jaydeehess
Penultimate Amazing
Yes, WTC2, my bad, wish I could have two windows open on this tablet at the same time...I assume you meant when WTC 2 collapsed. But in addition to Billy, Mike also had Viennie and Galeato with the generators on the fifth floor, also with radios. According to Mike Catalano Vinnie came down the stairs with Billy when WTC 2 collapsed. No one heard anything.
I note that MM does not consider Mike's story as reliable.
Point stands though that MM has on several occasions quoted Catalano on his description of the second plane impact and where the man was when that occurred, commented on it, then immediately quotes his description of the effect of WTC2 collapse without reference to where Catalano is at that time. The inference is that the effect is the same at the top of the building as it is at the bottom. Jennings was midway up the building.
Nor does MM ever bother with mentioning that when the first aircraft hit the closer north tower, that Catalano was one floor above where he was when the south tower was hit, and yet for that first crash he "just felt and heard a thump", same thump they had heard when the tower bombing occurred.
I find it difficult to accept that impact into the farther south tower would cause a much greater WTC7 shaking than did the impact into WTC1, while Catalano was on the roof and then the 47th floor.
As for WTC2 collapsing and its effect on WTC7, Catalano is in the third floor lobby and the greatest danger is the dust and debris. That would not be an issue on the 23rd floor. There are no doors to the outside that could blow open and allow dust in and nothing coming at the windows of the 23rd floor will be breaking them at this point.
It is also quite easy to envision this influx of dust to affect the stairwells up through several floors. Hess described the descent as being dusty/smoky for a few floors before they got to the sixth.
The lights went out then came back on. In the lobby! Good chance that they would " flicker" elsewhere in the building or that the apparent 5 or so minute outage that Catalano experienced would be described as a "flicker". Gensets generally start up, run for a few minutes to ensure proper output is being generated, then street power connection is cut and generator power transferred to building circuits.
Given the nastiness of the effect on WTC7 at lobby level when the south tower fell, one would expect even greater effect when the north tower fell and that this would be especially noticible to persons in the lower floors such as the sixth. While neither impact, nor the collapse of WTC2 saw heavy debris impacting 7, the collapse of WTC1 did. Aircraft impacts and the fall of WTC2 did no structural damage to WTC7, but the collapse of WTC1 did.
The most significant effect on WTC 7 that Jennings and Hess report is the shaking of the building and huge influx of dust and lights that go out and never come back on, which occurred when they reached the sixth floor.
Later, Jennings infers that the towers collapse when FFs leave the area twice. If that were true they would have first experienced something similar to what Catalano did in the lobby when WTC2 collapsed, while only 3-5 floors higher than Catalano. Then they would have experienced the collapse debris impacts of WTC1 while on a level that DID suffer very significant structural damage to exterior columns at that time. Yet Jennings had to infer collapses from the actions of the FFs?
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