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Myriad said:
I have one. But it's a difficult one, in two different ways.

How would the events of 9/11 have played out if none of the buildings had globally collapsed? All other facts of the events being the same.*

I'm asking for a full scenario for the firefighting and rescue effort. Timeline, personnel involved, probabilities of successful rescues of people on upper floors, probable firefighter casualties, aftermath.

I've tried this myself, so I'll warn you, besides being a technically complex question, it also might be stressful to think about. I'd be honored to hear your assessment in detail, and completely understanding if you choose to answer briefly or not at all.

Respectfully,
Myriad

*I realize that there's a logical contradiction here, because constructed as the buildings were, with the plane crashes and fires as they occurred, and the laws of physics being what they are, the collapses were inevitable. But let's just say, for the alternative scenario, that the buildings were magically collapse-proof.
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Profanz said:
Maybe this is a derail, but I've always pondered a similar question. Would they have tried to repair the towers? If not, then how would they have been dismantled and removed?
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In a clearly hypothetical sense, including the already present damage from the aircraft;


The manpower needed to extinguish and evacuate both towers would have been in thousands, that right there would have put a huge strain on the department. Climbing 70+ flights of stairs in full bunker gear and carrying equipment, these guys would have been exhausted. You would need to rotate guys in and out continuously just to make sure nobody suffers any medical issues.

I believe the number of firefighter fatalities would have been a lot lower than what it is now, but injuries would have been high due to the nature of the fire and heat/fatigue related illnesses.

The time line for rescuing people on the upper floors and extinguishing the fires would have been delayed significantly. Its hard to say exactly how long it would have taken firefighters to eventually get the fire under control. There is no way in telling if the water tanks or even the pumps required to get the water to where it needs to be would have been intact. Suppression would have almost been futile.

As for the rescue, the damaged stairwells and fires would be an obvious obstacle, making it hard to reach those trapped in the upper floors. However, the FDNY did have helicopter rescue plans on paper after the '93 bombing that could have been initiated eventually, placing rescue crews on the roof and working their way down.

I highly doubt if they were able to extinguish the fires that the buildings would have been rebuilt. Unable to know the cost of how much it would be to repair the towers, I think it would have been more cost effective to dismantle them.
 
bill smith said:
The Port Authority wanted to demolish the Twin Towers anyway. The EPA had already told them that the buildings had to be upraded and brought into line with EPA regulations by 2007.
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Got some proof of that? Only sites I have ever seen that claim that are idiot boy Avery's site or some nest of jack-booted lunatics.
 
bill smith said:
The Port Authority wanted to demolish the Twin Towers anyway. The EPA had already told them that the buildings had to be upraded and brought into line with EPA regulations by 2007. Otherwise they were required to demolish the buildings. This involved manual dismemberment of the buildings from the top down because any other way would have released masses of asbestos and other contaminents into the air.

So they got a quote- a cool 15 BILLION dollars.

But luckily 9/11 came along and took care of all that. Big relief eh ?
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I would love to know why someone who DIDN'T OWN the buildings, would want them DESTROYED.

PS, I would love to see a source of this claim.
 
NYCEMT86 said:
In a clearly hypothetical sense, including the already present damage from the aircraft;


The manpower needed to extinguish and evacuate both towers would have been in thousands, that right there would have put a huge strain on the department. Climbing 70+ flights of stairs in full bunker gear and carrying equipment, these guys would have been exhausted. You would need to rotate guys in and out continuously just to make sure nobody suffers any medical issues.

I believe the number of firefighter fatalities would have been a lot lower than what it is now, but injuries would have been high due to the nature of the fire and heat/fatigue related illnesses.

The time line for rescuing people on the upper floors and extinguishing the fires would have been delayed significantly. Its hard to say exactly how long it would have taken firefighters to eventually get the fire under control. There is no way in telling if the water tanks or even the pumps required to get the water to where it needs to be would have been intact. Suppression would have almost been futile.

As for the rescue, the damaged stairwells and fires would be an obvious obstacle, making it hard to reach those trapped in the upper floors. However, the FDNY did have helicopter rescue plans on paper after the '93 bombing that could have been initiated eventually, placing rescue crews on the roof and working their way down.

I highly doubt if they were able to extinguish the fires that the buildings would have been rebuilt. Unable to know the cost of how much it would be to repair the towers, I think it would have been more cost effective to dismantle them.
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Don't you remember that Chief Palmer got to the impact floor #78 in WTC2 ? . Remember when he radiod back, panting from the effort of climbing to the 78th. '' There are only a few isolated pockets of fire '' he said...'' we can knock them down with two lines ''

It sounds like the short lived jet fuel fires had already gone out by the time he got there as you would expect. (Jet fuel burns off very quickly as we all know especially when it has been atomised).

So the question is when he said 'Two Lines ' did he mean just two hoses ?
 
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NYCEMT86 said:
In a clearly hypothetical sense, including the already present damage from the aircraft;


The manpower needed to extinguish and evacuate both towers would have been in thousands, that right there would have put a huge strain on the department. Climbing 70+ flights of stairs in full bunker gear and carrying equipment, these guys would have been exhausted. You would need to rotate guys in and out continuously just to make sure nobody suffers any medical issues.

I believe the number of firefighter fatalities would have been a lot lower than what it is now, but injuries would have been high due to the nature of the fire and heat/fatigue related illnesses.

The time line for rescuing people on the upper floors and extinguishing the fires would have been delayed significantly. Its hard to say exactly how long it would have taken firefighters to eventually get the fire under control. There is no way in telling if the water tanks or even the pumps required to get the water to where it needs to be would have been intact. Suppression would have almost been futile.

As for the rescue, the damaged stairwells and fires would be an obvious obstacle, making it hard to reach those trapped in the upper floors. However, the FDNY did have helicopter rescue plans on paper after the '93 bombing that could have been initiated eventually, placing rescue crews on the roof and working their way down.

I highly doubt if they were able to extinguish the fires that the buildings would have been rebuilt. Unable to know the cost of how much it would be to repair the towers, I think it would have been more cost effective to dismantle them.
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To expand on this a little more.

Not to mention the added logistics keeping our firefighters hydrated, and also supplied with Oxygen bottles. The SCOTT packs that were used either had a 30 minutes bottle, or a 45 minute bottle.

Now, this is normal breathing. Even an average 30 minute bottle sometimes will only last 15-20 minutes. Especially in a high stress, breathing heavy situation like that.

Now, the other problem is water. Yes, you could get water to the floors below the impact point, but what do you do after that. Sure, you could, in theory, stretch more hose up the stairwells, but then you run into the problem of pressure and flow rates. It would most likely be like trying to fight a blaze witha garden hose. You could in theory put portable pumps with a water basin on the roof, and in the lower floors to act as a relay point, with additional pumps, but, the logistics, again, make it VERY difficult to implement.

I think firefighter injuries would be very high. Maybe not in the area of what we had, but certainly high. Not to mention the strain on the department.

We would have had to have firefighters from all over the NY, NJ, and surrounding towns and cities sending their firefighters over.
 
triforcharity said:
I would love to know why someone who DIDN'T OWN the buildings, would want them DESTROYED.

PS, I would love to see a source of this claim.
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Why not ask Lefty Sarge to post the evidence he says he has ? Just for some orientation ?
 
I don't have any 9/11 related fire questions, but I'm grilling steaks in couple of hours for my parents, while my sister in is town. What is the optimal temperature to assure deliciousness? :)
 
Before I go into the refutation of the myth, let me share a lesson: We shouldn't clear our ignore lists. People go onto them for reasons, one of which is repeated ignorant arguments. This is one:

bill smith said:
In the case of WTC7 the fires initially were sparse, small and widely seperated. No evidence shows otherwise- in fact the existing evidence all confirms the small sparse fires.
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This is the exact opposite of the truth. All the evidence in fact indicates the size of the fires was not merely substantial, but tremendously large. NCSTAR 1-5 and all those subreports is a reconstruction of the fires in the towers, and not a single shred of evidence indicates what bill smith here is trying to peddle. He's stating fantasy for fact, and the lie is easily refutable by examining the evidence.

WTC 1 fires
Examine the visual evidence presented in NCSTAR 1-5. After impact, the first fires were noted on the 97th floor; within 10 minutes of the impact, they were visible on the east face of the North tower, and covered floors 96 and 97. A mere 6 minutes after that, the fire on the 97th floor was observable on the west face of the tower (so on that level, within 16 minutes, the fire had already traversed from the east to the west side of a one acre floor).

Within that same amount of time, the fires also progressed vertically; on the east face, by 9:03am (16 minutes after the impact), fires were noted on the 94th floor, three floors below the first noted fire. Read NCSTAR 1-5A for more detail on how far in the fires were, but as a mental limiting case, presume that the fires were only covering what was seen from the outside of the towers and whatever minimal amount of interior floor was necessary to present the fire to the external face. Within 16 minutes, you had a fire that had spread from the east to the west face of a single floor, and had traversed 3 floors. No, the whole floors weren't on fire at once, but again, even if you presume a minimal amount of floor necessary to show flames on the outside, that's still a lot of fire. And this was only within the first few minutes of the fire.

From the NIST report:
Just before 8:57 a.m., flames appeared from windows on the 97th floor located just to the south of the internal wall of the room in the northeast corner of this floor. This fire appeared to spread and grow rapidly, covering more than a quarter of the length of the floor by 9:03 a.m. By this time, several small fires were also visible on the northern sides of the 92nd, 93rd, and 95th floors and had just appeared on the 96th floor. Near the end of the period, numerous people were observed falling from the 92nd and 93rd floors over a short period of time, which may have been an indications that conditions on the east sides of these floors were becoming untenable at this time.
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This passage demonstrates that the fire was growing fast. The visual observations of both the fires as seen from the outside, plus the actions of the poor victims trapped on those floors, indicate the severity of those fires, and the timeline indicates just how fast they were propogating.

Refer to figure E-4 in NCSTAR 1-5A. Note floor 97. By 9:03am, fires on that floor were noted on all four sides of the tower. The obvious implication is that the entire floor was on fire by this point, but again, as a limiting case, imagine that only a few feet in were on fire and the center of floor 97 wasn't (this is obviously an impossible scenario, given that the flames traveresed the floor outward from the initial impact point, but again, this is for the sake of argument). That's still a big fire. And that's only a single floor. And it's only 16 minutes into the event on one of the two towers.

From visual evidence alone, I have already demonstrated that a single one of the fires in WTC 1 was, within 16 minutes, very large, potentially up to an acre wide and a floor high.

Now, examine figure E-5 from NCSTAR 1-5A: By 9:16am, the 96th floor's fires were seen on all 4 sides of the tower. Now, there are two consecutive floors that from the exterior visual evidence alone could be argued to have traversed nearly the entirety of an acre wide floor. And we're currently within a half hour of the initial impact.

We're not even to the collapse point yet, I've only discussed part of the engulfed regions in WTC 1, and we can see that from what was noted by 9:16am on just two of the involved floors, the fires were already quite large. WTC 1 did not collapse until 10:28am; there's still over an hour of combustion and propogation to go.

For further detail on the North Tower fires, refer to NCSTAR 1-5 and it's subreports. I've already conclusively shown that the initial fires - fires within 30 minutes of the first impact - were substantial. Not sparse, or widely separated. If you want an idea of just how bad those fires got, refer to Figure 2-4 in NCSTAR 1-5 (the main .pdf of 1-5): That figure shows that by 10:28, fires were noted from floors 94 to 98 on all four faces of the tower.

WTC 2 fires

I'll keep this section shorter. Refer to Figure 2-12 in NCSTAR 1-5. FL175 struck WTC 2 at 9:02:59am (basically, 9:03am). By 9:58am, fires were noted from floors 79 to 83 on the north, east, and south faces of the tower. Keep in mind that at 9:04 - a mere minute after the impact - the fires were only seen from the outside on floors 80 to 83, and only significantly manifested themselves on the north and east faces. So within an hour, the fire progressed from 2 floors manifesting on only two faces to 5 floors visible on 3 faces of the towers.

Summary

Quite simply put, from observations of the fires from the outside alone, we can see that the fires were in fact quite large, not sparse at all, nor were they widely separated. Not even from the beginning, immediately after the impacts.

_________________________________

Now, as a counter, who wants to bet that our truther here will bring up the Chief Palmer quote of "isolated pockets"? After all, he's done so in the past:
bill smith said:
I can't help seeing Chief Palmer in my mind's eye standing there on the 78th floor beathing hard from the long hard slog up the stairs and frantically reporting to control ' There are only a few isolated pockets of fire,we can knock them down with two lines' Then some perp pushes the button and blows him and the building away.
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Somehow, that is supposed to buttress the claim that the fires were sparse and well separated. Regardless of the evidence I noted above. Let's consider this statement for perhaps the hundredth time since 2006:

Those "isolated pockets" were not small. On the contrary, they were quite large fires, yet they were still among the smallest ones in the towers. First of all, consider the amount of firefighting resources dedicated to those pockets:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3065416
NYCEMT86 said:
As most you know that the bulk of the fire was above the 78th floor and I won't get into much detail about that, Rather I am going to get into the stand pipe operations and why only two hand lines would have been needed to knock down the fire the 78th floor.


Most conspiracy theorists think two lines sounds like a small amount and therefore the fire was small right? Well not necessarily, two 2 1/2 inch hoses with 1 1/8th inch smooth bore nozzles can deliver more water at greater pressure than compared to the 1 1/2 inch unlined hoses that would have been stored on site, which anybody in the fire services knows, is usually crap since they don't meet the same requirements as hoses used by the fire department. As basic SOP during a high rise, they would have opened the gravity tanks located above them and turned on the fire pumps (which most likely would have been automatic) in addition to hooking two engines into an exterior outlet to add more pressure in the pipe, 650 psi to be exact. The nozzle pressure would have been reduced to 80-70 psi either by a PRD (Pressure Regulating Device) or at the stand pipe valve. Also the second line would have been hooked up at least two floors below the first line as not to interfere with residual pressure. So what does this all mean? Well if the stand pipe systems were still intact and operational they would have been able to deliver over 338 GPM (Gallons per minute)

GPM = (29.7)(d)^2(NP)

GPM = Gallons Per Minute
29.7 = Constant
d = Diameter in inches
NP = Nozzle Pressure

(29.7)(1.125)^2(80)(Use 81 for Square Root Purposes)
(29.7)(1.265)(9)
(37.5705, Rounded down to 37.57)(9)

GPM = 338


and at a weight of 8.33 pounds per gallon you are talking about over a ton of water with just one line alone. Now if you double that you are looking at over 2.5 tons of water.
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Next, note that Palmer was referring to the 78th floor of the South Tower. Compare his location to the impact and damage map:
123864b6599269f879.jpg


Here's my point: The 77th floor was the lowest floor in that tower that suffered impact damage, and the 78th was the lowest floor to get any jet fuel from that initial impact. On top of that, the largest fires were noted to be on the 80th floor and above; the 78th floor was the most minor fire location. Yet, to that, Palmer recommended two hand lines and all the suppression capacity that entails.

And last, as Gumboot posted:
gumboot said:
It's worth pointing out that when Palmer made this radio call he was still in the stairwell and therefore could not have seen the entire floor.



-Gumboot
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The "isolated pockets" were large, demanded two entire lines of capacity to fight, and were only the first noted on that floor, the lowest floor of the fire zone. And yet, that is supposed to indicate that all the fires in both towers were "sparse, small and widely seperated"? Even just "initially"? The evidence given above contradicts this notion.

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As you can see, the evidence very clearly shows that the fires were anything but sparse, small, or any other term you can come up with to suggest that they were minor. On the contrary, as you can see from the evidence above, they were quite large, and had grown quite fast; again, in the case of the North Tower, within 6 minutes one floor's fire had progressed to the point where flames were noted on opposite sides of the tower. You can also see here that bill smith merely asserts that they were "sparse, small and widely seperated", and does not provide any evidence that this is so. And in fact, his assertion is in direct contradiction to the evidence that exists. And that is the sad norm for conspiracy peddlers. Bill smith does not provide evidence. And what claims he makes he does so in direct contradiction to what is well known and established. This is one example that illustrates the basic dishonesty of conspiracy peddlers, and is in fact representative of how they present their claims regarding 9/11. This is why they are wrong.

And this is why with just a single post, he's earned a trip back to the ignore list. If you note the quotes I pull from previous threads, this issue was explained years ago. He doesn't even bother to note that his arguments are old and were well refuted before he even made his first appearance here. That is not the behavior of an honest historical researcher. That is the behavior of a scam artist. Honest researchers do not make claims in contradiction to available evidence; scam artists ignore evidence and simply make assertions. This, folks, is 9/11 "Truth" for you.
 
Now before you go...make with the early photos of the fires. The only ones you can show are of few small and seperated fires. No photos- no real fires.

See ?- less is more. lol
 
triforcharity said:
Proof? Citation?? EVIDENCE??

Or are you pulling things out of your posterior to try to get a reaction??
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While these may not all be firemen they obviously all attended the 'fully involved' briefings as you can see or obvious reasons. lol

"The building was fully involved in fire." – Photographer Steve Spak

"I had a clear view down Washington Street of Building Seven, which was on the north edge of the site. All forty-seven stories were on fire. It was wild" - Ground Zero Superintendant Charlie Vitchers

"We walked over by number Seven World Trade Center as it was burning and saw this 40-plus story building with fire on nearly all floors"
–FDNY Lieutenant Robert LaRocca

"Just when you thought it was over, you're walking by this building and you're hearing this building creak and fully involved in flames. It's like, is it coming down next? Sure enough, about a half an hour later it came down" –FDNY Lieutenant James McGlynn

"I walked out and I got to Vesey and West, where I reported to Frank [Cruthers]. He said, we’re moving the command post over this way, that building’s coming down. At this point, the fire was going virtually on every floor, heavy fire and smoke" - FDNY Deputy Chief Nick Visconti

"When the building came down it was completely involved in fire, all forty-seven stories"
–FDNY Assistant Chief Harry Myers

"Then we had to move because the Duane Reade, they said, wasn't safe because building 7 was really roaring and fully involved " –FDNY Chief Medical Officer Kerry Kelly

"The flames were coming out of every window of 7 It was fully engulfed, that whole building. There were pieces of tower two in building Seven and the corners of the building missing and what-not. But just looking up at it from ground level however many stories -- it was 40 some odd -- you could see the flames going straight through from one side of the building to the other, that’s an entire block".–Firefighter Tiernach Cassidy

"7 was fully involved at this time. This was a fully involved building. I said, all right, they're not coming for us for a while. Now you're trapped in this rubble, and you're trying to get a grasp of an idea of what's going on there. I heard on the handy talky that we are now fighting a 40-story building fully involved" - Firefighter Eugene Kelty Jr.

"The whole south side of Seven World Trade had been hit by the collapse of the second Tower, and there was fire on every floor." – Fire Captain Brenda Berkman

"When I got out and onto a clear pile, I see that 7 World Trade Center and the customs house have serious fire. Almost every window of 7 has fire. It is an amazing site" –Captain Jay Jonas, Ladder 6.

"The other building,#7, was fully involved, and he was worried about the next collapse." FDNY Firefighter TJ Mundy

"7 World Trade was burning from the ground to the ceiling fully involved. It was unbelievable."–FDNY Firefighter Steve Modica

"So I attempted to get in through the Barkley Street ramp which is on Barkley (sic) and West Broadway, but I was being held back by the fire department, because 7 World Trade, which is above the ramp, was now fully engulfed" -–PAPD K-9 Sergeant David Lim
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We walked over by number Seven World Trade Center as it was burning and saw this 40-plus story building with fire on nearly all floors. –FDNY Lieutenant Robert Larocco

I walked out and I got to Vesey and West, where I reported to Frank [Cruthers]. He said, we’re moving the command post over this way, that building’s coming down. At this point, the fire was going virtually on every floor, heavy fire and smoke that really wasn’t bothering us when we were searching because it was being pushed southeast and we were a little bit west of that. I remember standing just where West and Vesey start to rise toward the entrance we were using in the World Financial Center. There were a couple of guys standing with me and a couple of guys right at the intersection, and we were trying to back them up – and here goes 7. It started to come down and now people were starting to run. –FDNY Deputy Chief Nick Visconti

When the building came down it was completely involved in fire, all forty-seven stories.
–FDNY Assistant Chief Harry Myers
 
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