Scrap steel from WTC disaster

[The Silver Shadow]

TAM, that is way too complex for the average CFer to understand. It's even harder for Killtard to understand due to his lack of insight and presence of stupidity (If there's any scientific way of measuring that...)

 

[Gravy]

You raise an important point, T.A.M. EVERY New Yorker wanted the site cleared as quickly as possible, in part to recover remains before they disintegrated, in part to get the infrastructure (especially utilities and subways) repaired ASAP, and in part from a desire to return to normalcy.

For a long time, though, the public wasn't allowed near the site, so the visuals weren't that much of a concern to most people. But the smell from the fires in the piles was strong for months. Particularly if you worked or lived east of the site (and often elsewhere depending on the wind), there were daily reminders of what was still there. From my apartment 3 miles away I could see the site smoking into December.

It's not surprising that the preservation of the steel was something of an afterthought for the engineers. There were far more pressing issues at first: Where is it safe to search? Where can heavy equipment be placed? Are any of the surrounding buildings in danger of collapse? Will the slurry wall collapse and cause the flooding, not only of the site, but of all the subways in lower Manhattan?

 

[AZCat]

But...but...they shoulda kept all those pieces and reconstructed all three of those buildings in a airplane hanger somewhere! I mean, that's how you investigate a crime, right?

[/woo]

As you know, that's exactly what they expect - not that there's an aircraft hanger big enough to hold all the steel. These were, after all, two of the tallest buildings in the world (and B#7 wasn't exactly small potatoes). They expect someone to take all the pieces, inspect each one for any markings that might remain after 30 years and a building collapse, log all this information into some sort of database along with a description of the current state of each piece and then reconstruct the failures using pieces from the sections of the building in the neighborhood of the impacts (assuming they've been successfully located). While I don't think anyone would deny that this would be a nice thing to do, the failure of the typical truther to take feasibility of such an undertaking into account is indicative of their approach - it doesn't matter to a truther how much work it takes to do something as long as the truther himself isn't required to to any of it (or at least anything beyond looking at images and video on the internet).

 

[AZCat]

It's not surprising that the preservation of the steel was something of an afterthought for the engineers. There were far more pressing issues at first: Where is it safe to search? Where can heavy equipment be placed? Are any of the surrounding buildings in danger of collapse? Will the slurry wall collapse and cause the flooding, not only of the site, but of all the subways in lower Manhattan?

This is a most important point, IMO - the preservation of the elements of the building structure, while it would have been nice, was of secondary importance. For all the discussion they have created, the collapses of the WTC towers are not what I would consider worthy of significant investigation as far as building safety is concerned, because the events that triggered the collapses are not the sort that occur every day. If the towers had collapsed without any significant external stimulous it would be a different story, but there will always be possible (but not probable) events that a building designer cannot factor into his or her design.

There isn't much to be learned from the collapses about the behavior of structures during a building fire either, because various laboratories have done considerable research into this area already (including the BFRL at the NIST) and because it is difficult in this situation to discern what damage was caused initially by the impact and subsequent fuel fire and what damage was caused by the secondary fires. The NIST has done considerable work in this area but whether or not their study did anything to improve overall high rise building safety is something that may not ever be determined - in fact, it remains to be seen which of their recommendations will be incorporated into future building codes (there's quite an ongoing fight over several of their recommendations to the International Code Committee).