They used similes. The guy you quoted who was gesturing with his hands? He was referring to the actual building collapse. I'll get you his name when I get home. You talk about investigations -- call FDNY. Call their public relations office. Heck, call their union. Ask them who said what and what they meant.
Here's how to reconstruct an airplane: First, you rig up a wooden frame in the shape of the particular aircraft. Then you attach the pieces. It's really hard work, especially for the fuselage, because the pieces are often small. But it's possible because all the pieces except for the fuselage are distinct -- from the manual you can figure out where the door goes, for instance.
Now try to reconstruct a 110-story office building. First, you rig up a 110-story wooden frame...
For whatever it's worth, mockups are not always done in plane crashes. In particular they're not done when it's too difficult relative to what one would learn from it. Only a partial mockup was done of Valujet 592, because it was too hard to do the rest once they discovered what caused the crash. The investigation of United 232 saw only a mockup of the aft section and the tail because it was known that that was where the cause was.
