Total Building Collapse from a Single Column Failure

JSanderO said:
I am not concluding anyone lied. I want to see the evidence of the fuel recovery and how they excluded diesel fires. My sense is that there was really no data about what was going on inside the sub station and the floors above it. If there are any reports of this I am unaware of them.

So not having reports does not mean there was nothing going on there. This seems to be the logic here... no reports of fire so there was none. But there were no affirmative reports that there WAS no fire in this region. Two very different things.
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IIRC the final NIST report DOES go into why they concluded no fires on fifth floor. It details the fuel recovered (yes some was not accounted for,,,, and that was why they investigated the possibility in the first place). It also details that when FFs went through the building they included fifth floor in their walk through and at no time reported any fires or smell of fuel. While there are no windows near the diesel generator room (quite close to TT1) , there are air supply louvers that open when the diesel is running. They were not open but they are also far from airtight and had there been fires near there it would be expected that smoke would be coming from them, it wasn't.
I am sure you are aware that the pressure in the supply was not that great (the flow need not be all that high since the genset only can use it so fast) and that the fuel would have to pool, it would not be a jet blast blow torch. The pump itself had to be supplied with electricty and electric power to the building was out meaning that it would have to get power from the genset itself but the louvers were not open indicating that the louver motor was not being operated also supplied with power by the genset when street power goes out, indicating that the genset was not running therefore no power to the fuel pump.

This is all off the top of my head, it being several years since I read the report, but feel free to come up with a scenario tht accounts for the pump operating while the louvers don't.
 
jaydeehess said:
IIRC the final NIST report DOES go into why they concluded no fires on fifth floor. It details the fuel recovered (yes some was not accounted for,,,, and that was why they investigated the possibility in the first place). It also details that when FFs went through the building they included fifth floor in their walk through and at no time reported any fires or smell of fuel. While there are no windows near the diesel generator room (quite close to TT1) , there are air supply louvers that open when the diesel is running. They were not open but they are also far from airtight and had there been fires near there it would be expected that smoke would be coming from them, it wasn't.
I am sure you are aware that the pressure in the supply was not that great (the flow need not be all that high since the genset only can use it so fast) and that the fuel would have to pool, it would not be a jet blast blow torch. The pump itself had to be supplied with electricty and electric power to the building was out meaning that it would have to get power from the genset itself but the louvers were not open indicating that the louver motor was not being operated also supplied with power by the genset when street power goes out, indicating that the genset was not running therefore no power to the fuel pump.

This is all off the top of my head, it being several years since I read the report, but feel free to come up with a scenario tht accounts for the pump operating while the louvers don't.
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I remain skeptical about recovering 20,000+ gallons of diesel fuel in multiple tanks after a 250,000 ton structure collapses on them. Anyone can SAY anything. I'd like to know how they did it and how much they recovered and where it was located.
 
JSanderO said:
I remain skeptical about recovering 20,000+ gallons of diesel fuel in multiple tanks after a 250,000 ton structure collapses on them. Anyone can SAY anything. I'd like to know how they did it and how much they recovered and where it was located.
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There were IIRC 6 tanks, 4 of which with 36,000 gallons capacity were underground at the southwest corner of the building. Those latter tanks certainly could have survived intact. There was a small tank on the 7th floor fed by a larger tank of 6,000 gal. capacity on the 2nd floor. These served the cities emergency command bunker. I have no idea how much fuel was in these or if any of it was recovered.
 
JSanderO said:
I remain skeptical about recovering 20,000+ gallons of diesel fuel in multiple tanks after a 250,000 ton structure collapses on them. Anyone can SAY anything. I'd like to know how they did it and how much they recovered and where it was located.
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The tanks were below grade IIRC (Lots of buildings in NYC have power houses, not just backup gen sets, in the basement. Few are fully dependent on ConEd). I thought they recovered over 95% of the fuel, but I could be mistaken. There's companies in the NYC area that do hazmat recovery. They use pumps and tanker trucks. :)

Compared to gasoline, diesel is very stable and hard to ignite at atmospheric pressure and room temperature (I work on lots of diesel and gas engines). Watch how slow the flames spread here:

If that was 400 gallons of gasoline you'd have one hell of a fireball as soon as that torch touched it. :D

When I first started mechanics, I worked in a diesel fuel shop. We rebuilt injector pumps and injectors (also turbos to an extent) as well as general truck engine repairs. There was diesel everywhere and EVERYONE smoked in the fuel shop lol (20 years ago). At the carburetor shop I use you aren't allowed to smoke within 100 feet of the joint lol.

I'm not so sure you'd have a blast furnace type flame from an unregulated ruptured line with diesel. It'd be like when your home water heater's nozzle goes bad, snuffs the ignitor, and coats the inside of the unit with muck. Diesel is basically (though, not always exactly chemically) home heating oil just refined a lot more (diesel has a cetane of about 45 and HHO is in the 30's IIRC)
 
JSanderO said:
I remain skeptical about recovering 20,000+ gallons of diesel fuel in multiple tanks after a 250,000 ton structure collapses on them. Anyone can SAY anything. I'd like to know how they did it and how much they recovered and where it was located.
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Why?
 
JSanderO said:
There was no basement in 7WTC.
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I said "below grade"
Engineers from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation investigated oil contamination in the debris of WTC 7. Their principal interest was directed to the various oils involved in the Con Ed equipment. However, they reported the following findings on fuel oil: "In addition to Con Ed's oil, there was a maximum loss of 12,000 gallons of diesel from two underground storage tanks registered as 7WTC." To date, the NY State Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and DEC have recovered approximately 20,000 gallons from the other two intact 11,600-gallon underground fuel oil storage tanks at WTC 7.
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http://www.fema.gov/media-library-data/20130726-1512-20490-2227/403_ch5.pdf - Page 5-15

ETA: So I was mistaken about 95%. :D
 
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JSanderO said:
They estimated a loss of 12,000 gals (max)...

And what about the cooling oil? What happened to that?

So where did the diesel go?... into the bedrock? up in smoke? into the sewers?
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Probably mostly in the soil, some up in smoke. Sewers, maybe? Bedrock??? IDK if would have gotten that far down or if bedrock is porous enough to absorb it.

Most was probably in the soil and soaked up by dust. No one knows if the pumps kicked on or not for sure but for the reasons sited by others before (louvers), probably not.

If the soil was contaminated, it would probably have to be removed as per NYS DEC and the EPA. The cooling oils (I'm assuming you mean the ConEd equipment) probably ended up in the same place.
 
JSanderO said:
They estimated a loss of 12,000 gals (max)...

And what about the cooling oil? What happened to that?

So where did the diesel go?... into the bedrock? up in smoke? into the sewers?
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It is unaccounted for. That means exactly what it sounds like, no explanation for its not being there. The tanks were in fact not full at the time and both FEMA and NIST worked with the panynj to estimate how much to expect would be in them. There was still a missing amount and THAT is why NIST decided to investigate the possibility of a liquid fuel fed fire BUT they found no evidence of such a fire.

To then postulate such a fire based solely on "where'd the fuel go?" would have been a gross case of making stuff up.
 
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JSanderO said:
Because that claim cuts through the possibility that there may have been some diesel fueled fires.
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So? AFAIK, that's not necessary to explaining why the buildings fell.

It is interesting the way you posted. "Just asking questions" and all. If evidence is presented that the oil was removed as stated, you move on without a second look. If evidence isn't presented, you have something to be suspicious about.
 
Transformer cooling oils may have contributed but again there wasn't a lot to go on to suggest large transformer fires in the Con-Ed which was separated from TT1 by the original Con-Ed building's exterior walls anyway. A large fire in the Con-Ed would have possibly failed columns inside that structure and led to failure of the cantilever trusses, but no one is suggesting that as a scenario.
 
JSanderO said:
Because that claim cuts through the possibility that there may have been some diesel fueled fires.
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Which would have been a easy out for NIST to hypothesize as a cause of initial failure but they had no evidence of that fire. Back to the drawing board, and fire was the most obvious vectoir to cause an initial failure in a progressive collapse. Where were the most widespread fires. What structures would they have affected which if failed could account for the observed rooftop failures?

,,,, etc., etc., etc., and voila the hypothesis they came up with.

Admit it, you have no evidence to support the scenario of a diesel fuel fed fire of great enough intensity, in proximity to TT1 , to cause that structure to fail.

Like I said before, a TT1 failure just might lead to the observed sequence of failure but there is no observed proximate cause for such a failure. Proposing an unseen, undetected diesel fuel fire then has as much backing as would an explosive CD of TT1.
 
jaydeehess said:
Which would have been a easy out for NIST to hypothesize as a cause of initial failure but they had no evidence of that fire. Back to the drawing board, and fire was the most obvious vectoir to cause an initial failure in a progressive collapse. Where were the most widespread fires. What structures would they have affected which if failed could account for the observed rooftop failures?

,,,, etc., etc., etc., and voila the hypothesis they came up with.

Admit it, you have no evidence to support the scenario of a diesel fuel fed fire of great enough intensity, in proximity to TT1 , to cause that structure to fail.

Like I said before, a TT1 failure just might lead to the observed sequence of failure but there is no observed proximate cause for such a failure. Proposing an unseen, undetected diesel fuel fire then has as much backing as would an explosive CD of TT1.
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Like NIST I have no evidence of fires... In fact I have no evidence of anything. I am simply trying to figure things out on my own. I don't do simulations, calculations and collect evidence. I am not a forensic engineer. I am not a PE. I am an old dumb architect. TTF driven by some heat event makes the most sense to me as a lead to the global collapsed we witnessed. I know column 79 dropped at some point which is kinda NIST's starting point. I put the col 79 drop following the TTF. But this is an hypothesis. It's also in line with what the building engineer Cantor speculated along with ASCE who suspect connection failures.

I have nothing else to say. I can't prove anything, Nor can TTF be disproven by the so called "absence of evidence" as this is the same "absence of evidence" which supports NIST's girder walk off at column 79.

You can believe whatever you want. But NIST's 7WTC work is an hypothesis (and a questionable one at that).

My opinion.
 
JSanderO said:
Like NIST I have no evidence of fires... In fact I have no evidence of anything. I am simply trying to figure things out on my own. I don't do simulations, calculations and collect evidence. I am not a forensic engineer. I am not a PE. I am an old dumb architect. TTF driven by some heat event makes the most sense to me as a lead to the global collapsed we witnessed. I know column 79 dropped at some point which is kinda NIST's starting point. I put the col 79 drop following the TTF. But this is an hypothesis. It's also in line with what the building engineer Cantor speculated along with ASCE who suspect connection failures.

I have nothing else to say. I can't prove anything,
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,, and I agree wholeheartedly with this post , up to this point.
Nor can TTF be disproven by the so called "absence of evidence" as this is the same "absence of evidence" which supports NIST's girder walk off at column 79.

You can believe whatever you want. But NIST's 7WTC work is an hypothesis (and a questionable one at that).

My opinion.
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,,, and I do not "believe" in the NIST hypothesis any more than you "believe" in your own fire-failed-TT1 hypothesis. What drives me more towards accepting NIST's as more plausible is the DIRECT evidence of a fire at that location as opposed to the lack of such in the case of the location of TT1.


There is no evidence either of an explosion near TT1. If a transformer blew out in the Con-Ed then it would have been separated from TT1 at least by the Con-Ed's original exterior walls. Whether by concussive force or transformer oil fire/heat, one would presuppose, this causes much greater damage to structural components within the Con-Ed rather than without.

I am not a PE, I am not a forensic engineer, I am just a dumb electronics tech with some background in physics. I learned a bit of engineering by hanging with engineering students , and I learned a bit about logic by hanging with journalism students.
 
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jaydeehess said:
...I learned a bit of engineering by hanging with engineering students , and I learned a bit about logic by hanging with journalism students.
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Good choices IMO.

Best to avoid engineers if you want logic. They are prone to "forests and trees" syndrome...

...AND they tend to be happiest when "up to their arse in alligators" - with the usual consequence.



:runaway
 
A friend of mine said if fire can bring down a steel building why arent demolition experts using fire to demolish buildings, saving money , man power , riggers RDX etc...

Is their a logical answer to that?
 
stevemcqueen said:
A friend of mine said if fire can bring down a steel building why arent demolition experts using fire to demolish buildings, saving money , man power , riggers RDX etc...

Is their a logical answer to that?
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Yes.

But why should a stupid statement warrant a reasoned answer?

To give a brief preliminary response:
1) Fire didn't bring down a steel building - at WTC on 9/11
2) WTC 1 & 2 collapsed as the result of major trauma resulting from at least two consequences of impact by a large airplane...and your "friend" omitted the 'plane impact from the scenario. The three consequences being:
(a) significant but not fatal damage to the structure; PLUS
(b) near instant starting of full intensity fires across multiple storeys and with the burning material "bulldozed" into concentrated heaps.
(c) The initial impact plus fire disabled fire fighting infrastructure AND prevented escape of trapped persons.

Both aspects (2a) and (2b) not available as demolition tools

PLUS There is no guarantee that those two applied to a building of design different to WTC Towers would cause collapse NOR that they would trigger (2c).

There are much more comprehensive reasons available but that summary should suffice. Bear in mind that anyone asking the question in the first place is either:
X) Joking - sick humour; OR
Y) Lacks the intelligence to comprehend; OR
Z) is committed to the false claims of the conspiracy movement.
 
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stevemcqueen said:
A friend of mine said if fire can bring down a steel building why arent demolition experts using fire to demolish buildings, saving money , man power , riggers RDX etc...

Is their a logical answer to that?
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It's hard to hire pilots who will willingly fly airliners into buildings.
 
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