Reporter John Bussey watches the collapse from the Wall Street Journal's offices across the street from the WTC. He say s,''I heard
metalic crashes and looked up out of the office window to see what seemed like perfectly synchronized explosions coming from each floor, spewing glass and metal outward. One after the other, from top to bottom, with a fraction of a second between, the floors blew to pieces'' [Wall Street Journal, 9/12/2001]
Complete quote:
http://www.pulitzer.org/archives/6536
Deputy Fire Commissioner Thomas Fitzpatrick:''I remember seeing, it looked like sparkling around one specific layer of the building.
I assume now that that was either windows starting to collapse like tinsel or something. Then the building started to come down. My initial reaction was that this was exactly the way it looks when they show you those implosions on TV'' [City of New York, 10/1/2001]
Complete quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/Fitzpatrick_Tom.txt
Assistant Fire Commissioner Stephen Gregory: '' saw low-level flashes. In my conversation with Lieutenant Evangelista, In my conversation with Lieutenant Evangelista,
never mentioning this to him he questioned me and asked me if I saw low-level flashes in front of the building, and I agreed with him
because I thought -- at that time I didn't know what it was. I mean, it could have been as a result of the building collapsing, things exploding, but I saw a flash flash flash and then it looked like the building came down.… You know like when they demolish a building, how when they blow up a building, when it falls down? That’s what I thought I saw'' [City of New York, 10/3/2001]
Complete quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/Gregory_Stephen.txt
Also in the same transcript by the same person:
"I don't know if that means anything. I mean, I equate it to the building cowing down and pushing things down, it could have been electrical explosions, it could have been whatever."
Firefighter Richard Banaciski:''It seemed like on television they blow up these buildings. It seemed like it was going all the way around like a belt, all these explosions'' [City of New York, 12/6/2001]
Firefighter Joseph Meola:''As we are looking up at the building, what I saw was, it looked like the building was blowing out on all four sides. We actually heard the pops.
Didn't realize it was the falling -- you know, you heard the pops of the building.You thought it was just blowing out'' [City of New York, 12/11/2001]
Full Quote:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110287.PDF
Fire Chief Frank Cruthers:''[T]here was what appeared to be at first an explosion. It appeared at the very top, simultaneously from all four sides, materials shot out horizontally. And then there seemed to be a momentary delay before you could see the beginning of the collapse'' [City of New York, 10/31/2001]
Source:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110179.PDF
Battalion Chief Brian Dixon:''I was watching the fire
, watching the people jump and hearing a noise and looking up and seeing -- it actually looked -- the lowest floor of fire in the South Tower actually looked like someone had planted explosives around it because the whole bottom I could see—I could see two sides of it and the other side—it just looked like that floor blew out.
I looked up and you could actually see everything blew out on the one floor I thought, geez, this looks like an explosion up there, it blew out.
Then I guess in some sense of time we looked at it and realized, no, actually it just collapsed. That's what blew out the windows, not that there was an explosion there but that windows blew out.'' [City of New York, 10/25/2001]
Full paragraph:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110166.PDF
Firefighter Timothy Burke:''Then the building popped, lower than the fire
which I learned was I guess, the aviation fuel fell into the pit, and whatever floor it fell on heated up really bad and that's why it popped at that floor. That's the rumor I heard. But it seemed like I was going oh, my god, there is secondary device because the way the building popped I thought it was an explosion'' [City of New York, 1/22/2002]
Full Quote:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110488.PDF
Firefighter Edward Cachia:''It actually gave at a lower floor, not the floor where the plane hit, because we originally had thought there was like an internal detonation explosives because it went in succession, boom, boom, boom, boom, and then the tower came down'' [City of New York, 12/6/2001]
Firefighter Kenneth Rogers:''[T]here was an explosion in the South Tower… I kept watching. Floor after floor after floor. One floor under another after another and when it hit about the fifth floor, I figured it was a bomb, because it looked like a synchronized deliberate kind of thing'' [City of New York, 12/10/2001]
Reporter Beth Fertig:''The tower went down perfectly straight, as if a demolition crew had imploded it. I wondered if it was being brought down deliberately'' [Gilbert et al., 2002, pp. 78]
