Originally Posted by fastom

So what you are suggesting is that all buildings should be expected to collapse in a fire and maybe having 1,000,000 square foot ranchers is the way to go for office buildings?

It's really odd that only the WTC buildings seem to collapse from fire even though there have been lots of other buildings that have had fires. But that was the day of many coincidences.

I take those NIST findings with a grain of salt... OK a fifty pound bag of salt. It's making a cause to fit the results except where they can't explain, so they don't.

What do you think started those fires... inside a building? The NYC emergency command center was in there... you don't think somebody could have grabbed a red bottle off the wall and put the fire out right away?

Originally Posted by NYTimes.com

LINK
Pier D, at the foot of 64th Street, was built of wood in the 1880s, then rebuilt with a steel frame after a fire in 1922. According to a historical plaque placed there by the Department of Parks and Recreation, it was used by longshoremen to unload bulk cargo, much of it grain, milk and vegetables. The pier was abandoned by June 1971 when it and two others were consumed in a spectacular blaze. Smoke was so thick that it forced the closing of the elevated West Side Highway nearby.

After years of inaction, Pier D — also called the “Frank Gehry Pier,” after its almost organically random angles — and the nearby “Spaghetti Pier,” a tangled mess of steel from the 1971 fire, were finally to be removed in 2003 as part of the Riverside Park South project. (Pier I, at the foot of West 70th Street, reopened in 2001 as a pedestrian promenade and fishing spot.)