Wrong
The lobby was open end to end. The firefighters could see that there was no heavy debris in the lobby areas from either end of the lobby.
The "explosion" , it seems to me is quite obviously the effect the collapse of WTC 1 had on WTC 7. They did not know that #1 had gone down all they knew about was the effects they witnessed in their location.
True, but there were no fires at time Michael and Barry heard an explosion.
There was the extreme amount of relativley fast moving dust, likely some smoke from the fires that had been in the towers and then there are the fires that were ignited in WTC 7 due to the damage caused by the collapse of WTC 1.
An explosion would create smoke, dust and debris.
Explosion is the more likely of the two explanations.
In
your opinion. I beg to differ.
The clap of thunder it seems obvious, occured before the penthouse started to sink. We know the witnesses could not see the penthouse, correct? Something gives internally, with a loud boom or crack, the column structure under the penthouse sinks causing a rippling effect to be visible up the side of the building, the Penthouse begins to sink, falls through the building for several seconds eventually causing major damage to the cantilever truss/column system which also fails and which is responsible for much of the structural integrity of the north wall so the lower portion of the north wall comes apart as the cantilever trusses lose their support and then the entire building is compromised and collapses.
The normal position for stairwell doors is closed.
,,,,,Not perfectly.
Yes, perfectly. You expect that the doors would withstand the impact of the tower debris and the rather large, dense and fast moving dust cloud such that barely a whiff of dust would enter the stairwell. The only way for that to occur is for the doors to work perfectly.
I take all eyewitness statements at face value unless there reason to doubt them. [other statements or evidence to the contrary]
This does not mean they constitute proof, but they should be considered as evidence of what happened.
Collaboration by other witnesses gives them more credibility.
Tell me again how many other witnesses heard the "clap of thunder" or what exactly backs up the senario as described by the two that did, especially as per the timing of the events they witnessed?
Meet ya half way
No reason to assume it wasn't an explosion or a mistake made in the extreme nature of the situation they were in.
,,, or the very human habit of describing one thing using terms that can be both generic or specific. Make that the very human way of describing situations in ENGLISH. That could be considered a mistake I suppose.
After all people learning English do often get very confused at the way our words can so many differing connotations.
