#6 NIST Conceals the Controlled Demolition of the Twin Towers pt2

NIST Conceals the Controlled Demolition of the Twin Towers

Omissions and Distortions

Omissions and Distortions is the subtitle of David Ray Griffin's book critiquing the 9/11 Commission Report. Given the likelihood that NIST's Report will be greeted by the mainstream media with uncritical acceptance similar to that enjoyed by the 9/11 Commission Report, it deserves a critique as thorough as Griffin's. This essay is much less ambitious, and does not attempt to provide a thorough enumeration of the Report's flaws. In this section I just note some of the more serious omissions and distortions apart from the ones mentioned in the preceding sections.
The Privatization of the World Trade Center

After providing a fairly detailed overview of the history of the World Trade Center, the Report mentions that WTC 7 "was completed in 1987 and was operated by Silverstein Properties, Inc." (p 2/56) However, the Report makes no mention of the fact that a private consortium headed by Silverstein Properties acquired a 99-year lease of the main World Center complex on July 24, 2001. Nor does it mention that the new landlord secured an array of insurance policies that included a special provision for loss due to terrorist attacks, and, subsequent to the attack, successfully sued the insurers to obtain twice the value of the policy based on its being "two occurrences" (two airplane crashes).
Chief Palmer's Radio Call

The Report conceals one of the most vivid accounts of heroism in responding to the attack. Battalion Chief Orio J. Palmer had reached the 78th floor of the South Tower by 9:48 -- 11 minutes before the explosive collapse began -- and reported via radio "two isolated pockets of fire." In contrast to Palmer's communication, NIST's Report implies that no firefighters were able to reach the crash zones.

However, there was insufficient time and no path to reach any survivors on the impact floors and above. Any attempts to mitigate the fires would have been fruitless due to the lack of water supply and the difficulty in reaching the fire floors within the time interval before the building collapse. (p 45/99)

It would take hours to accumulate sufficient people and equipment to access the impact zones. (p 163/217)

NIST gets the closest to admitting Palmer's account here:

From radio communications and first-person interviews, it appears that there were responders as high as floors in the 50s in WTC 1 and the 78th floor in WTC 2. (p 166/220)

Here's a transcript of a portion of the radio communication with Chief Palmer:

Battalion 7 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 10-40 Code Ones.
...
Ladder 15: Floor 78?

Battalion 7 Chief: Ten-four, numerous civilians, we gonna need two engines up here.
...
Battalion 7 Chief: I'm going to need two of your firefighters Adam, stairway to knock down two fires. We have house line stretched we could use some water on it, knock it down, kay.

Excuses, Excuses
Light wind from the north bathed the northern portion of the North Tower's roof with cool, fresh air.

Of the 1,344 people estimated to have been on or above the 91st floor of the North Tower when the plane hit, not a single person survived, the crash having blocked all three stairwells. But many might have been rescued from the roof, had not the doors been locked and helicopter rescue barred. Two choppers arrived within 5 minutes of the crash, one of which was a Bell 412 equipped with a 250-foot hoist and capable of carrying as many as 10 survivors at a time, and carrying a three-man crew specially trained for rooftop rescues. One of the choppers was piloted by Greg Semendinger, who had helped to rescue 28 people after the 1993 WTC parking garage bombing. Semendinger and other veteran pilots have stated that rescue from the North Tower roof would have been difficult but possible. But on 9/11/01, no rooftop rescues were allowed.

NIST avoids any mention of the 1993 rooftop rescues and the opinions of pilots that rescue was an option.

Some of the people went toward the roof. However, there was no hope because roof evacuation was neither planned nor practical, and the exit doors to the roof were locked. .. Even had the roof been accessible, the helicopters could not have landed due to the severe heat and smoke. (p 26/80)

NIST excuses the locked doors and lack of notification to the occupants:

The 2003 code does not intend roof access to be used for evacuation and has no prohibition on locking this access. (p 26/80)

NIST excuses the amazing prohibition of rooftop rescue by misrepresenting the condition of the roof, (whose accessibility is documented by photographs and the words of the helicopter pilots) and by falsely implying that a helicopter would have had to land on the roof to effect any rescue.

NYPD helicopters reached the scene by 8:52 to assess the possibility of roof rescue. They were unable to land on the roof due to heavy smoke conditions. During the first hour, FDNY did not consider the option of roof rescue. When the aircraft struck WTC 2, it was clear that this was criminal activity, and the decision regarding roof top operations became the responsibility of NYPD. The NYPD First Deputy Commissioner ordered that no roof rescues were to be attempted, and at 9:43 a.m., this directive was passed to all units. (p 164/218)

This implies that an hour instead of 18 minutes passed between the North Tower strike (8:46) and the South Tower strike (9:03). Also, it was clear almost immediately after the first strike that people could not evacuate downward from above the crash zone. Why then did the unnamed First Deputy Commissioner prohibit rooftop rescue? NIST shows no curiosity at this decision, but makes further excuses, suggesting that a few lives weren't worth the effort:

Even if it had been possible for a helicopter to gain access to the roof, only a very small fraction of the large number of people trapped above the impact zone could have been rescued before the Towers collapsed. (p 169/219)

Given the great lengths and expense to which public officials often go to save a single life, it is striking that the Report's authors suggest that there was nothing wrong with the NYPD decision to prohibit attempts to rescue people from the roof. This, like the Report as a whole, is evidence that the authors would defend the authorities no matter what their conduct.

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Conclusion

Assuming the premise of the official explanation, the total collapses of the Twin Towers and Building 7 were the largest, most unexpected, and least understood failures of engineered steel structures in the history of the world. NIST's Report, like FEMA's 2002 report, presents the appearance of explaining the collapses of the Twin Towers, but in reality it doesn't explain them at all. Flatly asserting that "global collapse" inevitably follows "collapse initiation," the Report implies that the only issue worthy of study is how the jet impacts and fires led to collapse initiation -- an issue to which it devotes well over one hundred pages. Thus, the Report makes two fundamental claims, the first explicit and the second implicit:

* The impact damage and fires caused the tops of the Towers to lean and then begin to fall (collapse initiation).
* Once initiated, the collapses proceded to total collapses.

NIST goes to great lengths to support the first claim, but commits numerous omissions and distortions in the process. It remains quiet about the second claim, which is indefensible. Accepting that claim requires us to believe:

* That the collapses of WTC 1, 2, and 7 are the only examples of total progressive collapse of steel-framed structures in history.
* That those collapses were gravity-driven despite showing all the common physical features of controlled demolitions. In the cases of the Twin Towers, those features included the following:

* Radial symmetry: The Towers came straight down, blowing debris symmetrically in all directions.
* Rapid descent: The Towers came down just slightly slower than the rate of free-fall in a vacuum.
* Demolition waves: The Towers were consumed by synchronized rows of confluent explosions.
* Demolition squibs: The Towers exhibited high-velocity gas ejections well below the descending rubble.
* Pulverization: The Towers' non-metallic components, such as their concrete floors, were pulverized into fine dust.
* Totality: The Towers were destroyed totally, their steel skeletons shredded into short pieces, most less than 30 feet long.

All of these features are seen in conventional controlled demolitions. None have ever been observed in steel-framed buildings collapsing for any reason other than controlled demolition.

What are the chances that a phenomenon other than controlled demolition would exhibit all six features never observed elsewhere except in controlled demolitions?

NIST avoids asking this and other questions by implying that they don't exist. It uses the false assertion that partial collapse will inevitably lead to total collapse (couched in the ill-defined terms of "column instability," "global instability," "collapse initiation," and "global collapse") to imply that nothing about the actual collapses is worth considering.

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http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/reynolds/index.html

Point 3 understates the near free-fall rapidity of Building 7's collapse. Examination of the CBS video shows that, ignoring the penthouse, the building collapsed entirely in under 7 seconds. An brick dropped from the height of the building's roof through a vacuum would have taken 5.9 seconds to reach the ground. Clearly, the structure of this building had been shattered to remove nearly all the resistance to its collapse.

Point 7 is incorrect, because blast furnaces do use hydrocarbon fires to melt steel. However, blast furnaces are fundamentally different from building fires, because blast furnaces pressurize and/or preheat the air and mix it with fuel in the optimal ratio before combustion. Lacking pre-heating and pressurization, it is difficult to achieve flame temperatures much above 800ºC, far below the over-1500ºC melting points of most steel.

More important, the inability of such fires to melt steel is a red herring, because the officially endorsed explanation of the collapses blames the softening, not the melting, of the structural steel. Scientific American falsely accused 911Research of using the no melted steel ... no collapses straw man argument, when in fact 911Research has long debunked both versions of the offical story:

* The column failure theory
* The truss failure theory

Professional Demolition


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As with the WTC towers' demolition, the points Reynolds makes in favor of the no-jetliner theory are all made by other authors, so the contrast between the soundness of his arguments for the two theories may just reflect the contrast between the strengths of the theories themselves -- a contrast which Reynolds may not appreciate.

Reynolds' article, which combines strong theories with erroneous ones, is a microcosm of the 9/11 Truth Movement. Experience has shown that the mainstream media will amplify the least credible and most offensive theories and misrepresent them as gospel of the "conspiracy theorists." Reynolds' concluding paragraph highlights the importance of getting the science right.

If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the World Trade Center on 9/11, then the case for an "inside job" and a government attack on America would be compelling. Meanwhile, the job of scientists, engineers and impartial researchers everywhere is to get the scientific and engineering analysis of 9/11 right, "though heaven should fall."

I couldn't agree more.