Total Building Collapse from a Single Column Failure

[DGM]

Before 911 was the main concern of architects and engineers the possibility that a huge airplane would crash into the building that they were designing? If not then it was very remiss of them, it happens all the time. Is there such a thing as a quasi-truther and quasi-truther standards?

Maybe.

At some point you need to look at the benefit of naming the person to blame for failures in the past as opposed to changes that benefit for the future. This seems obvious to most.

I'm not sure anyone did anything wrong in the design of the WTC buildings. Some people think there is a need to point fingers.

 

[JSanderO]

Maybe.

At some point you need to look at the benefit of naming the person to blame for failures in the past as opposed to changes that benefit for the future. This seems obvious to most.

I'm not sure anyone did anything wrong in the design of the WTC buildings. Some people think there is a need to point fingers.

Need to point only if there is some responsibility or failures. I think there were.

 

[ozeco41]

OK, I got that. Tell me, where does accountability fit into what was reasonably expected to happen to a structure. These buildings did really well in my opinion. Building 7 lasted far longer than what would be required by code giving everyone time to get out.

What standard do you think these people should be held to?

The whole concept of retrospective legislation going back decades to assign blame is morally repugnant.

It is a topic worthy of discussion but not IMO in this thread. Not even in the 9/11 CT Sub Forum.

 

[JSanderO]

[qimg]http://conleys.com.au/smilies/clap.gif[/qimg] [qimg]http://conleys.com.au/smilies/clap.gif[/qimg]

The buildings were designed to the standards of the day:
1) "x" hours fire resistance to give time for;
2a) All the occupants to escape; AND
2b) Fire fighting efforts to be started.

AND
3) No expectation or allowance for attacks with aircraft, mini-nukes or laser beams from space.

AND
All three passed the test. WTC 7 met its design goals. The failings with the "Twins" were in lack of redundancy of:
a) The egress - escape provisions; AND
b) Fire fighting.
Both of those after the design parameters had been grossly exceeded. And the engineering survived - the architecture failed if we want to play those games - but I'm not about blame.

However the basis of the criticism of the engineering is that "the building failed at its weakest points" - and Sander arguing that NIST got the choice of "weakest point" wrong. Wow!!! Where else but the weakest point will a building start to fail?

And so what if NIST got it wrong? In structural cascade failures it is rare that we will know the exact weakest point or first point to fail. What matters to engineers designing future buildings is that it was a cascade. Their challenge is to build some level of cascade ("progression") resistance into their future buildings.

7wtc lasted longer than the fire rating...neither of the twins did
Occupants began evacuating immediately when the AA11 hit iWTC causing explosions in 7WTC Con Ed power station. There were no fires when they evacuated but they were told to get out because of a terrorist attack with the con ed explosions as evidence (mistaken)
Thousands of people were unable to get out the the twin towers
There was no fire fighting at all aside the FDNY setting up a command station and dispatching FFs to investigate the issue in evacuation.

Only 7 passed any level of performance under stress

It has no water, no electricity and there was no ability to to fight fires

Great success!

 

[ozeco41]

Maybe.

...I think it was a tongue in cheek comment.

At some point you need to look at the benefit of naming the person to blame for failures in the past as opposed to changes that benefit for the future. This seems obvious to most.

Spot on.

I'm not sure anyone did anything wrong in the design of the WTC buildings. Some people think there is a need to point fingers.

True. And the finger pointing is both legally and ethically obnoxious unless there is a sound reason in both fields.

 

[DGM]

Need to point only if there is some responsibility or failures. I think there were.

Time to step up. Remember though. These people did not have the benefit of the knowledge we know today.

Care to continue?

 

[JSanderO]

[qimg]http://conleys.com.au/smilies/clap.gif[/qimg]

The whole concept of retrospective legislation going back decades to assign blame is morally repugnant.

It is a topic worthy of discussion but not IMO in this thread. Not even in the 9/11 CT Sub Forum.

excuse me? There are crimes which have no statute of limitations. it is not morally repugnant to find a murderer and bring him to justice. Why shouldn't any other sort of criminal act or professional incompetence not have the same standard or justice?

Let's not jump the gun here. It hasn't even been established...not even examined as far as I can tell, if the engineering / design and planning decisions were a significant factor in the collapse... not the only one... maybe not the key one.

And even if it could be shown that very wrongheaded decisions driven by economy (read greed) were in play I don't know that this is criminal. You're putting the cart before the horse and declaring there's no there there and why bother.

I've raised the example of the Pinto gas tank. Pintos were fine cars unless rear ended... and then they were deathtraps. Ford argued that bad drivers killed the occupants. The product liability action determined that Ford had some level of culpability and after the fact... many years because law suits can take decades to reach a decision.

Perkin Elmer built the lens for the Hubble Telescope and ground it to the wrong radius. Probably lots of engineers were involved in that one. We paid for it and paid for it to be repaired and people risked their lives too. No one should be held accountable? Should they be paid? Be sued? Return the contract sum? With penalty?

What about the engineers who pulled a boner with the Challenger and 7(?) people died and multiple 10s of millions of tax payers' dollars lost? No accountability? No one gets the pay docked? or loses their job? No engineer's liability insurance pays back the tax payers?

Ozzie, you seem too willing to not hold people accountable who let 9/11 turn out as tragically as it did... and there were lots of them who were well paid and did a lousy job.

 

[DGM]

True. And the finger pointing is both legally and ethically obnoxious unless there is a sound reason in both fields.

You also need to show that these people knew the possibility of the conditions that would cause failure was higher than what would be considered reasonable.

The bar he is setting is easy to reach if you already know the outcome. (I think this is a hindsight thing).

 

[JSanderO]

Time to step up. Remember though. These people did not have the benefit of the knowledge we know today.

Care to continue?

Roberston knew his design folded like a cheap table. He's dodging everyone on that and you can see it in his face. He feels very guilty... as well he should.
Cantor said his trusses collapsed... Of course NIST knew better. of course Cantor absolved himself of responsibility because he said the trusses succumbed to diesel which was a retrofit after the building was finished and another engineering firm was involved in the retrofits.
NIST tells us that a 250,000 ton building collapsed and they were able to recover something like 20-30,000 gallons of diesel... You believe that? How was that accomplished?
You don't have reports of fires because the WTC was pretty much empty of people after 1 WTC collapsed aside from firefighters attending to building 4, 5 and 6 which were burning like crazy. 7WTC has no water, no water main, no sprinklers... No means to fight fires... So they didn't. They assumed it would yield and it did... after 7 hrs.
ASCE suspected the connections failed were key in the collapse... NIST? ignored this completely.

Interesting stuff.

 

[ozeco41]

excuse me?

excuse you for what? You are well aware that on previous occasions I have rebutted the nonsense you have now posted.

As I said this is not the thread for discussing the legal or ethical issues. But I prefer to not walk away from such a poorly reasoned challenge. Your first example will do:

There are crimes which have no statute of limitations.

True. What crime are you referring to Sander? What statute? What jurisdiction? The real legal issue is that there is no crime defined in statute. YOU want to make it a crime. And YOU want it to be retrospective. AND I have already covered those aspects in my posts which you choose to ignore. Why don't you explain why the law should be changed so that people who committed no crime should, decades after the event, be criminally sanctioned for your newly invented crime?

it is not morally repugnant to find a murderer and bring him to justice.

Or her but irrelevant. We are not discussing murder as defined in any relevant statute.

Why shouldn't any other sort of criminal act or professional incompetence not have the same standard or justice?

They should. They do. The former in criminal jurisdiction the latter in civil. The issue here is not equality under the law. We all are. The problem is your offensive wish to change the law to make past legal acts illegal. That is your wish. That wish is offensive unless - as I have said many times - YOU can present sound reasons to overcome the obnoxious legal and ethical aspects of what you propose.

The remainder of your post is equally ill conceived and I wont bore members by responding. Unless someone wants more details of the legal aspects.

As I said earlier - if you want to push the suggestion for retrospective legislation imposing criminality on past actions - be my guest. Try it in an ethics sub forum. The opposition will be far stronger than here.

Ozzie, you seem too willing to not hold people accountable who let 9/11 turn out as tragically as it did... and there were lots of them who were well paid and did a lousy job.

You are the one assigning accountability - not me. Stop trying to blame me for your failings.

 

[ozeco41]

You also need to show that these people knew the possibility of the conditions that would cause failure was higher than what would be considered reasonable.

The bar he is setting is easy to reach if you already know the outcome. (I think this is a hindsight thing).

Sure. That is one of about 6 or 8 fundamental failures.

I've walked Sander though the realities both legal and engineering on at least one other forum. Most people here are not interested so I wont bore members with detailed rebuttals or explanations. Legal stuff can get even longer to explain than rigorously rebutting engineering or physics nonsense.

 

[dafydd]

Interesting stuff.

No. Watching paint drying is much more interesting.

 

[DGM]

Interesting stuff.

Only if you want to point fingers after knowing the outcome.

Do you think any one of those buildings would not be here today if not for the extraordinary events of that day? Do you think they should have anticipated these events? Don't forget the events that actually lead to the demise of building 7 (I'll remind you if you forget).

 

[DGM]

ASCE suspected the connections failed were key in the collapse... NIST? ignored this completely.

No, they did not. Maybe you need to read the reports without looking for someone to blame.

This is not the first time you got it wrong when they reported something and you said they didn't. Did you actually read the report (and understand it)?

 

[dafydd]

Ozzie, you seem too willing to not hold people accountable who let 9/11 turn out as tragically as it did... and there were lots of them who were well paid and did a lousy job.

Let it turn out? What on Earth are you talking about? Nobody let it happen. Only Twoofers believe that.

 

[dafydd]

Only if you want to point fingers after knowing the outcome.

Do you think any one of those buildings would not be here today if not for the extraordinary events of that day? Do you think they should have anticipated these events? Don't forget the events that actually lead to the demise of building 7 (I'll remind you if you forget).

I have a solution to the problem. From now on only clairvoyant architects and engineers should be allowed to design buildings.

 

[DGM]

I have a solution to the problem. From now on only clairvoyant architects and engineers should be allowed to design buildings.

Or only allow people with outrageously deep pockets to ask for them.

That's the thing. Any engineer can design an indestructible building, problem is, no one could afford to build it.

 

[dafydd]

Or only allow people with outrageously deep pockets to ask for them.

That's the thing. Any engineer can design an indestructible building, problem is, no one could afford to build it.

He claims that he is an architect. I wonder if any of his buildings are jumbo jet crash-proof.

 

[ozeco41]

...Any engineer can design an indestructible building, problem is, no one could afford to build it.

Jokes aside that is one of the key reasons to engage engineers. Make things that are affordable.

Then remember the (alleged) test protocol for road bridges built in the era of the Roman Empire.

..stand the engineer under the finished bridge then march your heaviest loads across the bridge.

 

[JSanderO]

excuse you for what? You are well aware that on previous occasions I have rebutted the nonsense you have now posted.

As I said this is not the thread for discussing the legal or ethical issues. But I prefer to not walk away from such a poorly reasoned challenge. Your first example will do:

True. What crime are you referring to Sander? What statute? What jurisdiction? The real legal issue is that there is no crime defined in statute. YOU want to make it a crime. And YOU want it to be retrospective. AND I have already covered those aspects in my posts which you choose to ignore. Why don't you explain why the law should be changed so that people who committed no crime should, decades after the event, be criminally sanctioned for your newly invented crime?
Or her but irrelevant. We are not discussing murder as defined in any relevant statute. They should. They do. The former in criminal jurisdiction the latter in civil. The issue here is not equality under the law. We all are. The problem is your offensive wish to change the law to make past legal acts illegal. That is your wish. That wish is offensive unless - as I have said many times - YOU can present sound reasons to overcome the obnoxious legal and ethical aspects of what you propose.

The remainder of your post is equally ill conceived and I wont bore members by responding. Unless someone wants more details of the legal aspects.

As I said earlier - if you want to push the suggestion for retrospective legislation imposing criminality on past actions - be my guest. Try it in an ethics sub forum. The opposition will be far stronger than here.

The OP was about understand single column failures leading to total building collapses. Where has this been explained? A simple summary would suffice and no I am not going to read the NIST report again.

The fact is that engineering design/decisions are always factors when structural systems fail. These building were no run of the mill designs either.

Why is this topic being shunned like the plague?

You are the one assigning accountability - not me. Stop trying to blame me for your failings.

Wrong.

It's only nonsense to those who may not have the sense to see the relevance. I cited examples of industrial engineering failures... Do you deny these happened?

I am not seeking to turn anything done in the past into a unlawful act after the fact. I never mentioned any violation or criminal or civil code. I don't think there was intent to do harm. Incompetence and misconduct may not involve intent. In fact the engineers who screw up, always think they are doing a stellar job!

I don't even want to get into the legal arena. I am seeking the proper explanation for the collapses which I don't think NIST got right and assign the appropriate share of the cause to the engineering, planning and approval decisions. Some here claim these designs performed better than could expected. I find that a stretch.