-site contract, in Indianapolis (at least five years ago), and not local.
The work was finished several years before he joined the board, and was not in or near Washington. The Dulles Internation contract is another matter. Dulles is regarded as "absolutely a sensitive airport," according to security consultant Wayne Black, head of a Florida-based security firm, due to its location, size, and the number of international carriers it serves.
Black has not heard of Stratesec, but responds that for one company to handle security for both airports and airlines is somewhat unusual. It is also delicate for a security firm serving international facilities to be so interlinked with a foreign-owned company: "Somebody knew somebody," he suggested, or the contract would have been more closely scrutinized.
As Black points out, "when you [a company] have a security contract, you know the inner workings of everything." And if another company is linked with the security company, then "What's on your computer is on their computer."
In this context, retired FAA special agent Brian F. Sullivan is angry, and
eloquent. "You can have all the security systems in the world, but the people behind the systems make the difference." The Bush administration, says Sullivan, "spit in the faces" of the victims' families, in pushing for last-minute protections for foreign-owned security companies (in the Homeland Security bill). Sullivan points out that "not one single person" in an upper-level position has lost a job as a result of 9/11, "not in the FBI, CIA, FAA, DOT." As he sums up, "No accountability, no progress."
Stratesec got its first preventive maintenance contract with Dulles Airport in 1995, generating $0.3 million that year. The Dulles project generated revenue of $1.2 million in 1996, $2.5 million in 1997, and $2.3 million in 1998, accounting for 22% of the company's revenues in 1996 and in 1998
Like other specialists, Professor Dale B. Oderman of Purdue University's
aviation technology department, concurs that Dulles "was considered a very high profile target" as the primary international airport near the nation's capital. It serves as port of entry to about 15 international airlines as well as serving eight of the 11 major us passenger carriers. In comparison, Reagan Airport hosts only Air Canada from outside the U.S., and Baltimore-Washington Airport hosts about a half dozen."
Stratesec did not handle screening of passengers at Dulles. According to a
contracting official for the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority, its
three-year contract was for maintenance of security systems: It maintained the airfield access system, the CCTV (closed circuit television) system, and the electronic badging system.
In 1997, the World Trade Center and Dulles accounted for 55 percent and 20 percent of the company's earned revenues, respectively. The World Trade Center and Dulles projects figured largely in both Securacom's growing revenues from 1995 to 1997 and its decreases from 1997 to 1998.
Stratesec continued to refer to "New York City's World Trade Center" as a former client through April 2001. It listed Dulles Airport and United Airlines as former clients through April 2002.
As with the World Trade Center - which also had electronic badging, security gates, and CCTV - the ultimate problem with Dulles' security controls was not the controls themselves, but that they could be sidestepped. All the hijackers had to do was buy a ticket. As former FAA special agent Sullivan comments, "If they [attackers] knew about the security system, they knew how to bypass it." One obvious question for investigators is how much potential hijackers could have known about the security system. From 1993 to 1999, KuwAm - the Kuwait-American Corporation -- held a large and often controlling interest in Securacom. In 1996, KuwAm Corporation owned 90 percent of the company, either directly or through partnerships like one called Special Situations Investment Holdings and another called "Fifth Floor Company
for General Trading and Contracting." KuwAm owned 31 percent of Securacom in 1998 and 47 percent of Stratesec in 1999. It currently holds only about 205,000 shares of Stratesec; Walker, KuwAm's managing director, holds 650,000. Marvin Bush was reelected annually to Securacom's board of directors from 1993 through 1999. His final reelection was on May 25, 1999, for July 1999 to June 2000. Throughout, he also served on the company's Audit Committee and Compensation Committee, and his stock holdings grew during the period. Directors
had options to purchase 25,000 shares of stock annually. In 1996, Bush acquired 53,000 shares at 52 cents per share. Shares in the 1997 IPO sold at $8.50. Records since 2000 no longer list Bush as a shareholder.
Stratesec and KuwAm were and still are intertwined at the top. Walker, while a principal at Stratesec (a director since 1987, chairman of the board since 1992, and formerly CEO since 1999), was also on the board of directors at KuwAm and is still managing director (both since 1982). Mishal Yousef Saud Al Sabah, the chairman at KuwAm, also served on Stratesec's board from 1991 to 2001. Walker and Al Sabah had major stock holdings in each other's companies. The sons of both also held shares in the two companies. Stratesec, which currently lists 45 employees, hired KuwAm for corporate secretarial services in 2002, at $2,500 per month.
For several years, Walker has also been chairman and CEO of an aircraft company, Aviation General, about 70 percent owned by KuwAm.
The Saudi Arabian embassy, the Kuwait embassy, and KuwAm have office suites in the Watergate complex, where both Stratesec and Aviation General held their annual shareholders' meetings in 1999, 2000, and 2001. Bush was reelected to his annual board position there, across the hall from a Saudi Arabian Airlines office. (This year, the companies' shareholders meetings switched to the fifth floor, in space also leased by Saudis and Kuwaitis.) Incidentally, Saudi Princess Haifa Al-Faisal had her checking account at Riggs Bank, which has a large branch in the Watergate. Given that Jonathan Bush, the president's uncle, is a Riggs executive, it is difficult to understand any obstacle for American authorities pursuing the recently reported "Saudi money trail." The princess's charitable activities were processed through Riggs, but attention focused on the Saudis seems not to extend to the politically-connected bank they used.
McDaniel was asked in a brief telephone interview whether FBI or other agents have questioned him or others at Stratesec about the company's security work in connection with 9/11. The concise answer: "No." Asked the same question regarding KuwAm, Walker declined further comment, and referred a reporter to the public record.
According to a spokesman in an FBI regional office, since October 2001, "the investigation [of 9/11] is being coordinated at the national level, directly from the White House." If so, you'd think that an administration that could seriously consider infiltrating American mosques would ask a few questions closer to home.
But the suggestion is inescapable that any investigation into security
arrangements preceding 9/11, at some of the nation's most sensitive facilities, has been impeded to this day by narrowly political concerns in the White House.
Margie Burns

I included this article because it is now very difficult to find, and references to it on the net are vanishing quick. If you are a collector of informtaion, grab this one while it is posted here, it is getting rare. Good ole Marvin...

Fake terror is nothing new. According to recently released files, our government planned Operation NORTHWOODS to stage phony terror attacks against American citizens in the wake of the Bay Of Pigs, to anger Americans into support for a second invasion of Cuba. The plan was spiked by JFK. If our government has ever actually carried out such plans to stage phony terror attacks, the documents have remained classified. But given the reality of Operation NORTHWOODS, or the manner in which FDR maneuvered Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor, one cannot rule out the possibility that, once again, the people of the United States are being lied to by their own government, to manufacture consent for a war of invasion already being discussed with other nations the previous summer.It is also quite possible, indeed likely, that the United States is being spoofed by a third party to trigger a war. It has happened before. According to Victor Ostrovsky, a defector from Israel's secret service, Mossad, Israel decided to mount a false flag operation designed to further discredit Libya, and provoke the US to attack an Arab nation. A transmitter loaded with pre-recorded messages was planted in Tripoli, Libya, by a Mossad team.The `Trojan Horse' beamed out fake messages about Libyan-authorized
bombings and planned attacks that were immediately intercepted by US electronic monitoring. Convinced by this disinformation that Libya was behind the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco in which a US soldier died, President Ronald Reagan ordered massive air attacks on Libya, including an obvious- and illegal (under US law) attempt to assassinate Qadaffi himself. Some 100 Libyan civilians were killed, including Qadaffi's two year old daughter. Libyan officials had no idea why they were attacked.It is worth remembering the motto of the Mossad is, "By way of deception, thou shalt do war."

No we would never do anything like that would we? Wake up folks, there are more questions than answers here.



[edit on 30-9-2004 by twitchy]

A truck bomb at the WTC in 1993, in which approximately 0.5 tons of explosive were detonated, was not detected seismically, even at a station only 16 km away.

From that link:
This test, conducted by National Institute of Standards and Technology last month, showed the fuel from the plane that crashed into the tower burned out quickly - but the fire it created grew in intensity by up to another 300 degrees as it consumed office products and structures.
The computers, cubicle walls, furniture, files and paper - recreated on detailed information supplied by the insurance company on the exact materials used in their offices –blazed at temperatures that reached 1,200 degrees, the NIST test found.
The test fire burned for 33 minutes before the 386 pounds of material were consumed and reduced mostly to ash and gases.

Originally posted by twitchy

"The heat output from these fires will later be estimated to have been comparable to that produced by a large nuclear generating station. [Civil Engineering Magazine]"

Civil Engineering article
The fires spread, and there are significant temperature variations throughout those areas where the fires are located, depending on the type and arrangement of combustible material being consumed and the availability of air supporting combustion. The advancing fires elevate the temperature within the tower. Future estimates will place it between 1,700ş and 2,000şF—further stressing the structure. At the 80th floor of WTC 2—in the northeast corner, where office furnishings had been deposited by the rapid path of the plane—the fire burns at such a high temperature that a stream of molten metal begins to pour over the side of the tower. The heat output from these fires will later be estimated to have been comparable to that produced by a large nuclear generating station. Over a period of many minutes, this heat induces additional stresses on the damaged structural frames while simultaneously softening and weakening these frames.

Originally posted by twitchy
A thermite reaction generates extraordinarily high temperatures (>2500° C) and it provides a credible explanation for the hot spots and molten steel (a byproduct of the thermite reaction) found in the collapsed buildings - they were a result of thermite detonations on 9/11.A thermite reaction also generates large amounts of ultraviolet radiation.On 27 September, the officials ordered 2000 gallons of [Pyrocool FEF], which when added to water produces a slippery, low-viscosity foam.[...]Berger adds that "Pyrocool also contains two powerful ultra-violet absorbers." [New Scientist]

Originally posted by scorchio123
sorry if this is already on this thread, but ive noticed alot of people asking for proof that the towers had explosives within them. WTC7 was 2 blocks away from the two towers hit by the planes, this tower wasnt hit by a plane so how could it of come down without explosives.

heres a link to video footage of the tower comimg down

thewebfairy.com...

just click the picture at the top of the link for video

Officials said that WTC 7 collapsed around 5:20 p.m., the 3rd WTC to collapse on 9/11, as a result of a fire at ground level making it the first major structure in the United States to collapse from a fire. But did it collapse from a fire, or did it really collapse from a well controlled demolition?

Bombs in the World Trade Center # 3
by Victor Thorn
As we’ve seen, once science and physics enter into the 9-11 equation, the
official explanation for why the WTC towers collapsed doesn’t seem to hold
as much water. Of particular interest is some seismic data that originates
from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades,
New York, which is 21 miles from NYC. It seems that when the two
“hijacked” jets crashed into the WTC towers on the morning of 9-11, they
made virtually no registration on Columbia’s seismic equipment. Nor did
the failed 1993 WTC truck bomb. Last but not least, when the two
towers ultimately pancaked to the ground that morning, their registration was also negligible. But what did create two extreme spikes on the seismic equipment were the circumstances which occurred BEFORE the towers collapsed (www.world-exposed.com...). Yes, you read that correctly – before they crashed to the ground. In fact, in the moments before the South Tower fell at 9:59:04 am, something happened to register a magnitude of 2.1 on Columbia’s seismic equipment. Likewise, moments before the North Tower was brought down, something
registered a seismic spike on the magnitude of 2.3 on Columbia’s equipment. So, let’s step back a moment and examine what we’ve discovered. Planes hitting the WTC towers didn’t create a seismic spike, nor did a failed truck bomb or the towers’ collapse. But what does create a spike on the magnitude of 1.0-2.0 every time at Columbia’s
observatory are the underground explosions at a quarry 20 miles away (Source: seismologist Won-Young Kim in Christopher Bollyn’s article for The American Free Press
– New Seismic Data
Refutes Official Explanation – September 3, 2002). This
is interesting, for if we rule out fire as the cause of the towers’
collapse, and consider that huge spikes occurred right BEFORE the towers
fell, what does this open the door to? Some type of underground explosion, similar to that which occurs at a quarry.
Arthur Lerner-Lam, director of Columbia University’s Center for Hazard and
Risk Research, stated in the above-mentioned article, “Only a small
fraction of the energy from the collapsing towers was converted into
ground motion. The ground shaking that resulted from the collapse of the
towers was extremely small.”
He then went on to explain that what did create the huge seismic data was an energy source beneath the towers that preceded their collapse. The biggest question we must ask ourselves now is: shouldn’t the spikes have taken place when the buildings actually HIT the ground,
not before they fell?
Now, there would be an extremely easy way to prove whether or not there
were explosive devices planted at the WTC’s base. All we’d need to do is
thoroughly inspect the fallen steel girders. But guess what? All of the
girders were immediately hauled away without being tested by engineers or FEMA to detect any trace of explosives. Why was there no investigation?
Bill Manning, editor of Fire Engineering magazine said in its January 2002
edition, “The ‘official investigation’ blessed by FEMA and run by the
American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) is a half-baked farce that may
have already been commandeered by political forces whose primary
interests, to put it mildly, lie far afield of full disclosure.”
Considering how many firemen and innocent civilians lost their lives that
day, you would think that we’d STILL be studying every scrap of evidence
from that fateful event. But Dr. W. Gene Corley, who headed FEMAs
engineering assessment of the WTC fallout, admitted that no tests were
performed on the girders to see if explosives were present. (Source: Randy
Lavello - Bombs in the Building: World Trade Center 'Conspiracy Theory' is
a Conspiracy Fact) This is also the very same man who was in charge of
covering-up evidence and hauling it away after both the Waco tragedy and
the OKC bombing. Think about it – absolutely NO forensic tests were
performed on the steel girders. If the above evidence doesn’t make you suspicious, consider that three different World Trade Center engineers have publicly announced that they built those towers to withstand the
impact of a jumbo jetliner. The first was Lee Robertson, WTC structural engineer: “I designed it for a 707 to hit it.” He also pointed out that even though a 767 was used on the morning of 9-11, a 707 holds 23,000 gallons of fuel, while a 767 holds only slightly more at 23,980 gallons.
Secondly, Aaron Swirski, a WTC architect, told Jerusalem Post Radio, “It
was designed around that eventuality to survive this kind of attack.”
(Christopher Petherick – The American Free
Press – December 2, 2001 -
Eyewitness Reports Persist of Bombs at WTC Collapse)
Finally, Hyman Brown, a WTC construction manager and civil engineering
professor at the University of Colorado, stated in the same article, “It
was over-designed to withstand almost anything, including hurricanes, high winds, bombings, and an airplane hitting it.”
Yet, planes carrying less than 10,000 gallons of jet fuel which burns at
only 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit brought both of these mighty towers to their knees … to little more than dust.
Incredible.

Originally posted by HowardRoark
Your claim of pools of molten steel are unsubstantiated. provide links to physical evidence of this. Furthermore you are implying that the USGS data indicates these pools exist. This is not the case.

When the excavation of the rubble was completed, masses of
previously molten steel were found, according to Mark Loizeaux and
Steve Tully, presidents of two of the companies contracted to 'clean
up' Ground Zero.

WTC Steel Removal The Expeditious Destruction of the Evidence at Ground Zero Steel was the structural material of the buildings. As such it was the most important evidence to preserve in order to puzzle out how
the structures held up to the impacts and fires, but then disintegrated into rubble. Since no steel frame buildings had ever collapsed due to
fires, the steel should have been subjected to detailed analysis. So what did the authorities do with this key evidence of the vast crime and unprecedented engineering failure?
They recycled it! Some 185,101 tons of structural steel have been hauled away from Ground Zero. Most of the steel has been recycled as per
the city's decision to swiftly send the wreckage to salvage yards in New Jersey. The city's hasty move has outraged many victims' families who believe the steel should have been examined more thoroughly. Last
month, fire experts told Congress that about 80% of the steel was scrapped without being examined because investigators did not have the
authority to preserve the wreckage. Mayor Bloomberg, a former engineering major, was not concerned about the destruction of the
evidence: If you want to take a look at the construction methods and the
design, that's in this day and age what computers do. Just looking at a piece of metal generally doesn't tell you anything.
During the official investigation controlled by FEMA, One hundred fifty pieces of steel were saved for future study. One hundred fifty pieces out of hundreds of thousands of pieces! Moreover it is not clear who made the decision to save these particular pieces. It is clear that the volunteer investigators were doing their work at the Fishkills dump, not at Ground Zero, so whatever steel they had access to was first picked over by the people running the cleanup operation. Highly Sensitive Garbage Given that the people in charge considered the steel garbage, useless to any investigation in this age of computer simulations, they certainly took pains to make sure it didn't end up anywhere other than a smelting furnace.
They installed GPS locater devices on each of the trucks that was carrying loads away from Ground Zero, at a cost of $1000 each. The securitysolutions.com website has an article on the tracking system with this passage. Ninety-nine percent of the drivers were extremely driven to do their jobs. But there were big concerns, because the loads
consisted of highly sensitive material. One driver, for example, took an extended lunch break of an hour and a half. There was nothing criminal about that, but he was dismissed. Shielding Investigators From the Evidence According to FEMA, more than 350,000 tons of steel were extracted from Ground Zero and barged or trucked to salvage yards where it was cut up for recycling. Four salvage yards were contracted to process
the steel.
Hugo Nue Schnitzer
at Fresh Kills (FK) Landfill, Staten Island, NJ
Hugo Nue Schnitzer's Claremont (CM) Terminal in Jersey City, NJ
Metal Management in Newark
(NW), NJ
Blanford and Co. in Keasbey (KB), NJ
FEMA's BPAT, who wrote the WTC Building Performance Study, were not
given access to Ground Zero. Apparently, they were not even allowed to collect steel samples from the salvage yards. According to Appendix D of the Study, "Collection and storage of steel members from the WTC site was not part of the BPS Team efforts sponsored by FEMA and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)."
References
1,N.Y. Daily News,4/16/02
2Baosteel Will Recycle World Trade Center
Debris,china.
org.cn,1/24/02
3GPS ON THE JOB IN MASSIVE WORLD TRADE CENTER
CLEAN-UP,securitysolutions.com,

A growing number of fire protection engineers have theorized that "the
structural damage from the planes and the explosive ignition of jet
fuel in themselves were not enough to bring down the towers," the
editorial stated. A FEMA spokesman, John Czwartacki, said agency
officials had not yet seen the editorial and declined to comment. Norida Torriente, a spokeswoman for the American Society of Civil Engineers, described her group's study as a "beginning" and "not a definitive work."
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has joined a group of relatives of
firefighters who died in the attack in calling for a blue-ribbon panel
to study the collapse. "We have to learn from incidents through investigation to determine what types of codes should be in place and what are the best practices for high-rise construction," Manning told the Daily News. "The World Trade Center is not the only lightweight, core
construction high-rise in the U.S. It's a typical method of construction."
NY TIMES
December 25, 2001 THE TOWERS
Experts Urging Broader Inquiry in Towers' Fall
...In calling for a new investigation, some structural engineers have
said that one serious mistake has already been made in the chaotic
aftermath of the collapses: the decision to rapidly recycle the steel columns, beams and trusses that held up the buildings. That may have
cost investigators some of their most direct physical evidence with
which to try to piece together an answer. Officials in the mayor's office declined to reply to written and oral requests for comment over a three-day period about who decided to recycle the steel and
the concern that the decision might be handicapping the investigation...
Interviews with a handful of members of the team, which includes some
of the nation's most respected engineers, also uncovered complaints
that they had at various times been shackled with bureaucratic
restrictions that prevented them from interviewing witnesses,
examining the disaster site and requesting crucial information like
recorded distress calls to the police and fire departments...
"This is almost the dream team of engineers in the country working
on this, and our hands are tied," said one team member who asked not to
be identified. Members have been threatened with dismissal for
speaking to the press. "FEMA is controlling everything," the team
member said...
Dr. Frederick W. Mowrer, an associate professor in the fire protection
engineering department at the University of Maryland, said he believed
the decision could ultimately compromise any investigation of the
collapses. "I find the speed with which potentially important evidence
has been removed and recycled to be appalling," Dr. Mowrer said.

Originally posted by HowardRoark
Furthermore you are implying that the USGS data indicates these pools exist. This is not the case.

In perfect conditions the maximum temperature that can be reached by hydrocarbons like jet-fuel, burning in air is 1520° F (825° C).

Originally posted by HowardRoark
Not true. You are confusing heat and temperature. The amount of heat energy released in a given chemical reaction like the combustion of toluene, for example, is a fixed value based on the amount of materials involved. Since temperature is an average of the kinetic energy the maximum temperature is a totally different thing.

Eduardo Kausel proposed an alternative failure explanation that he
acknowledged was independently developed by Zdenek Bazant, a professor at Northwestern University. "I believe that the intense heat softened or melted the structural elements—floor trusses and columns—
so that they became like chewing gum, and that was enough to trigger the collapse," he said.
To turn the columns into the consistency of chewing gum would have
required heating them to at least 1200ş C, well above what can be achieved with jet fuel, even with a directed flame and pressurized oxygen. "The floor trusses are likely to have been the first to sag and
fail. As soon as the upper floors became unsupported, debris from the failed floor systems rained down onto the floors below, which eventually gave way, starting an unstoppable sequence. The dynamic forces are so large that the downward motion becomes unstoppable." Via two simple models, Kausel was able to determine that the fall of the upper building portion down onto a single floor must have caused dynamic
forces exceeding the buildings’ design loads by at least an order of
magnitude. He also performed some computer simulations that
indicate the building material fell almost unrestricted at nearly the speed of
free-falling objects. "The towers' resistive systems played no role.
Otherwise the elapsed time of the fall would have been extended," he
noted. As it was, the debris took about nine seconds to reach the ground
from the top. Did you catch that? the towers' resistive systems played no
role. The at least 85,000 tons of intact steel structure below the impact
zone provided no resistance. It all magically got out of the way.

Originally posted by HowardRoark
Hmm, what happened to all of the office furniture, paper, computer cases, carpeting, wood doors, paneling, etc. that were in the building before it collapsed? these were there as well as the remaining jet fuel.
Have you ever heard of underground coal fires?

Conventional fires burning under tons of rubble would be oxygen starved, therefore the smoke produced would be black, not white. Also, a lot of soot would have been produced in five days, therefore the temperatures of the oxygen starved fires should have been significantly lower. The fires in the WTC wreckage were not conventional fires.

Originally posted by HowardRoarkHmm, what happened to all of the office furniture, paper, computer cases, carpeting, wood doors, paneling, etc. that were in the building before it collapsed? these were there as well as the remaining jet fuel. Have you ever heard of underground coal fires?

...the one unexplained WTC issue is the continuing fire from below the collapsed debris. That was NOT jet fuel, just by virtue of the smoke color. Any residual liquid fuel would have been burned or dispersed - essentially evaporated, on the way down. Refer to FEMA's statement above - if jet fuel couldn't have induced the collapse, there could not have been enough remaining liquid fuel to account for the subterranean temperatures;
jet fuel doesn’t “leak-down-and-smolder.”
By all evidence, and pragmatic thinking, the smoke was smoldering debris and escaping residual heat. BUT the post-collapse temperatures (gathered by satellite heat imagery) were radically too high to be just smoldering “building debris;” even with any remaining jet fuel being factored. Buried debris will not burn at a temperature hotter than its open-air temperature. Remember the millions of gallons of water which were constantly being sprayed on the 'pile.'
That takes us to the last reasonable question, "Then, what WAS fueling that kind of temperature?"About all that can be said is "Damned good question!"...
THE SMOKING GUNS
One of the most curious statements of the 9-11 history is the “slip” of Tom
Kenney, the infamous FEMA Urban Search & Rescue worker. According to his statement to Dan Rather, the FEMA team arrived the night before 9-11...

Originally posted by HowardRoark
Twitchy, Let’s get back to this point that you made.

Originally posted by twitchy
In perfect conditions the maximum temperature that can be reached by hydrocarbons like jet-fuel, burning in air is 1520° F (825° C).

I am going to go over this again because it indicates a root failure to understand simple chemistry and physics.
To begin with, some very important words have been left out of that quote above. It should read ”In perfect, and standardized, equilibrium, conditions the maximum temperature that can be reached by hydrocarbons like jet-fuel, burning in air is 1520° F (825° C).”
That statement assumes that the combustion is under standard equilibrium conditions. Engineers and scientists that use this kind of data make that assumption because when they are designing a boiler system, for instance, they can be safe in assuming that the initial temperature of the air and the fuel are a constant. The rate at which the heat of the
reaction is drawn off is also a constant. This is called an equilibrium system
Unfortunately, under the conditions we are talking about, a structure fire, these things are anything but constant. This is called a non-equilibrium system. Let me ask you this. Let us say that your fuel and air are both at 20° C initially, and after the combustion, you’ve produced combustion gasses that are 800° C. What would happen if both your fuel and air are 400° C initially? What would the temperature of the exhaust gasses be then? How about if they were both 800 °C? What if they were both 1000° C? Would the temperature of the exhaust gasses go down to 825° C? Further on in you post, you wrote

That is some hot office furniture man.

"The heat output from these fires will later be estimated to have been comparable to that produced by a large nuclear generating station. [Civil Engineering Magazine]"

Really hot Office furniture!

Uh, yes in fact it is. You must have missed this

link from an earlier post.

From that link:
This test, conducted by National Institute of Standards and Technology last month, showed the fuel from the plane that crashed into the tower burned out quickly - but the fire it created grew in intensity by up to another 300 degrees as it consumed office products and structures. The computers, cubicle walls, furniture, files and paper - recreated on detailed
information supplied by the insurance company on the exact materials used in their offices –blazed at temperatures that reached 1,200 degrees, the NIST test found. The test fire burned for 33 minutes before the 386 pounds of material were consumed and reduced mostly to ash and gases.

And that is just one cubicle, imagine how much heat an entire floor will give off, now imagine four or five floors burning away at the same time.
Let’s go back a bit.

Originally posted by twitchy
"The heat output from these fires will later be estimated to have been comparable to that produced by a large nuclear generating station. [Civil Engineering Magazine]"

Just how exactly do you think that the heat output from the fires was estimated? They didn’t measure them, they estimated them. How do you think that the engineers and scientists were able to do that? Simple, they totaled up the amount of fuel (mainly jet fuel) present, made some assumptions on how fast it burned off, and computed the amount of energy released over the period between the impact and the collapse. (energy over time equals watts) Why don’t you include the entire paragraph from which you took that quote?

Civil Engineering article
The fires spread, and there are significant temperature variations throughout those areas where the fires are located, depending on the type and arrangement of combustible material being consumed and the availability of air supporting combustion. The advancing fires elevate the temperature within the tower. Future estimates will place it between 1,700ş and 2,000şF—further stressing the structure. At the 80th floor of WTC 2—in the northeast corner, where office furnishings had been deposited by the rapid path of the plane—the fire burns at such a high temperature that a stream of molten metal begins to pour over the side
of the tower. The heat output from these fires will later be estimated to have been comparable to that produced by a large nuclear generating station. Over a period of many minutes, this heat induces additional stresses on the damaged structural frames while simultaneously softening and weakening these frames.

Actually, the author of that article copied that almost word for word from the FEMA executive summary with one interesting exception. He changed the wording from “a large commercial generating station”
in the FEMA report to “a large nuclear generating station.” ( not only was the reported lazy, but given to a bit of hyperbole.)

In any case, if the fire was hot enough to melt aluminum, it was hot enough to soften the steel.

How Serious Were the Twin Towers' Fires?
The plane crashes resulted in significant fires in
both towers, at least for the first few minutes after the crashes. The fires in the North Tower were considerably more extensive than than those in the South Tower. As time progressed the fires in both towers appeared to
diminish greatly in severity. This was probably due to most of the
jet fuel being exahausted within a few minutes of the impacts.
Since kerosene (jet fuel) has a low boiling point and a low flash point,
most of it would have evaporated and caught fire quickly.
The Fires at Their Most Severe How severe were the fires at their greatest extents? Fires in the North Tower covered extensive regions, at
least near the perimeter walls, of about three floors. Fires in the South
Tower also extended over about three floors, but were more
localized to one side of the building. The fires were not hot enough to produce significant window breakage in either tower. Widow breakage is a common occurrence in large office fires, particularly when temperatures exceed 600ş C. The flames mostly remained within the buildings. Significant
emergence of flames from the buildings, another common feature of large office fires, was only observed in a limited region of the North Tower.
The fires did not spread significantly beyond the impact region. With the exception of a region of fire about 10 floors above the crash zone in the North Tower, the fires remained around the impact zones. The fires did not cause parts of the building to glow. At temperatures above 700ş C, steel glows red hot, a feature that is visible in daylight. The Fires' Progression Over Time Given that the vast majority of the volatile jet fuel was consumed inside five minutes of each crash, the fires subsequently
dwindled, limited to the fuels of conventional office fires. The fires in both
towers diminished steadily until the South Tower's collapse. Seconds
before, the remaining pockets of fire were visible only to the firefighters and victims in the crash zone. A thin veil of black smoke enveloped the tower's top. In the wake of the South Tower's fall new areas of fire appeared in the North Tower. This summary is supported by simple observations of the extent and brightness of the flames and the color and quantity of smoke, using the available photographic and video evidence.
Visible flames dimished greatly over time. Significant emergence
of flames from the building is only seen in a region of the North Tower 10 stories above the impact zone. South Tower: Virtually no flames were visible at the time of its collapse. North Tower: Flames were visible in several areas at the time of its collapse. A region of flames on the 105th floor is seen after the South Tower collapse. The smoke darkened over time. While the fires in both towers emitted light gray smoke during the first few minutes following the impacts, the color of the smoke became darker. South Tower: Smoke from the fires was black by the time it
collapsed. At that time it was only a small fraction of the volume of the smoke from the North Tower. North Tower: Smoke from the fires had
become much darker by the time the South Tower was struck, 17 minutes after the fires were ignited. The smoke was nearly black when the South Tower collapsed. Thereafter the smoke appears to have lightened and
emerged from the building at an accelerated rate. Dark smoke implies the presence of soot, which is composed of uncombusted hydrocarbons. Soot is produced when a fire is oxygen starved, or has just been extinguished. Soot also has a high thermal capacity and may act to rob a fire of heat by carrying it away. There appears to be no evidence of fires within the buildings' cores. It can be assumed that most of the fires were near the
perimeters of the towers where broken windows around the crash zone
allowed them a supply of air. The cores were an average distance of
about 70 feet from the nearest walls, and had much less flammible
material than the surrounding offices. The impact gash in the North
Tower provided a line of sight to the core. Available photographs
and videos show the gash as consistently dark, showing no signs of
fire in the building's core. Eyewitness ReportsDozens of people were observed to jump from floors of the North Tower above the impact zone. They may have jumped to escape painful deaths from inhalation of toxic smoke, or to escape unbearable heat.
Note, however, that temperatures unbearable to a human, such
as 100 C, are insignificant to the survivability of structural materials.
At least 18 survivors evacuated from above the crash zone of the
South Tower through a stairwell that passed through the crash zone,
and many more would have were it not for confusion in the evacuation
process. None of the survivors reported great heat around the crash
zone. An audiotape of firefighter communications revealed that
firefighers had reached the 78th floor sky lobby of the South Tower
and were enacting a plan to evacuate people and put out the " two
pockets of fire" they found, just before the tower was destroyed.

Daddy Bush and Cheney were in the SITUATION ROOM at the WHITE HOUSE during the terror attacks (during the 34 minutes between the second WTC hit and the PENTAGON hit while a stand down order was issued to the AIR FORCE to supersede established intercept
procedures for planes that stray off course).
Junior Bush was reading stories to grade school children during the
attacks. He knew one plane had crashed into the WTC when the
reading started. When his top aid Andrew Card whispered in his ear
about the second plane hitting the WTC this was caught on videotape
and is widely available on the internet. Junior Bush only looks up
and nods and then goes back to reading stories to the kids for 25
more minutes!! It clearly looks more like Card is informing Bush of
an expected event. There was for example no time for Card to add
AND THERE ARE SEVERAL OTHER HIJACKED PLANES IN THE AIR.
The Director of the WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM where all military
crises are managed is with Junior Bush at the grade school. At the
end of the 25 minutes of reading Bush goes immediately to the library of the school where a press conference was set. He says there I CALLED MY VICE PRESIDENT AND MY FBI DIRECTOR AND THE
GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK. This was a lie!! There was not enough
time for that. It takes $5 million to make the minimum investment in CARLYLE GROUP, the defense contractor investment group whose stock has gone up 37% since 911. The friends of Bush and Cheney are
the other investors in CARLYLE GROUP along with the bin Ladens and John Major. CARLYLE GROUP was having their international investors conference in Washington D.C. at the RITZ CARLETON at the exact time of the
911 attacks. CARLYLE GROUP had a big interest in BIOPORT a company
that was the sole source of ANTHRAX VACCINE for the PENTAGON.
BIOPORT gave Admiral Crowe, the former Chairman of the JOINT CHIEFS
OF STAFF a 27% interest in the company for his pull
with the PENTAGON. Do I have to connect all the dots regarding the
ANTHRAX ATTACK that was traced to US military sources?
It was widely reported by THE NEW YORK TIMES Feb. 17, 2002, MSNBC
Oct. 7, 2001 and others that Pakistani ISI Chief, General Mahmud,
wire transferred $100,000 to alleged lead terror pilot Mohammed Atta
the week before the terror attacks. At the exact moment of the
terror attacks Mahmud was having breakfast with the chairmen of the
HOUSE (Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla) and SENATE (Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla)
INTELLIGENCE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEES along with my senator Jon Kyl. I
will have words with Kyl at the next opportunity. The $100,000 was
sufficient to remove Mahmud from office but not enough for the light
to go on in the brains of our top US intelligence officials!!
Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, and others were
told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October. In an exercise, called Operation "Swift Sword" planned for four years, 23,000 British troops were on their way to Oman the day before the attacks. These troops were the ones used to assist the Americans in the Afghan invasion. At the same time two U.S. carrier battle groups arrived on station in the Gulf of Arabia just off the Pakistani coast. Also at the same time, some 17,000 U.S. troops join more than 23,000 NATO troops in Egypt for Operation "Bright Star." All of these forces were in place before the first plane hit the WTC! Dan Hopsicker found plenty of CIA connections to the flight school in Venice Florida where Atta and others trained and much more of this nature www.madcowprod.com...

Heightened WTC Security Alert Had Just Been LiftedThe World Trade Center was destroyed just days after a heightened security alert was lifted at the landmark 110-story towers, security personnel said yesterday [September 11]. Daria Coard, 37, a guard at Tower One, said the security detail had been working 12-hour shifts for the past two weeks because of numerous phone threats. But on Thursday [September 6], bomb-sniffing dogs were abruptly removed. Pre-9/11 World Trade Center Power-DownOn the weekend of 9/8, 9/9 there was a 'power down' condition in WTC tower 2, the south tower. This power down condition meant there was no electrical supply for approx 36 hrs from floor 50 up... "Of course without power there were no security cameras, no security locks on doors and many, many 'engineers' coming in and out of the tower."WTC Security Courtesy of Marvin Bush