Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Unanswered Questions Surrounding Terrorist Attacks

host · 05-28-2006, 03:17 AM

Dilbert1234567, I have no history of intentionally acting rudely towards you. I was sincerely flabbergasted by your argument. It seemed an unsubstantiated stab at a theory that would explain away all of the dubious and questionable federal government directed and deliberately non-directed, (willfully incomplete) actions to keep conspiracy theories "alive and kickin", when all it would take is competent and credible evidence gathering and investigation, and the timely issuance....of "final reports" as previously promised. A spirit of reluctance to lead or cooperate in investigating and disclosing "what really happened" on 9/11, resonated from Bush and Cheney from the very beginning. The surviving family members of 9/11 victims had to shame Bush into agreeing to form the 9/11 Commission, or there would not have been one. Little good it's report actually did to quell suspiscion. First came the cynical, Bush appointment of herr Kissinger to head the commission, which was shouted down, and then came the appointment of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_Commission#Criticisms">former Saudi business associate</a>, Tom Kean, (not the sharpest move, after you've told us that 15 of 19...9/11 "hijackers", were Saudis...) to replace Kissinger as 9/11 Commission chairman..... My point is that the "conspiracy theories" are the result of official government ineptness, duplicity, insincerity, and or, criminality....not...in spite of them. They aroused suspicions, because their "handling" of the investigation....smells.

I enjoy trying to meet the challenge that you've put out to us, and I've admitted, on this thread....specifically to you....when I was mistaken. I had hoped that would garner your trust....and I hope that we can get past this. Accept that I did not intend to incite you....now....hopefully I am providing some of what you challenged me to give you:

Quote:

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstra...AB0894DA404482
A Search for Clues In Towers' Collapse
Engineers Volunteer to Examine Steel Debris Taken to Scrapyards
New York Times, The (NY)
February 2, 2002
Author: JAMES GLANZ and ERIC LIPTON

....... Perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation involves extremely thin bits of steel collected from the trade towers and from 7 World Trade Center, a 47-story high rise that also collapsed for unknown reasons. The steel apparently melted away, but no fire in any of the buildings was believed to be hot enough to melt steel outright. A preliminary analysis of the steel at Worcester Polytechnic Institute using electron microscopes suggests that sulfur released during the fires -- no one knows from where -- may have combined with atoms in the steel to form compounds that melt at lower temperatures.............

Quote:

http://www.wpi.edu/News/Transformati...ing/steel.html
The "Deep Mystery" of Melted Steel

There is no indication that any of the fires in the World Trade Center buildings were hot enough to melt the steel framework. Jonathan Barnett, professor of fire protection engineering, has repeatedly reminded the public that steel--which has a melting point of 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit--may weaken and bend, but does not melt during an ordinary office fire. Yet metallurgical studies on WTC steel brought back to WPI reveal that a novel phenomenon--called a eutectic reaction--occurred at the surface, causing intergranular melting capable of turning a solid steel girder into Swiss cheese.

Materials science professors Ronald R. Biederman and Richard D. Sisson Jr. confirmed the presence of eutectic formations by examining steel samples under optical and scanning electron microscopes. A preliminary report was published in JOM, the journal of the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society. A more detailed analysis comprises Appendix C of the FEMA report. The New York Times called these findings "perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation." The significance of the work on a sample from Building 7 and a structural column from one of the twin towers becomes apparent only when one sees these heavy chunks of damaged metal.

A one-inch column has been reduced to half-inch thickness. Its edges--which are curled like a paper scroll--have been thinned to almost razor sharpness. Gaping holes--some larger than a silver dollar--let light shine through a formerly solid steel flange. This Swiss cheese appearance shocked all of the fire-wise professors, who expected to see distortion and bending--but not holes...........

The problem with your theory, IMIO (in my ignorant opinion....) is that you have no way to measure how much of the energy that was generated from the fall of heavy debris from the upper reaches of the tall WTC 1 & 2 towers, was dissipated upon impact with the near ground surfaces, i.e., low buildings, multiple concrete decks and sub-surface structural levels that surrounded the towers' one acre footprints. Energy was also absorbed from upper floor debris, due to "pancaking" of floor upon floor....with floors undamaged by fire or impact from either "attacking airliner", offering the most energy absorbing resistance, since they were studier....harder to pancake.

WTC 7 was less than half the height of the twin towers and was comprised of much lighter core steel support members. It is documented that there were hot fires burning in it's contained, seperate debris field, for some weeks after 9/11. It is documented that competent, credible witnesses observed "vaporization" of structural steel from that building. It is documented that WTC 7 is the only steel framed building in history to collapse from fire damage and heavy but localized structural damage. The combined circumstances of the WTC 7 collapse, coupled with the persistent, post collapse, hot fires in it's footprint, and throughout the 16 acre WTC site, the reports of glowing and molten steel encountered in the debris, are enough to arose suspicion in an allegedly ignorant individual, such as I appear to be.

Quote:

From 5,000 Feet Up, Mapping Terrain for Ground Zero Workers
New York Times, The (NY)
September 23, 2001
Author: KENNETH CHANG

.........The Federal Aviation Administration granted EarthData permission to make daily flights in the

tightly controlled airspace over the site. Each day since Sept. 15, EarthData's plane has passed

over Lower Manhattan, shooting 15,000 laser pulses a second. EarthData then produces a grid of

more than 100,000 points of topographic elevations, spaced about five feet apart, over the trade

center area. The information is then analyzed by the researchers at Hunter College.

Other instruments on the EarthData plane are taking photographs and measuring thermal radiation

emanating from the surface to track the underground fires. The fires, which warm the surface 30

degrees above surrounding areas, are still burning beneath the rumble of the two towers and 7

World Trade Center. The hot spots can flare up as debris is removed, endangering people at the

site.

The fires spread outward on the first couple of days, but have since started to recede. "But

they're still extensive," Mr. Logan said.............

Quote:

A NATION CHALLENGED: THE SITE
At the Site, Little Hope Of Uncovering Survivors
New York Times, The (NY)
September 19, 2001
Author: SUSAN SACHS

....Two buildings, 5 and 6 World Trade Center, have essentially been gutted by fire, said Peter

J. Davoren, a senior vice president of Turner Construction Company. The rubble that once was 7

World Trade Center, a building believed to have been evacuated before it was hit by debris from

the collapse, is still burning. By late yesterday, crews working from baskets suspended by

cranes over 7 World Trade Center were cutting lengths of twisted steel to be removed.....

Quote:

AT GROUND ZERO, A CLEANUP OF EPIC SCOPE
BILLION-DOLLAR JOB FRAUGHT WITH PERIL
The Record (New Jersey)
November 6, 2001
Author: BRIAN KLADKO, Staff Writer; The Record

....... The site is suffused by a smoky haze, produced by the smoldering fires underneath the

debris. The temperatures down there reach 1,500 degrees, hot enough to fry a robot that had been

sent down with a video camera. Some of the columns pulled from the wreckage glow red.

"Even when it's been hosed down, it still steams for a long time," Ashlin said.

City officials have been tracking the fires using airplanes equipped with cameras and thermal

sensors. In the days after the attack, half of ground zero was burning; by late last month, the

fires had been confined to a few scattered spots.........

When you add the clumsy BS on the U.S. State Dept. <a href="http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2005/Sep/16-241966.html">web page</a>...intended to rehabilitate WTC leaseholder Silverstein's video documented and unambiguous <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?p=2059787&highlight=silverstein+pull#post2059787">statement of three years earlier....</a>

Is ignorance a prerequisite for an individual to perceive deliberate deception on the part of unknown persons in a federal government that runs the type of "cover op" intended to diminish the controversy of Silverman's 2002 statement, three years after he was videotaped, making it? Show me another example where a federal agencies web page is "turned over" to an a private individual so that his spokesperson can post a propaganda piece that coincides with the "official line" of the current executive regime. I've never seen anything like it, if you have....direct me to it!

Is it just "business as usual"..."nothing to see here", when the lead investigative federal agency responsible for investigating and determining the effects of fire damage on the 3 collapsed WTC "skyscrapers"....fails to achieve it's own first stated goal.....by one third if you consider that it issued a "final report" that only made determinations about the collapses of two out of three WTC towers, and admitted that it had no structural steel samples to test to evaluate the collapse of that third building....and then quietly seperate and postpones the final report on that building'd collapse, and then delayed the final report release for another full year....with no official announcement that it was doing so? I don't think that it is....especially when many architects and engineers consider the collapse of the third building after a fire....to be unprecedented.....and historic.

Call me ignorant...but something is going on that smacks of an official attempt to conceal the truth...the facts...about the WTC 7 collapse, from the American people.

Here are descriptions of the heat and the aftermath of energy absorbing impact of falling WTC debris: (Note the date....9 weeks after 9/11)

Quote:

A NATION CHALLENGED: THE SITE
Below Rubble, a Tour of a Still-Burning Hell
New York Times, The (NY)
November 15, 2001

Abstract: Tour of basement floors under World Trade Center site reveal some places with only superficial damage but hold eerie images of past; acrid air and fires that continue to burn deep in debris add to hellish reality;

A descent beneath the World Trade Center is a passage into a grotesque landscape of stalagmites formed by dripping metal, entire office floors compressed into a space of six inches, and train cars smashed all the way down to the tracks by collapsed concrete ceilings.

The trade center's basement was once a six-level shopping center, parking ramp and underground train terminal spreading over more than two million square feet. Now it has become a place where the horror of the aboveground devastation is amplified by the gloom of the debris-strewn, claustrophobic space -- a hazy darkness pierced only by flashlights and an occasional crater that lets dim sunlight filter through from above.
Yesterday, a rare journey to the bottom of the trade center's basement revealed a few places with only superficial damage, like the Commuter's Cafe, five levels below the trade center's plaza, where dust-encrusted bottles of liquor still sit on the shelves.

But most of the basement has become an underground quagmire where muddy pools of water, cinder blocks, travertine facing from collapsed walls and half-melted ventilation ducts spread crazily over floors that end suddenly, at sheer drops into the darkness.

The confined air is acrid because of the fine dust that is everywhere and the fires that continue to burn deep in the debris.

"It's still cooking," said Thomas O'Connor, who manages the construction and engineering work at the site for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owned the buildings and arranged for the tour through the basement.

In the days after the collapse of the towers two months ago, the tangled steel was still so hot that it glowed like charcoal briquets in the unlighted basement, Mr. O'Connor said, adding, "For seven weeks it was surreal down here."

Now, it has become the unreal city of T. S. Eliot's "Waste Land," a place where dread lurks in the shadows and terrible things emerge by gleam of light. Even so, it is a city that construction crews removing the debris have come to understand, and as they continue clearing the site -- for now, using grapplers, cranes and wrecking balls aboveground -- they believe the site is structurally stable as the work continues.

In particular, the submerged wall, nicknamed the bathtub, that holds back the waters of the Hudson River seems to be sound.

The trip -- which felt more like spelunking through caves or archaeological ruins than touring an urban structure -- began at the opening of a downward-sloping truck ramp on Barclay Street, one block north of the trade center site, where all freight was once delivered to the trade center. Beginning at the site's northern boundary -- at the western edge of the L-shaped 5 World Trade Center, which burned but did not collapse -- the trip was constrained by several elements of the smashed topography created by the collapse of the twin towers.

To the west, a giant hole punched through the middle of the United States Custom House by falling debris from the north tower continues to the bottom of the basement. Steel beams dangle from the edges of the hole like ragged tapestry and form a wildly chaotic pile in the center. To the southwest is packed debris from the north tower itself, and to the south, many basement floors have been crushed by debris hurled from the south tower.

As solemn as it is, the passage below is not just a study in destruction. As respirators dangled from the necks of everyone else in the small group, John O'Connell, a rescue worker with the Fire Department, smoked a big cigar.

"It's my respirator, it's my oxygen indicator and it's my explosion indicator," Mr. O'Connell said. "The only problem, the explosion indicator, it works only once."

After a walk southward down the truck ramps and a dogleg right, to the west, the dancing flashlights illuminate the edge of the debris that fell nearly straight down through the north tower and collected down here. At first the mind simply refuses to accept what the eyes see -- the recognizable traces of 20 floors, much like geologic strata, over a 10-foot vertical span.

In one place, the steel decks of half a dozen floors protrude like tattered wallpaper, almost touching where they are bent downward at the edge. "You're looking at roughly 60 feet of the building, smashed into about 3 feet," Mr. O'Connell said.

A three-foot stalagmite of steel, which looks for all the world like a drip candle, sits next to one of the immense steel columns that held up the north face of the tower.

The column, two feet across, has a sort of compound fracture -- the top has been pushed a foot south of the piece it is resting on.

Down two more floors to the mezzanine, and the Commuter's Cafe seems to wait for customers next to dozens of turnstiles and a partly smashed bank of escalators leading down to the PATH station.

"Hey, Eddie, why don't you go sit on your regular stool?" someone yells in the darkness.

A few feet south of the cafe, the floor abruptly ends, as if something has bitten it off, but a stairway near the escalators leads down to the train station, at the bottom of the basement.

Among the sodden chaos of fallen steel and cracked walls, the ceiling slopes downward on the south end of the platform at about a 20-degree angle and ultimately meets the train tracks.

Half a train car emerges from the nothingness between floor and ceiling and connects to a string of four more cars to the north.

No one was killed here. But signs of a hasty evacuation are all around. An unopened eight-ounce can of Arizona Iced Tea sits upright on a bench at the center of the platform a few feet from the crushed car.

Near a tear where the steel-reinforced guts are spilling out of the slumping ceiling, Ed Smith, a Port Authority policeman, says mournfully: "I poured that concrete out of high school."

On the way back up, the mottled and apparently charred wall of the bathtub appears in a few places. Construction crews are working to preserve the wall so that it can encircle any new buildings that rise at the site, as it did the trade towers, keeping out the waters of the Hudson.

"From the fire and whatever else happened, it's been through hell," said Frank Lombardi, chief engineer at the Port Authority, pointing to part of the bathtub wall.

But so far, he says, the wall is entirely stable.

Like miners, the group emerges into the light at the freight entrance. Mr. O'Connell is still smoking his cigar.
Caption:
Photos: Port Authority workers, right, walk through a parking garage beneath the site of the World Trade Center. The basement was once a six-level shopping center and train station as well. Now, in some places, remnants of 20 floors are compressed into 10 vertical feet. (Pool photo by John O'Boyle)(pg. B10); Parking level B3, beneath the trade center site. "For seven weeks it was surreal down here," said Thomas O'Connor, who manages work at the site for the Port Authority. (Pool photo by John O'Boyle)(pg. B1)
Chart/Diagram "Under the Rubble" shows ground zero and some of the damages caused to the surrounding area and underneath the site. (pg. B10)

Three "molten metal" references:

Quote:

http://www.nypost.com/movies/19574.htm
UNFLINCHING LOOK AMONG THE RUINS

By LOU LUMENICK
March 3, 2004

....... The program, running for two weeks at the Film Forum, opens with a half-hour short

called "The First 24 Hours," a verité collage of indelible images Sauret collected in and around

Ground Zero, beginning moments after the planes hit the World Trade Center.

Though brutal, those images pale beside the grisly reminiscences of firemen at the scene in

Sauret's one-hour companion piece, "Collateral Damages."

These candidly shaken macho guys recall scenes still haunting their nightmares two years after

9/11 - a 4-foot-high pile of bodies hurled from the towers, finding faces that were ripped from

heads by the violence of the collapse, and heat so intense they encountered rivers of molten steel. ........

D-Day: NY Sanitation Workers' Challenge of a Lifetime
... NYDS played a major role in debris removal — everything from molten steel beams to human remains — running trucks back and forth between Ground Zero and ...
www.wasteage.com/mag/waste_dday_ny_sanitation/ - 79k - May 26, 2006 -

http://www.seau.org/SEAUNews-2001-10.pdf
Page 3

As of 21 days after the attack, the
fires were still burning and molten
steel was still running.....

....and reports by engineers of "evaporated" WTC structural steel:

Quote:

A NATION CHALLENGED: THE SITE
Engineers Have a Culprit in the Strange Collapse of 7 World Trade Center: Diesel Fuel
New York Times, The (NY)
November 29, 2001
Author: JAMES GLANZ

.....A combination of an uncontrolled fire and the structural damage might have been able to

bring the building down, some engineers said. But that would not explain steel members in the

debris pile that appear to have been partly evaporated in extraordinarily high temperatures, Dr.

Barnett said.....

Quote:

Scarred Steel Holds Clues, And Remedies
New York Times, The (NY)
October 2, 2001
Author: KENNETH CHANG

....Two Wednesdays ago, on his first night in the city to collect scientific data on the

collapsed World Trade Center buildings, Dr. Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl looked out the window of his

room at the Tribeca Grand Hotel and saw a flatbed truck parked outside.

By chance, trucks hauling steel from the trade center site paused there for an hour or two

before proceeding to the docks, where the steel was loaded onto barges.
Dr. Astaneh-Asl, a professor of structural engineering at the University of California at

Berkeley, changed out of his nightclothes and went downstairs for a closer look. Over the next

few nights, he cataloged 30 to 40 of the mighty beams and columns as trucks stopped in front of

the hotel.

"I've found quite a number of interesting items," he said......

...Dr. Astaneh-Asl's project is one of eight financed by the National Science Foundation to study

the World Trade Center disaster. He is also a member of a team assembled by the American Society

of Civil Engineers to investigate the trade center site, and the society is dispatching a team

to examine damage to the Pentagon.

One piece Dr. Astaneh-Asl saw was a charred horizontal I-beam from 7 World Trade Center, a

47-story skyscraper that collapsed from fire eight hours after the attacks. The beam, so named

because its cross-section looks like a capital I, had clearly endured searing temperatures.

Parts of the flat top of the I, once five-eighths of an inch thick, had vaporized.

Less clear was whether the beam had been charred after the collapse, as it lay in the pile of

burning rubble, or whether it had been engulfed in the fire that led to the building's collapse,

which would provide a more telling clue.

The answer lay in the beam's twisted shape. As weight pushed down, the center portion had

buckled outward.

"This tells me it buckled while it was attached to the column," not as it fell, Dr. Astaneh-Asl

said, adding, "It had burned first, then buckled."........

Quote:

WRECKAGE YIELDS CLUES FOR THE FUTURE OF HIGH-RISES ENGINEERS EXAMINE TWISTED STEEL DEBRIS

FROM THE WORLD TRADE CENTER, SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS TO SAFETY AND CONSTRUCTION QUESTIONS TO GUIDE

PLANS FOR FUTURE BUILDINGS.
San Jose Mercury News (CA)
October 9, 2001
Author: GLENNDA CHUI, Mercury News

....The evidence was on the brink of being destroyed -- cut up for scrap and melted down to make

cars, appliances and the skeletons of more high-rises -- when he and others intervened last week

to save at least some of it......

''This is the first high-rise building I'm aware of, other than the towers themselves, that

collapsed as a result of fire,'' said Ronald Hamburger, a structural engineer with ABS

Consulting in Oakland who is on the team.

One of the support beams from Building 7 had been heated to such high temperatures that some of

the steel vaporized, said Astaneh-Asl. ''My interest, believe it or not, is higher for Building

7 than for the towers,'' he said, because it was a much more common design, used in perhaps a

dozen buildings in San Francisco and 200 nationwide. So any lessons that come out of its

collapse should be widely applicable......