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Merged Fireballs and Backdraft in WTC1 Basement and Lobby

16.5 said:
"6. And what about Jenny Carr's audio record of the day? Can you explain that loud sound just prior to the apparent impact of the plane?"

Cripes, you mention this all the time, but would it kill you to actually you know, give us a link to it?
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I don't believe it exists. :D

It's rather like the McGuffin in "Pulp Fiction"; Because you never see it, it could be ANYTHING.
 
DGM said:
Swing;
How do you explain the lack of blast injures to the victims. That seems to be a pesky inconsistency to explosives.
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He can't explain it. So he pretends he didn't hear the question.
 
SwingDangler said:
6. And what about Jenny Carr's audio record of the day? Can you explain that loud sound just prior to the apparent impact of the plane?
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No, that first sound is the impact of the plane. There is a jet-engine sound a couple of seconds prior to it. The second sound you referred to occurred some 9 seconds later.

gumboot said:
Judging by most of the other Truther "explosion" evidence, I'd guess it's probably fake.
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Well, the original audio I believe is genuine....it was provided by Ginny Carr with her own introduction and description as part of the Sonic Memorial Project, and it was added to the 911 Digital Archive back in 2002 -- prior to proliteration of 9/11 CTs and Mr. Rodriguez's involvement in the 9/11 truth group. Unfortunately, the website seems to now be defunct.

I believe the audio used by Dylan Avery in LC (2nd ed.) has been manipulated, however. The audio of the second noise has been amplified to be just as loud as the first one, when it originally was quieter relative to it, whereas both sounds were amplified vis-a-vis the voices in the room. The first louder sound preceded by the engine noise would correspond to the crash. It is hard to tell what the second sound 9 seconds later may be or what caused it...the sound is not on the Naudet video (at least the version of the footage edited for the "9/11" film), and thus probably not loud enough to register at the distance Jules Naudet was at, and could well have been something more local to One Liberty or the WTC complex. If there were backdrafts, is it in the realm of possibility that they occurred 9 seconds after the crash?
 
Swing Dangler said:
1. Simply trace the route and the amount of the jet fuel, in liquid or fireball form from the initial impact to the basement areas and still account for the survivors located within the elevators.
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Once again Swing Dangler, elevator shaft number 6, 7 and 50 went through the impact zone. Shaft number 6 and 7 ended at B-4 while shaft number 50 ended at B-6. These shafts were the route followed by the jet fuel down to the basement.

Gravy has traced these three shafts for you on this page:
http://911stories.googlepages.com/wtcelevatorshafts

Shafts number number 6 and 7 are marked yellow and number 50 is marked blue. If you do not trust Gravy's interoperation of the drawings you find high resolution scans here on Jim Hoffman's truther site:
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/plans/table.html

There were two survivors in freight elevator number 50 that stopped between B-1 and B-2, both were pulled out of the car just before the fireball arrived:
'I don't know who saved me. It was so black and smoky. I couldn't see nothin',' Arturo said. 'When they got me out, I told them there was someone else down there, a woman. They went back to get her. Seconds after they pulled her out, a ball of fire came down the shaft. They almost got killed.'
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Source

Felipe David who came running into William Rodrguez's office was badly burnt when he was in front of the the freight elevator on either B-1 or B-2. While Arturo and Marlene avoided burns since they were lying on the floor due to their injuries when the fireball arrived.

And do not forget that Arturo's wife survived even though she was inside her elevator car in a different shaft when the fireball arrived:
A full elevator had just left the 78th floor, and Carmen was about to carry up six or seven stragglers. The plane struck as the doors of her elevator closed. They could hear debris smash into the top of the car; then the elevator cracked open, and flames poured in. Carmen jammed her fingers between the closed doors, pulled them partly open and held them as passengers clambered over and under her 5-foot-6 frame to escape.

Before finally throwing herself out onto the lobby floor, she glanced back to be sure the elevator was empty. That was when fire scorched her face with second- and third-degree burns, and literally welded her hooped right earring to her neck. Her hands were badly burned.
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Source

Tracing the fireballs way down to the basement is not exactly rocket science Swing Dangler. It is time for you to stop repeating this question in thread after thread, you know the answers I have given you above.
 
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I somehow missed all earlier referrences to Jenny Carr. It would help if I could see a better account before commenting further, but the one link I could find, in a Google clip that Dylan had had his hands on, suggests that she was far enough from the impact that she could have picked up more than one event. What is the best available source on her stroy?
 
Huntsman said:
I'd suspect strongly that a backdraft would also be subsonic, and have similar attributes to a fuel vapor deflagration.
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Yes it would definitely be subsonic, but it would be violent enough like this one:

Go right to the end since it did not happen as fast as the instructor thought it should in this case.

No large boom or shock wave, but in a confined space it would easily build up enough pressure to knock down walls and doors.
 
(where did the explosions originate?)

Swing Dangler said:
Parking garage
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mike pecoraros account (after ascending UP from the parking garage):-

They decided to ascend two more levels to the building's lobby. As they ascended to the B Level, one floor above, they were astonished to see a steel and concrete fire door that weighed about 300 pounds, wrinkled up "like a piece of aluminum foil" and lying on the floor. "They got us again," Mike told his co-worker, referring to the terrorist attack at the center in 1993. Having been through that bombing, Mike recalled seeing similar things happen to the building's structure. He was convinced a bomb had gone off in the building. Mike walked through the open doorway and found two people lying on the floor.
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NB my bold
hey swing , anything inconsistent there regarding the explosion being in the parking garage?

BV
 
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leftysergeant: It's Ginny -- not Jenny -- Carr. The audio was hosted by the 911 Digital Archive, which is currently redoing their website and the original audio links are defunct. This is what you get when you search for Ginny Carr:

ginny4xo4.jpg


I've uploaded a comparison of the audio and Dylan's version here:

http://files-upload.com/files/645895/ginnycarr-comp.mp3

It's quite clear that the audio has been modified.
 
I dug up a report on the 1993 bombing by the United States Fire administration, it is actually a republishing of several articles from Fire Engineering Magazine. But it contains a lot useful information regarding this discussion.

Regarding this discussion the following account by John J. Walpole in the basement of the Vista Hotel (Marriott in 2001) in 1993 should be quiet significant:

At the time of the explosion, I was waiting for an elevator with
another individual on the B-l level. An invisible blast wave emanated
from the elevator shaft, immediately followed by an onrush of air back into
the elevator shaft. It was when the backrush of air occurred -not during
the initial blast -that building materials and debris began to fall around
us.
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Page 38 in the report

Judging by the figure on page 40 he was about 200 feet away from the detonation of a bomb of more than 1000 pounds surrounded with hydrogen canisters on the level below. He was hit by the blast wave, but no flames came up and burned him.

There are several accounts of the damage and the fires caused by this bomb in 1993 in the report. The damage described by the 2001 witnesses in the basement is not even close to the damage created by the 1993 bomb. The truck was parked only a few feet away from the B-2 level exterior wall of WTC 1, less than 100 feet away from the elevator shafts, yet not a word about fireballs traveling up the elevator shafts burning to death people inside or outside the elevators, in the Lobby area of WTC 1 for instance. The explosion only:
The shock
waves from the explosion blew down the doors in the
subbasement shaft, giving the smoke full access to the elevator
shaft. Numerous people trapped in these elevators suffered from
smoke inhalation.
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Page 78 in the report, picture on page 156.

So much for Swing Danglers claim that the 2001 "explosion" originated in the parking lot. And in 2001 not a word about burning cars or collapsed floors in the basement.
 
Swing Dangler said:
Hmmm firefighters after impact and and after basement explosions in the basement instead of the impact zone. It sure sounds like firefighting efforts were split to me.
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Look, this line of argument is not only pointless, it's just plain bizarre.

You attempted to argue that, perhaps, someone "planted explosives" in the sublevels specifically to distract firefighting efforts from the impact zone.

The firefighters never even got to the impact zone, excepting only the superhuman Chief Orio Palmer (RIP with honor), and he was a ruddy marathon runner with a light gear load. You can't split the firefighting efforts because there weren't any. This "diversion" of yours could only (potentially) delay rescue operations on floors above ground but well below impact. Firefighting upstairs was hindered by logistics, and any such distractions would have been utterly superfluous.

Besides, why divert them in the first place? According to you, the Towers weren't just loaded with decoy explosives, they were also demolished by explosives, and not fire. So why bother? The firefighting efforts would have been utterly futile. According to you, that building was coming down, fire or no fire. So why contradict yourself?

Honestly, is that the best reason you can come up with for "explosives" in the basement? It's preposterous.

Swing Dangler said:
The standpipe's 294A and B as well as the jockeypump were located in the basement hence the desire to eliminate this firefighting process.

You realize that the explosion on the 22nd floor knocked out the Secure Command Center's ability to manually start the sprinkler system? Oh well, sorry I got off topic there.
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As I've already remarked, according to you, hindering firefighting efforts is pointless since you believe the fire was inconsequential. Ignoring that for a moment, the basement standpipe and jockeypump, as well as the manual controls elsewhere, wouldn't do anybody any good anyway. The standpipes were broken at the impact zone. There was an effort underway to manually reroute the standpipes as firefighters ascended, but it never completed and may have been futile in any event. So, once again, you have no compelling reason for mythical "explosives" on the lower levels. None.

Swing Dangler said:
I'm sorry but if you would have sourced it, I would not have asked for your source.
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Correction -- if you bothered to read carefully, you wouldn't have asked for the source. It's not my fault. I did source it.

In this post, note the underline below the words "were lifts that did fall." That's a link, much like the one you cliked on under "this post" to get there. It takes you to the USA Today article in question. Fully sourced. Months ago. Your powers of observation do not convey a sense of general competence.

Swing Dangler said:
Where did I get the idea? From NIST. I thought you were the resident expert on the NIST report.

Arturo Griffith's account from the USA Today source of course disproves the car 50 crash nonsense as do the emergency brakes on the other car and their maintenance.
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Why yes, I might be among the local NIST Report experts. I misunderstood you -- it appeared that you had some other source that disputed NIST's conclusion, namely that several elevators were cut by the impact, and fell deep into the structure.

If you're complaining that the freight elevator (50) didn't actually hit bottom, as NIST sugggests, but instead miraculously halted between the B-1 and B-2 levels, then you're correct; NIST is slightly inaccurate with respect to this detail. However, this has no impact on the viability of the jet fuel path, nor the damage caused by its deflagration. I fail to see what you're complaining about.

Swing Dangler said:
Explosives doesn't make sense? LOL. [...] Yet when a similar explosion takes place in the basement that reminded others of the 1993 truck bomb and indeed caused damage that reminded them of a truck bomb, instead of accepting the most logical excuse, a truck bomb, the implausibility of a jet fuel explosion is offered with only assumptions to support that theory.

Why is everyone so resistant to a truck bomb in the basement anyway? Yet accept without question and without proof, jet fuel.
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Laugh while you can. Explosives make absolutely no sense, as I am about to demonstrate to you again.

Swing Dangler said:
You shouldn't have any problems answering these questions in regards to the jet fuel phenomena. Or did you avoid them?

1. Simply trace the route and the amount of the jet fuel, in liquid or fireball form from the initial impact to the basement areas and still account for the survivors located within the elevators. [Etc.]
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Poster Norseman answered this skillfully, even though I know you've been given the answer numerous times before, three times by me alone. Read his answer, and please stop asking. It makes you seem... simple.

I will tackle the energy "questions," below.

Swing Dangler said:
Hey we agree on something!! Let's see some numbers in support of the jet fuel excuse. I've been looking for years for that and I can't seem to find any.
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:D You've got to love the sheer arrogance of this guy. He says, out of the frickin' blue, that "jet fuel didn't have enough energy to do that much damage." I call him on it, and demand to see his numbers. Does he provide numbers? Of course not. He provides no support at all, and demands numbers from me.

As much as I'd appreciate a straight answer from you once in a while, Swing, I have to admit that it would be so startling, I'd have to suppress the impulse to suspect you of loaning your account to somebody else.

I'll give you straight answers, though. Here's some: I don't think you even have any numbers. I think you made that up out of thin air. I don't think you have the math to find out, one way or the other.

But I do.

Here's your questions:

Swing Dangler said:
First, before I accept this information, can you source the 24,000 pounds of fuel from the NIST report.
Second, what class of explosives are you referring to?
Third, can you provide the necessary numbers to prove jet fuel caused the amount of damage in the basement levels?

Fourth, why are you using the energy equivalent of remaining jet fuel after the impact to prove 100,000 pounds of explosives in each basement had to be used? You would be better off to show the process and data behind the jet fuel to prove it caused the destruction witnessed.

If you sincerely believe in the jet fuel excuse then it should be easy to answer the following questions:
1. Can you source the amount in pounds of jet fuel in each tower after the initial impact and explosion?

2. Second, can your provide the fuel/air ratio necessary for the explosion as well as blast pressure data?

3. Third, can you provide the calculations supporting the official story that jet fuel fireball caused the damage in the basement? You know those energy
numbers NIST didn't provide in their report.

4. Fourth, can you provide any witnesses who saw the amount of jet fuel you claimed did or could do the damage in the multiple levels of the basement?

Yet debunkers accept as fact the jet fuel excuse without anyway to quantify the damage to the basement with numbers that mean anything despite the historical record of terrorists, the FBI's working theory, the eyewitness descriptions, etc, etc.! Go figure!
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In order, here are the answers.

1. 24,000 pounds of fuel is the estimate that NIST gave for the amount of fuel running into the lower structure. NIST estimated that there were 66,100 pounds of fuel in AA11 and 62,000 pounds in UA175 at impact (NCSTAR1-2B, pg. 171). Of those totals, NIST estimated that 20% was consumed in the initial fireballs, 40% was distributed on the impact floors, and 40% drained or flowed into the lower structure (NCSTAR1-5F pg. 56).

Yes, these are rough estimates, and I am on record criticizing these estimates in my whitepaper. However, working out a better estimate either through investigation or modeling would be a nontrivial undertaking, and for now, it's the best we have. Certainly it's in the right ballpark.

2. I'm referring to all chemical explosives. The energy density of Jet A is approximately 43 MJ / kg (remember that number for later). The typical yardstick, TNT, is a mere 4.2 MJ / kg, ten times less. Exotic, impractical, high-powered explosives such as octanitrocubane only get up to about 7.5 to 8 MJ / kg, still a factor of five below Jet A. It really doesn't matter what explosive compound you fantasize about, they just aren't going to give you more energy than the jet fuel, unless you propose a fantastic amount of it. I can only assume you don't know much about explosives.

3. As a matter of fact, I can prove that jet fuel could cause the damage seen. This step is a long one.

To begin, let us model the problem as follows: Suppose the entire basement of a Tower suffered an overpressure event, sufficient to cause the observed damage. We can describe the damage qualitatively:
  • There was extensive damage to interior and furniture over a wide area.
  • Damage to the structure, however, was minor to negligible.
  • There are no reports of anyone being killed by the blast. The principal danger was fire.
Based on these factors, we estimate that the magnitude of the pressure pulse was moderate, in the range of 1 PSI, since overpressures of 5 PSI typically damage or destroy all but hardened structures, and would have surely killed many who were inside. Nevertheless, we want to overestimate the energy requirement to make absolutely certain that my contention -- that the jet fuel is more than sufficient -- is true. We will use the higher, less credible estimate of 5 PSI. In proper units, this is 34.5 kPa.

Next, suppose the deflagration pressurized the entire volume of the basement to 5 PSI. This is another deliberate overestimate. In actual fact, the overpressure would be a wave rather than a static phenomenon, and thus the true energy requirements are much, much lower. Let us suppose that the basement area was the size of the WTC footprint (64 m square) times a depth of 25 m, sufficient for at least six sublevels. This is a total volume of roughly 100,000 m3.

Next, we work out the energy required to raise that entire volume by the pressure differential required. There are several ways to calculate this, depending on your model of the process. The simplest is to consider the Bernoulli energy density, in which case E = ΔP V, but this only applies in non-dissipative processes along streamlines, and is generally an underestimate. At the other extreme, we can consider an increase in pressure due to heating in a constant-volume process, which is maximally entropic and will overestimate the energy required. We will use the latter extreme.

To solve the energy density in this fashion, we simply apply the Ideal Gas Law, in this case expressed as follows:

ΔP V = n R ΔT (1)​

where n is the number of moles of gas and R is the gas constant.

After we solve for the increase in temperature, we can then extract the energy required from the simple expression:

E = ρ V cs ΔT (2)​

where ρ is the density of air and hence ρ V is the total mass of air, and cs is the specific heat capacity of air.

Substituting for ΔT in (2) using a rearrangement of (1), we find that:

E = ρ V2 cs ΔP / n R (3)​

Or, using the shorthand N = ρ V / n where N is the molar mass of air, i.e. the number of grams per mol, we arrive at the answer:

E = N V cs ΔP / R (4)​

Values for these constants are as follows:
  • N = 28.97 g / mol
  • cs = 1.012 J / g K
  • R = 8.31 Pa m3 / mol K
And so we find that:

E = 3.53 V ΔP (5)​

In other words, this formulation is roughly 3.5 times the energy of the Bernoulli approach. All that work for a lousy factor of 3.5. So it goes.

We are now ready to compute the answer. In our problem, V = 100,000 m3, and ΔP = 34.5 kPa. Therefore, the energy required in our model -- understanding, again, that it is a deliberate overestimate -- is equal to:

E = 3.53 (100,000 m3) (34.5 kPa) = 12.5 GJ​

12.5 GJ is a lot of energy. But how much is that in terms of jet fuel? Now recall that jet fuel has an energy density of 43 MJ / kg. This means, in order to get this much energy, we need (12.5 GJ) / (43 MJ / kg) = 290 kilograms of jet fuel.

That's all. 290 kg, or about 640 pounds, 375 liters, just under 100 US gallons.

I remind you, this is a wild overestimate. In practice, the fuel will probably not all burn at once, and will not be terribly efficient, but the constant-volume method above captures all of these effects. The actual number might be two to ten times smaller if we did it carefully, but that doesn't matter.

What matters is that 290 kg of jet fuel is a totally acceptable amount of jet fuel to pour down the elevator shafts. The damage seen in the basement is, therefore, perfectly reasonable.

I'll hurry through the rest of the questions.

4. To do the same amount of damage with explosives, using the ratios already discussed above, you would need about 2900 kg of TNT, or 1450 kg of the obscure and never-used octanitrocubane. Any explosive you pick will land somewhere in the middle or perhaps heavier than these figures. That's a heck of a big boom.

5. This is a repeat of Question 1. See above for the source of the jet fuel amounts.

6. I can only assume that your question about mixing ratios is a desperate clutch at straws. Jet fuel's mixture ratio is 0.044 by mass. Our 290 kg of jet fuel would thus require 6591 kg of air, or a volume of 5492 m3, or about 5% of the volume treated in the above exercise. There is plenty of air to get it done. Nice try.

7. Repeat of Question 3.

8. I have no need to provide witnesses. The level of destruction that would be wrought by my model explosion above is greater than even the most speculative cherry-picked assessment of witness reports. This is the value of doing a bracketing or "worst case" analysis. I can afford to sacrifice precision, since the effect is so obviously within the capability of a jet fuel explosion.

9. It should now be perfectly obvious why we accept the jet fuel argument, and why we reject the "truck bomb" argument. But for your benefit, I'll state it anyway:

  • Remember how big the "truck bomb" was in 1993? 1300 pounds of various low to moderate explosives, call it 1000 pounds TNT equivalent. My jet fuel situation above is about five times more powerful. You'd have to spec an awfully big truck.
  • Despite being smaller than my jet fuel case, the 1993 truck bomb woke up the whole damn town. No way to conceal that. Forget it. It would be totally obvious that high explosives had been used. The jet fuel, on the other hand, delivers its blast as a deflagration, and is totally consistent with witness statements, both inside and outside the structure.
  • Even a smaller truck bomb, on par with the 1993 event, would have killed people through blast and shrapnel. Didn't happen. So you must have a smaller truck bomb. This contradicts the points above, thus the hypothesis is DOA.
  • Unlike truck bombs, it's clear to everyone that there was jet fuel in massive quantities running all over the place. There's no evidence for explosives. The "excuse" is yours.
  • How anyone would trigger a bomb coincident with a jetliner impact is almost too incredible to contemplate. Was someone watching with his finger on the button? Why? What's the point?

---

I strongly suspect this entire exercise won't change your totally unsupported and fantastical beliefs one bit, but maybe I'm wrong. Justify my optimism. Try to understand. Take all the time you need.
 
My main reason for rejecting the idea of the truck bomb is that the explosions and injuries were so closely associated with or occurred in elevator shafts. This would support the fuel deflagration theory in that an HE detonation in those shafts would have shredded the personnel in the elevators and blown out walls as well as doors around the shafts. Thus, it would appear that the explosions were set off as air met the fuel vapors outside the shafts or just inside the shafts near a door that admitted some air. With a supply of fuel still arriving froim above throguh the shafts, it is not, then, surprising that more than one blast would occur.

Now, consider, too, that a truck bomb would have reuptured the fuel tanks of vehicles parked nearby in the garage levels. This would have resulted in rather wide-spread class B fires in the garage levels. Such was not the case.

In recall seeing footage of the 93 blast aftermath with a great quantity of black smoke coming from the lower levels, which was absent on 9/11. The two events were, then, of apparently different nature.

As for splitting the fire fighting operations to maximize casualties, I do not find this at all sensible. It was beyond the capabilities of the fire department to fight such wide-spread fires so high up without functioning sprinklers. The jets took care of that.

Since it was planned, by the twoofer version of events, to bring the towers down, it would have made more sense to let more fire fighters gain the 78th floor, thus trapping more of them with no place to run as collapse intitiated.

Secondary devides in terrorist attacks are usually timed to detonate in staging areas after fire fighters have arrived and begun working on other areas of the crime scene, thus catching them from behind with a directiona l device of some sort, are booby trapping areas where emergency personnel could be expected to trip the devices. Setting off secondary devices prior to the arrival of first responders makes little, if any sense.
 
Well, R. Mackey pretty much knocked this one out of the park, but to add my own two cents worth to a couple of comments from back around my post:

Norseman said:
Yes it would definitely be subsonic, but it would be violent enough like this one:

Go right to the end since it did not happen as fast as the instructor thought it should in this case.

No large boom or shock wave, but in a confined space it would easily build up enough pressure to knock down walls and doors.
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That was pretty much the point I was getting at :)

An explosive, especially any type of high explosive, would have produced a very quick, very high peak pressure. Structure would have been destroyed.

Instead, we have damage consistent with a lower pressure wave, which fits either backdraft or fuel deflagration...I prefer the fuel idea just because we know there was a heck of a lot of it there.

BenBurch said:
Just because you have a deflagration rather than a detonation doesn't mean that you won't make a big BOOM. Guy Fawkes knew this. :)
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Yep, very true. As another poster mentioned, the vast majority of movie explosions use small amounts of HE under containers of gasoline (or similar), to turn them into large deflagrations.
 
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