On February 20th, the Inaugural Lecture of the Principal of Queen Mary College (part of the University of London) by Professor Colin Bailey, was entitled ‘The Behaviour of Buildings During a Fire – Why the World Trade Centre 7 Collapsed.’ 

It was basically a re-run of the NIST Report, published in 2008. This National Institute of Standards and Technology report concluded that Building 7 was the only high-rise building ever to have collapsed due to fire. Hit by burning debris from WTC-1 (which exploded 10.28 that morning), WTC then had fires in it that burned for seven hours (they claimed),  before the collapse took place.

The NIST Report seems not to be a book or volume, but exists as web-pages, eg here: https://www.nist.gov/publications/structural-fire-response-and-probable-collapse-sequence-world-trade-center-building-7.

This is a good time to obtain a copy of David Ray Griffins book on the matter, his clear logic is here helpful. He analyses the scientific fraud perpetrated by the NIST Report – eg,

  •  ignoring partially-vapourised steel beams,

  • various reports of molten steel or iron in the debris,

  • long-lasting fires in the rubble pile,

  • dust particles only produced by extremely high temperatures (eg molybdenum spherules)

  • testimonial evidence of explosions going off before and during the collapse . 

  • fictional claims, that the fires all began at 10.28, when WTC-1 exploded

  • that fires on several floors lasted for several hours.

  • averring that steel beams were subjected to four hours of heating, when office fires could only have burned for 20 or 30 minutes.

  • Failure to mention that the fires on Floor 12 had completely burned out by 4.45 pm.

  • Its final report had to accept that for 2.2 seconds of the WTC-7 collapse it was in free-fall – though its theory of ‘fire-induced progressive collapse’ clearly did not allow for that. 

DRG: “Every collapse of steel-framed high-rise buildings that had occurred before or after September 11, 2001, had been brought about by explosives.” (p.249) – Yet NIST refused to entertain that option, saying it ‘was not credible enough to justify a careful investigation.’  

NIST was very much a closed group, it didn’t take advice from anyone, and its arguments were never peer-reviewed, as any science publication should be. they took several years to produce a 700-page document, then allowed only three weeks for anyone to comment upon it, then did not reply to any of the people who send in comments.

Its only ‘experiments’ carried out were on computers – it would not examine steel beam residues or dust samples. Their computer models they have refused to make available to other workers. 

NIST’s graphic showing a raging fire on floor 12 at 5.00 pm is contradicted by ‘the statement, made in NIST’s 2004 interim Report on WTC-7, that the fire on this floor had burned out by 4.45 pm’ (DRG, p253). 

The only bit of evidence it seems to have accepted from anyone was by David Chandler, who advised that WTC-7 had entered into free fall, ie it was descending with acceleration due to gravity. That went into their final report. 

A counter-statement is due to emerge, from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, a TWC 7 Study Report, which will disagree with NIST, concluding that fire could not have brought down WTC-7. By Dr Leroy Hulsey, this investigation has been  funded by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 truth.

I reckon that the engineering students at the lecture got a frisson of excitement from having a bunch of ‘conspiracy theortists’ in the audience. In a time of ever-dwindling academic freedom we should be grateful!

Founder of AE9/11 truth, Richard Gage, is coming to speak to our group in London in May, and by that time the U of Alaska report should be out.  Ageing 9/11 truthers please note: this could be the last time the whole subject gets re-ignited! 

Firemen expected it to fall

FDNY Chief of Operations Daniel Nigro:

I ordered the evacuation of an area sufficient around to protect our members, so we had to give up some rescue operations that were going on at the time and back the people away far enough so that if 7 World Trade did collapse, we [wouldn’t] lose any more people. 

and again:

The biggest decision we had to make was to clear the area and create a collapse zone around the severely damaged [WTC 7] building. A number of fire officers and companies assessed the damage to the building. The appraisals indicated that the building’s integrity was in serious doubt.

Fire Chief Peter Hayden:

We had to be very forceful in getting the guys out. They didn’t want to come out. There were guys going into areas that I wasn’t even really comfortable with, because of the possibility of secondary collapses. We didn’t know how stable any of this area was. We pulled everybody back probably by 3 or 3:30 in the afternoon. We said, this building is going to come down, get back. It came down about 5 o’clock or so, but we had everybody backed away by then.

All of the thousands of workers in WTC-7 had been evacuated hours earlier, then for several hours the NY fire department worked on the building, until around 2 pm. Most of them, were expecting WTc-7 to collapse. Word that the building was a ‘lost cause’ came from the city’s Office of Emergency Management – that was Mayor Giuliani’s office in WTC-7. (NB, Giuliani was told about the collapse of all three towers, shortly before they came down) 

DRG speculates that the plan had been for WTC-7 to be pulled in the morning, with the others, and in fact there were huge blasts in the bottom of that building around 9.30 am, destroying the entrance, and ALL the personell were evacuated around then – but it didn’t work and so the building was strangely left, damaged and smoking, until late afternoon. 

The worst lie that Professor told his students, was that (echoing NIST) fires had been burning for seven hours in the building before it came down. So, here is a list of some floors in WTc-7 with times when they were first seen and when they went out, using NIST’s own data (Bear in mind that on the NIST hypothesis, all fires have to start at 10.28 am and be on the South side, i.e. facing the Towers)

* Floors 30 & 29 – ?    22 => 12.10 pm, 19  – all these upper floors were out by 1 pm  

* Floor 14 => 5.00  and 13  => 2.30 pm (appeared on East face)

* Floors 12 & 11 => 2.08 pm, on East face. Floor 11 later had fire on North face at 4.34 

* Floor 9 burnt for 40 mins, from  4.00 to 4.40 pm

* Floor 8 => 3.40 pm, North face

* Floor 7 => from 2.08 to 4.45 pm,  first on North face

With these durations, DRG greatly doubts that any of the steel girders could have heated up to 600 C, the minimum for softening or buckling to occur.

Here are pictures of the huge amount of smoke that was pouring out of it, that afternoon:

 

 

 

 

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