Please specify. What has AE911truth accomplished in the last few years? Surely, if you think the NIST's recommended code changes for the IBC are frivolous, your experts should have something to say to the engineering community about it. Have they actually protested these?
The following
recommendations set forth by the NIST report on the WTC collapses represent a few examples of the changes that were adopted by the International Building codes in 2007:
- An additional exit stairway for buildings more than 420 feet in height.
- A minimum of one fire service access elevator for buildings more than 120 feet in height.
- Increased bond strength for fireproofing (nearly three times greater than currently required for buildings 75-420 feet in height and seven times greater for buildings more than 420 feet in height).
- Field installation requirements for fireproofing to ensure that:
- installation complies with the manufacturer's instructions;
- the substrates (surfaces being fireproofed) are clean and free of any condition that prevents adhesion;
- testing is conducted to demonstrate that required adhesion is maintained for primed, painted or encapsulated steel surfaces; and
- the finished condition of the installed fireproofing, upon complete drying or curing, does not exhibit cracks, voids, spalls, delamination or any exposure of the substrate.
- Special field inspections of fireproofing to ensure that its as-installed thickness, density and bond strength meet specified requirements, and that a bonding agent is applied when the bond strength is less than required due to the effect of a primed, painted or encapsulated steel surface. The inspections are to be performed after the rough installation of mechanical, electrical, plumbing, sprinkler and ceiling systems.
- Increasing by one hour the fire-resistance rating of structural components and assemblies in buildings 420 feet and higher. (This change was approved in a prior edition of the code.)
- Explicit adoption of the "structural frame" approach to fire resistance ratings that requires all members of the primary structural frame to have the higher fire resistance rating commonly required for columns. The primary structural frame includes the columns, other structural members including the girders, beams, trusses, and spandrels having direct connections to the columns, and bracing members designed to carry gravity loads.
- Luminous markings delineating the exit path (including vertical exit enclosures and passageways) in buildings more than 75 feet in height to facilitate rapid egress and full building evacuation.
Perhaps with your denial that buildings can collapse due to fire, you can explain what AE911truth has done to address these recommendations - clearly based on supposedly frivolous engineering cover up -and show that the conclusions should not have been accepted by the general architecture and engineering community.
You took the time to describe me as a disgruntled internet surfer when you could've used that time more productively to show us some actual accomplishments that your favorite movement has brought to the table - a resume if you will.
That resume - I must say - is looking unsurprisingly blank... being that you would rather avoid the technical details of the debate. May I ask why you chose to this route;
surely you must have a good reason.