Just in case anybody still thought Gage had a point...
Richard Gage, AIA – Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth
Does Richard win a prize?
Sizzler has, to be fair, posted something that claims to look like evidence, and since it was asked for I think we owe it to him to explain why it's nothing of the sort. So, it's point-by-point debunking time, folks.
In more than 100 steel-framed, high-rise fires (most of them very hot, very large and very long-lasting), not one has collapsed, ever. So it behooves all of us, as your own former chief of NIST's Fire Science Division, Dr. James Quintiere, said, "to look at real alternatives that might have been the cause of these collapses."
The first sentence is an argument from incredulity, pure and simple. The second is just padding.
Let's start with temperatures – 1,340° F. temperatures, recorded in thermal images of the surface of the World Trade Center rubble pile a week after 9/11 by NASA's AVIRIS equipment on USGS overflights. Such temperatures cannot be achieved by oxygen-starved hydrocarbon fires. Such fires burn at only 600 to 800° F. Remember, there was no fire on the top of the pile. The source of this incredible heat was therefore below the surface of the rubble, where it must have been far hotter than 1,340 degrees.
As Carzy Chainsaw pointed out, this is simply wrong. The "oxygen-starved" argument is a non sequitur; it is well known and documented that slow-burning, oxygen-limited underground fires, where the surrounding material insulates the burning region and causes a progressive temperature increase, can experience oven-like behaviour and easily reach higher temperatures than this.
Mark Loizeaux, president of Controlled Demolition, Inc., who was hired for the Building 7 cleanup, said that "molten steel was found at 7 WTC." Leslie Robertson, World Trade Center structural engineer, stated that on October 5, "21 days after the attacks, the fires were still burning and molten steel was still running." Fire department personnel, recorded on video, reported seeing "molten steel running down the channel rails… like you're in a foundry – like lava from a volcano." Joe O'Toole, a Bronx firefighter, saw a crane lifting a steel beam vertically from deep within a pile. He said "it was dripping from the molten steel." Bart Voorsanger, an architect hired to save "relics from the rubble," stated about the multi-ton "meteorite" that it was a "fused element of molten steel and concrete."
Mark Loiseaux has denied ever making this statement, which was attributed to him by Christopher Bollyn, a journalist with a long and consistent history of making wildly inaccurate claims. I'm not sure of the validity of Robertson's quote, but even if it were true, how would steel melted in the collapse remain molten for three weeks without an additional heat source? And if such a heat source was present, why could that heat source not have been the cause of any hypothetical melting? The anonymous quote makes no sense unless the molten metal was not steel, as molten steel running down channel rails would melt those rails. O'Toole's comment has the same problem as Robertson's. Voorsanger's comment about the "meteorite" cannot be relied upon; this piece of debris is well-known, and all the steel visible within it has clearly not been melted. There is therefore no evidence of molten steel in the rubble pile, and even if there were, this would not indicate anything other than that temperatures in the burning rubble many days after collapse reached the melting point of steel due to oven effects mentioned above.
The knowledge that this evidence even exists was denied by one of your top engineers, John Gross, in his appearance at the University of Texas in April of this year.
A reasonable position to take. See above.
Steel melts at about 2,850 degrees Fahrenheit, about twice the temperature of the World Trade Center Tower 1 and 2 fires as estimated by NIST. So what melted the steel?
Irrelevant if molten steel was observed weeks after the collapse. A more relevant question is, "What maintained temperatures in the rubble pile above the melting point of steel, and why could this heat source not have been responsible for any hypothetical melting?"
Appendix C of FEMA's BPAT Report (attached to this email) documents steel samples showing rapid oxidation, sulfidation, and intergranular melting. A liquid eutectic mixture, including sulfur from an unknown source, caused intense corrosion of the steel, gaping holes in wide flange beams, and the thinning of half-inch-thick flanges to almost razor-sharpness in the World Trade Center 7 steel. The New York Times called this "the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation."
This paragraph quite obviously contradicts everything said above to the point of absurdity. A half-inch slab thinned to "almost razor sharpness" has quite obviously not melted! Surface tension would have reflowed the surface to a smooth curve. The corrosion of steel post-collapse in the rubble pile has been extensively investigated, and plausible causes proposed which involve processes taking place entirely after the collapse and hence having no conceivable causal connection with the collapse mechanism. The opinion of the New York Times only suggests that the mysteries uncovered really aren't very deep.
NIST left all of this crucial forensic evidence out of its report. Why? Because it didn't fit in with the official conspiracy theory.
Two points here.
(1) This is speculation, and an unwarranted accusation against NIST.
(2) What report? They haven't written one yet.
Last year, physicist Steven Jones, two other physicists, and a geologist analyzed the slag at the ends of the beams and in the samples of the previously molten metal. They found iron, aluminum, sulfur, manganese and fluorine – the chemical evidence of thermate, a high-tech incendiary cutting charge used by the military to cut through steel like a hot knife through butter. The by-product of the thermate reaction is molten iron! There's no other possible source for all the molten iron that was found. One of thermate's key ingredients is sulfur, which can form the liquid eutectic that FEMA found and lower the melting point of steel.
This is the fallacy known as "affirming the consequent". The elements identified are not unique to thermate. Sulfur would be expected from the sheetrock wall cladding of the building. Manganese is a component of the steel used in the beams, as is (surprisingly?) iron. Aluminium and fluorine are fairly common elements. Furthermore, barium, an important component of thermate, has not been found, indicating that Jones's data disproves the use of thermate, rather than proving it.
In addition, World Trade Center 7's catastrophic structural failure showed every characteristic of explosive, controlled demolition. You can see all these characteristics at our website
www.AE911truth.org. The destruction began suddenly at the base of the building. Several first responders reported explosions occurring about a second before the collapse. There was the symmetrical, near-free-fall speed of collapse, through the path of greatest resistance – with 40,000 tons of steel designed to resist this load – straight down into its own footprint. This requires that all the columns have to fail within a fraction of a second of each other – perimeter columns as well as core columns. There was also the appearance of mistimed explosions (squibs?) at the upper seven floors on the network video recordings of the collapse. And we have expert testimony from a European demolitions expert, Danny Jowenko, who said "This is controlled demolition… a team of experts did this… This is professional work, without any doubt."
The failure lacked many of the characteristics of controlled demolition; specifically, the extensive pre-weakening of the structure carried out in advance, the several months of highly intrusive preparation work to obtain access to the steelwork of the structure, the placement of large numbers of charges, detonators and control wires by large teams of technicians, an extremely loud report - typically louder than the sound of the collapse - and large flash immediately prior to the collapse, and the lack of damage to nearby buildings. Two first responders reported explosion-like noises occurring after the collapse of the east mechanical penthouse into the building, which preceded the main collapse by several seconds; these noises would therefore be expected as due to that initial collapse. No explosion-like noises have been reported immediately prior to the penthouse collapse. The speed of collapse has been extensively modelled and found to be within observational errors of the observed collapse time. The collapse was not symmetrical, but involved southward rotation of the entire structure. The path followed by the collapse was generally downwards, in the direction of the driving force, as would be expected. The assertion that all the columns failed simultaneously is in direct contradiction to the evidence; it is known from the prior collapse of the penthouse that core columns 79, 80 and 81 failed some 6 seconds before the main collapse, and from the kink in the main structure during the final collapse that the perimeter columns failed in sequence outwards from an initial failure point, as would be expected in a collapse due to localised structural damage. The so-called "squibs" show none of the appearance of explosive devices. Danny Jowenko's testimony is hotly debated, but it should be pointed out that it is a central tenet of the truth movement that WTC 1 & 2 were demolished using explosives, which Jowenko claims was impossible; the truth movement itself therefore does not accept Jowenko as a credible source.
Fire cannot produce these effects. Fire produces large, gradual deformations and asymmetrical collapses. Thermate can produce all of these effects used in conjunction with linear shaped charges. If the thermate is formed into ultra-fine particles, as has been accomplished at Los Alamos National Laboratory, it is called super-thermate, and is very explosive.
In fact, cases are known in which fire in a steel structure results in a sudden, catastrophic collapse, substantially into the structure's own footprint. There is no evidence, however, that thermate can cause these results, as thermate has never been used in building demolition. Linear shaped charges can of course be used to demolish steel structures, but there is no evidence that any such devices were present in WTC7.
The National Fire Protection Association's NFPA 921 Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations (1998 Edition) dictates in fire investigations that certain residues should be tested for. Thermate would leave behind signs of sulfidation/corrosion by sulfur. Such residues were in fact noted in Appendix C of the FEMA BPAT report (see note 11). "If the physical evidence establishes one factor, such as the presence of an accelerant, that may be sufficient to establish the cause even where other factors such as ignition source cannot be determined." Thermate and sulfur obviously qualify as accelerants in this case (with regard to the destruction of steel which in turn could have caused the near-free-fall-speed collapse). (The fires were not particularly suspicious, but Building 7's collapse was, because of its symmetry and speed.)
This paragraph is deliberately disingenuous in its attempt to mislead. Sulfur is not a fire accelerant in any sense; nor is thermate, which is in fact an incendiary. The presence of sulfur residues would be expected from the existing sulfur content of the building, and so its presence is not evidence on anything unexpected. The argument that evidence should have been sought is not itself evidence. Finally, if the fires "were not particularly suspicious", this would explain why little effort was made to investigate the possibility of arson; the cause of the fires was well known. If, therefore, Gage is trying to suggest unwillingness to investigate on the part of NIST, this accusation is unfounded.
Because NIST seems to have forgotten or neglected to apply key features of the scientific method, I am including as an attachment to this submission Steven E. Jones, "Revisiting 9/11/2001 -- Applying the Scientific Method", Journal of 911 Studies, April 2007, Journal of 9/11 Studies: JonesWTC911SciMethod.pdf.
How much longer must we endure NIST's cover-up of how Building 7 was actually destroyed? Millions of Americans, including the 230+ architects and engineers and 600 others of AE911Truth.org, demand that NIST come clean with a full-throttle, fully resourced and transparent forensic investigation of the evidence of the controlled demolition of Building 7.
And nothing in these two paragraphs is anything other than rhetoric.
Sizzler, thanks for posting this piece in the appropriate thread. It's clear to me, as it should be to any critical thinker, that Gage has nothing to offer but a re-hash of a bunch of Steven Jones's ideas, all of which can be shown to be completely erroneous.
Dave
