Dave Rogers
Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through
What I think is being suggested is that the load was so great on all of these columns that it produced such rapid failure as to be unmeasurably indistinguishable from free fall, despite the fact that so much of the load was the columns themselves and the rest was building materials that had comprised the rest of the structure for decades.
Again, this is practically meaningless. Failure of a column is, again, a process, not a motion. If you can't distinguish between the two, it's not surprising that you can't understand what's going on.
The process of column failure involves several stages, as I understand it. I've shown them in a simple sketch. Initially (1) the column will shorten due to elastic compression. Next (2), it will buckle elastically, bending in a continuous curve; at this stage, if the load is removed, by definition the column will return to its original shape. Up to this point, failure has not occurred. As the load increases, the column will buckle inelastically (3); at points where the strain is greatest, the column will form plastic hinges, which will not return to its original shape once the load is removed. At this point the column may be said to have failed, and it loses much (though not all) of its load bearing capacity. Finally (4), the column will fracture at the plastic hinges, breaking into unconnected pieces. At this final stage, the column no longer has any load bearing capacity whatsoever, because it consists of broken pieces of metal that are not even in the load path. At this point, anything previously restrained by the column is now in freefall.

I'm sure the structural engineers here will correct me if any of this is wrong, but in the mean time, please explain how a column at stage 4 - where there is, effectively, no column any more - is supposed to retard a falling body.
Dave