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Fastom, metal does that. You have to know that. I don't work with metals daily. Call it monthly. I've built plenty of specialized prototypes and done my share of steel, iron, aluminum work, sometimes torch or oven heating to avoid problems. One inch expansion over 10ft is nothing. Barely point 8%?
Still, my shadetree experience says it's unlikely the entire 60ft beam would expand uniformly. I'll leave it to others to work out how hot over how much distance might have been plausible given what we could see of the fires.
For myself, mostly dealing with frames and assemblies of heated metals that like to creep out of square, I keep thinking about a truss design and hot spots. As trusses these are multiple pieces of metal, not just one. it makes more sense to me that parts of the truss heated unevenly which would stress and deflect weaker (weakened) parts. This would be encouraged if some parts lost their fireproofing while others did not. It doesn't take much deflection somewhere in the middle of a 60ft length to send the ends way out of spec. It would try to unbend as it cooled but damage is already done at the end points. Fasteners, welds, etc. It'll likely cool as a bent and therefore shorter assembly with impaired fasteners. Not a good recipe.
As a tinkerer and son of another I've worked with "things" almost since I could walk. Making things, changing them, watching them fail - sometimes disastrously - and while I've never had anything to do with big metal buildings I am not in the least surprised by this failure of a complex structure of metal exposed to heat. It seems completely natural to me. What seems odd is the lack of this sense by others. Yet I've helped highly educated people repair things who were completely surprised by the behavior. Given there are persistent posters in this thread who I take to be a notch above myself in intelligence, I have to assume some lack of experience coupled with distrust of the system leads to this persistent assumption it can't have happened as described.
Going way back to my first posts, IMO, without physical evidence or at least very good documentation we aren't going to find anything useful here. (that's okay, not my thread) A theorist may be better served by searching for money, other motivations, and any people involved. Look for the bigger question of why the event happened instead of spending too much time fighting what is likely the Copernican argument suggeted by USTwo.
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There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195
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