9/11: The World Trade Center Collapses
Part 1: Scientific Evidence and 200+ Mainstream
Testimonies Virtually Prove Buildings Brought Down With Thermate and
Explosives
Joël v.d. Reijden | December 10, 2012 | ISGP Video Archive (will be expanded)
"Explosion....
huge explosion... loud blast... secondary explosions... secondary
device... flashes... bombs... shockwave... detonators... controlled
demolition... the thickest steel, bent like a pretzel... |

The Twin Towers before 9/11. |
|
molten steel ... lava ... [underground] fires of hell... more than 2,800 degrees F [1540°C]..."
-
As you will see, typical terms used by witnesses to describe their
experiences during the attack and the clean up of the World Trade
Center site. (example video clips one and two)
"I spent the rest of
the afternoon at the mayor's command center. The reporters were trying
to figure out what happened. We were thinking that bombs had brought the
buildings down. The mayor [Giuliani] talked to us and said he had no
evidence of bombs."
- 2002, Cathy Trost and Alicia C. Shepard, foreword by Tom Brokaw, Running Toward Danger - Stories Behind the Breaking News of 9/11, p. 203.
"We were
watching the building as it was on fire - the bottom floors of the
building were on fire. And we heard this sound that sounded like a clap
of thunder. We turned around and we were shocked to see that the
building was, what looked like a |
shockwave ripping through the building and the windows all busting out.
It was horrifying. And then, you know, about a second later the bottom
floor caved out and the building followed after that.
- New York
University medical student with the name Daryl, interviewed on 1010 WINS
NYC News Radio immediately after the collapse of WTC 7 (example video
clips one, two and three and four). |
Contents
"I don't get
it. Why did it take two whole days to tell the world it was an exercise?
Frankly, it is incomprehensible. ... Let's start with the fact that
they told us it was sugar in the bags [instead of RDX]. Does this mean
that neither the FSB specialists nor the interior ministry know what
sugar looks like? ... Let's just imagine that real explosives were
planted and it was a real attempt at provocation in order to increase
tension in the Caucasus and so on and so forth. Do we have any guarantee
that we would have been given an accurate reply that we, the public,
would find convincing to what had happened? I suspect, unfortunately,
that we wouldn't."
-
Evgeni Savostianov, former Moscow FSB/KGB chief, on the March 2000 NTV
program about the Moscow apartment bombings of September 1999. Putin and
the FSB, who basically revived the Cold War, were completely implicated in the bombings.
Present on the program were Ryazan building residents, various
witnesses, experts and the FSB leadership to counter the claims of
conspiracy.
"In the
primitive simplicity of [the mind of the masses] they more readily
fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves
often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort
to large-scale falsehoods. ... The grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it,
even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all
expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art
of lying."
- 1926, Adolf Hitler, 'Mein
Kampf', p. 472. Words of a dictator, who actually received initial
support from much of the same establishment(s) that can be tied to
9/11. The underlined section can be interpreted in two different ways.
Introduction
The subject of 9/11 has always been
of special interest to me. Besides the fact that the event was
incredibly dramatic and the beginning of a new era in world politics, I
had originally planned to fly to New York the day before the attack.
Not that I would have been up so early in the morning, but the 107th
floor World Trade Center observation deck was definitely near the top of
my to-do list. I sometimes wonder what I would have seen and heard for
myself if I hadn't been too cheap to spent the money. And also, if it
were possible to go back into time, what locations in the World Trade
Center I would love to check in the days and hours before the attack.
Actually separate from that, it's
safe to say that without 9/11 having taken place this site would have
never been created. Membership lists of the Pilgrims Society, the 1001 Club and Le Cercle would still be unavailable. The Dutroux X-Dossiers would have never been exposed to the extent that they have. The ATLAS Dossier would have never been translated and made public. And no in depth studies would have been done on the American Security Council, the AFIO, the OSS Society, or various other groups.
Having followed the event live on CNN
from just after the first impact, the thing that struck me the most was
speculation of bombs having caused the collapses. After the first tower
went down, I assumed that the other would soon follow suit - but not
because the first collapse made any sense to me. I distinctly
remember pushing aside the idea that bombs had to be located at
various floors inside the building, simply because terrorists would have
never been able to carry out such an operation. My thoughts were
exactly like one of the witnesses cited below, who, upon witnessing the
first tower going down, yelled in disbelief: "That was a fucking bomb that did that. There's no goddamn way that could have happened."
I wasn't thinking along conspiracy lines at all in those days, but
was clearly censoring myself in order for things to keep making sense.
Like everyone else, I just waited
for the media to come up with the answers. I remember looking at
different television stations the rest of the day, waiting for
confirmation or a retraction that explosives were used to bring down
the towers. But interestingly enough the topic was never brought up
again, at least not as far as I noticed. Going through the (Dutch)
newspapers the next morning it was the same story: not one mention of
even the potential use of explosives. Not having the slightest clue
about world affairs, I dropped the issue and went on with my business.
Things changed two-and-a-half years
later, after becoming aware that sometimes prevailing ideas in
society may not be all that accurate. This awareness led me to do a few
simple Google searches on topics that I had always been interested in,
but really thought no evidence existed for. One of the subjects I
picked were reports of explosives at the World Trade Center - and there
it was: my rabbit hole. Things have never been the same since.
The amazing
thing is that I had absolutely no clue whatsoever that anybody anywhere
was asking similar questions about that event. I studied all aspects of
9/11 for 1,500 hours over |
the next 1,5 years, almost
immediately beginning with organizing all the information in timelines
and various summaries. The information quite literally shook my life to
the very core. Each night I went to bed convinced that there had been a
conspiracy; and each day I woke up again thinking it was all crazy -
that there had to be a normal explanation for everything I had come
across the previous day. It |
|

The event that led to the creation of ISGP. |
took months of
daily studying to somewhat shake this feeling. Although, to a degree I
still have those feelings, even after years and years of seeing all the
facts come together and pointing towards a conspiracy. |
I actually had the idea of one day
working with others to do interviews and get to the bottom of the event.
Well, it didn't pan out that way. Little did I know that the entire
conspiracy community appears to be one giant counter-intelligence
operation. It wasn't until really becoming an expert on the subject
that I began to notice the manipulation. Flight 77, the plane that
plunged into the Pentagon, is the most obvious example of this.
Trusting the work of other researchers, I pushed aside my own intuition
and copied information that indeed something fishy may have happened at
the Pentagon. But when finally getting around to checking the facts in
detail, it soon became clear that pictures and witness testimonies
had been taken out of context in quite an extreme manner.
As a result I wrote an article
that put the facts straight once and for all. It was distributed by
various sites: thousands got to read it, and replies were
overwhelmingly very positive. However, do you think it was possible to
change the minds of "gurus" like Dr. James Fetzer and Eric Hufschmid,
whom I briefly conversed with in private? No, of course not. For years
Fetzer has been messing up research into the Kennedy assassination,
pointing his readers in all directions except the correct ones. He's
hardly alone in that effort. Reading years later that the extremely
antisemitic Hufschmid is a relative of neocon media mogul Rupert Murdoch
- a friend of Frank Lowy, the co-owner of the World Trade Center -
hardly comes as a surprise either. In fact, immediately after my article
was distributed I became quite irritated with a new wave of
no-757-at-Pentagon theories being spread by virtually every
"respectable" author and major conspiracy website. Being used to it
these days, back then this realization was quite a shock.
Realizing that nothing more was to be
gained from studying 9/11, I distanced myself from it. Instead, I began
to map out networks of "non-government" groups which appeared to
have great influence on governments internationally. After a while it
was possible to pick out some of the more important and unknown ones,
including the Pilgrims Society, the 1001 Club and Le Cercle, bringing
out a lot of new informaton these groups. But the ultimate goal of this
site has always been to figure out who was behind 9/11.
Back in the day some of the seemingly
legitimate researchers I interacted with actually could not understand
why I was always so skeptical about explosives and thermite having been
used to bring down the World Trade Center buildings. The reason is
simple: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I don't
think this was available in the 2004-2005 period when Youtube wasn't
around yet and videos were relatively scarce and of low quality. It's
quite amazing really just the amount of high quality material, some it
new, that has been uploaded to Youtube since 2010. If one knows how to
steer through all the nonsense, it makes it infinitely easier to confirm
a lot of information that was previously just impossible to find.
As the reader will find out
in this article, evidence for explosives and thermate at the World
Trade Center is nothing short of overwhelming, a case additionally
strenghtened by a lack |

WTC impact floors and flight trajectories of planes. |
|
of willingness from the
media and NIST researchers to answer very important and very rational
questions. The purpose of this article is to provide readers with so
much testimony and evidence poiting towards controlled demolition, that
it becomes irrational to believe otherwise. That's not to say I'm 100
percent convinced of controlled demolition; a rational person is never
100 percent convinced of anything unless given overwhelming evidence and
is supported in his opinion by many others around him. That's just the
way psychology works. However, the evidence up to this point personally
leads me to conclude that I should at least be 95 percent convinced that explosives and thermite were |
used that day. My mind may
have trouble handling that conclusion, even after all these years, but
it is the only rational conclusion that fits all the facts. Everything
else is denial. |
If someone is able to prove me
wrong, I will be just as happy and immediately report it at the top of
this page. Giving certainty to readers by providing reliable
documentation has always been a key philosophy of ISGP. Giving (more
or less) certainty on the topic of 9/11 has been a real challenge
though. The only reason I have now actually decided to write about it
again is because there's just too much manipulation for the average
person to deal with. I have never been able to discuss events like
Kennedy or 9/11, simply because it takes at least 500 to 1,000 hours for
the average person just to get a sense of what is true and what is not.
Hopefully this article will help change that.
Basic information on the attacks
| 8:14 AM |
Flight 11 fails to respond |
F-15
and F-16 jets on Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) should be scrambled
within 15 minutes from Otis Air National Guard base, Langley Air Force
Base and Andrews Air Force Base. Based on this information, these
planes should be over New York City well within 30 minutes. Andrews
AFB is only 11 miles from Washington, D.C., suggesting fighters could be
over the capital within 20 minutes. |
| 8:42 AM |
Flight 175 signs of trouble |
Crosses the path of the pursued Flight 11. |
| 8:44 AM |
Jets should should have reached New York City well before this point. |
Jet
fighters aren't there yet and still won't be on 9:03 AM when the
second plane hits the South Tower. They're also not in time to protect
the Pentagon, 84 minutes after the first signs of trouble. No serious
investigation of these failures has been done. |
| 8:46 AM |
Flight 11 hits the North Tower |
32 minutes after hijacking. Impact at floors 94-98. |
| 8:51 AM |
Flight 77 signs of trouble |
Plane will eventually hit the Pentagon. |
| 9:03 AM |
Flight 175 hits the South Tower |
22 minutes after hijacking. Impact at floors 78-84. |
| 9:28 AM |
Flight 93 is hijacked |
Plane will eventually crash in Pennsylvania. |
| 9:38 AM |
Flight 77 hits the Pentagon |
47 minutes after hijacking. Still no fighters around to have intercepted it. |
| 9:59 AM |
South Tower collapse |
56 minutes after impact. |
| 10:03 AM |
Crash of Flight 93 |
35 minutes after hijacking. Possibly shot down. |
| 10:28 AM |
North Tower collapse |
102 minutes after impact. |
| 10:50 AM |
Pentagon collapse |
Due to fire. |
| 5:20 PM |
WTC 7 collapse |
Strong evidence for demolition. |
Typical disinformation
Without spending too much time on it,
the reader should always keep this section in the back of his mind when
researching 9/11. 9/11 can be divided in three major
investigations: 1) the potential use of explosives and thermate at the
World Trade Center; 2) something else than Flight 77 hitting the
Pentagon; and 3) who the Florida hijackers were (solely the domain of Daniel Hopsicker). For many years the primary arguments to legitimize the Pentagon investigation have been the following two:
Both arguments are nonsense and easy to dispel, as has been done by the author years ago.
The damage to the Pentagon corresponds exactly to that of a Boeing 757
while all witness statements that are supposed to prove something else
than a 757 hit the Pentagon have been taken out of context.
Maybe you now want to ask why the
FBI did not release a better quality video of the event? Maybe, just
maybe to keep fueling conspiracy theories. The minute a clear video of
the Pentagon attack appears, all focus will shift to other, much more
promising elements of the attack. Remember, I have come across my fair
share of disinformation over the years, as has been discussed in various
articles on this site. It's a real phenomenon.
As for the World Trade Center
discussion, it's impossible for me to say how sincere a person as Dr.
Steven Jones is. Jones claims to have evidence that nanothermate was
used at the World Trade Center site. I do not have access to the World
Trade Center dust, as Jones had, nor do I have the equipment to analyze
it myself. On top of that, I can never guarantee that dust given to me
by a third party wasn't tampered with. However, as the reader will see,
even without an analysis of the World Trade Center dust, there is a ton
of evidence available that this type of incendiary was used. And for
the record, I do suspect that Jones is sincere in his conclusions.
Considerably less legitimate aspects
of the World Trade Center "investigation", yet hugely prominent, include
the following:
-
Descriptions of plane impacts "confused" with those of the collapses. I have been very careful in this article to not
confuse the two. All references to explosions in this article were
made in reference to the collapses or moments in time other than the
plane impacts
-
A bomb in the lobby of WTC 1 or
2. The damage was done by an elevator that came crashing down, followed
by a wave of burning jet fuel.
-
A bomb in the basement. What is
certain is that a 20-ton freight elevator with burning jet fuel
crashed down to the basement, causing widespread damage and a number of
burn victims. There are only two testimonies that describe damage of an
extent that could potentially indicate explosives, but this is anything
but certain. Who knows how much overpressure the falling elevator and
burning jet fuel may have caused. The two legitimate testimonies are
from Mike Pecoraro and Phillip Morelli. A much more prominent one is from the hugely popular William Rodriguez
- but I'll guarantee you right here right now that he has invented his
(later) story. His account live on 9/11 clearly describes the falling
elevator with burning fuel. Later on he changed his account to hearing a
bomb prior to the impact of the first plane and how everyone was "pushed up"
by it - completely contradicting every other witness from that day.
It's one hundred percent guaranteed disinformation - and the reason why
he has been promoted literally everywhere. The fact that he was an
associate of James Randi should make people think.
-
Nuclear weapons or other exotic weapons used in the destruction of the towers. They are as old as the way to Oklahoma.
-
Seismic spikes that indicate
massive underground explosions. We have to thank Christopher Bollyn for
that, who took claims from a number of scientists out of context. These
spikes were used as "evidence" for the detonation of mini-nukes and
could potentially be linked to the Israeli moving vans - fine with
Bollyn and his highly racist American Free Press. The fact is that
anyone who looks at the seismic data can see that there's a build up of
several seconds towards the peak, which coincides with rubble starting
to hit the ground. The scientists in question also later stated that
Bollyn had taken their statements out of context.
-
Fake phone calls. At least when
it comes to calls made from Flight 11 and Flight 175, there's little
reason to doubt that they took place. Betty Ong from Flight 11 explained
events over the course of several minutes and her account can he heard
on Youtube these days. According to her, the hijackers stabbed two
persons, sprayed what appeared to be tear gas or pepper spray in the
front portion of the plane, and locked themselves into the cockpit with
the pilot. Similar claims came from Flight 175, where the hijackers were
said to have used knives and what appeared to be pepper spray. In this
case both pilots were killed before the plane crashed.
-
Watch out for fake witness
testimonies made years after 9/11, which in the event of any new
investigation (à la HSCA) will undermine efforts to get to the bottom
of the case. These will need to be debunked, causing additional
confusion and leading to most people quickly giving up. I've come
across various examples of this.
-
Pods underneath Flight 11 and Flight 175 are bogus.
-
That other planes than Flight 11 and Flight 175 hit the buildings are obviously bogus too.
Several good (potential) leads to check out deeper
-
Background investigations of the dozens of leading 9/11 skeptics who promote no-757-at-Pentagon theories.
-
Figuring out how it is possible that the news media do not allow honest investigations and discussions on the topic of 9/11.
-
The use of explosives and
thermate at the World Trade Center. We should have had many times the
testimony that we have today. We also need more and better footage of
the collapses when it comes to audio. The same goes even more for World
Trade Center 7.
-
Reports of foreknowledge:
influential persons not being present at their office and the exact
whereabouts of some of the persons whose roles have been questioned.
-
The slow response of the air
force on 9/11, especially pertaining to Flight 77, which was allowed
to fly all the way back to Washington, D.C. and circle around the
Pentagon before crashing into it. We should have expert testimony on all
the defenses in Washington, D.C. of that period. We have next to
nothing on that.
-
The peculiar lives of the
hijackers in Venice, Florida. Daniel Hopsicker uncovered more than a few
interesting facts about them. However, the rest of the media has shown
zero interest in Atta and his entourage.
-
The connections of the CIA with
the ISI and Saudi intelligence, the two intelligence agencies who kept
in contact with Osama bin Laden after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Much more about that in part two of this article.
Numbers: who described seeing and hearing what exactly
At the end of this document
we will be taking a quick look at the audio and visual evidence for
explosives having been used. Back in 2005 one of things I set out to do
was find a |
video clip of the collapse
and hear for myself if it began with an explosion. It took a long time
to find a proper video, but after watching and listening to it I almost
fell from my chair. There actually appears to have been a very loud
explosion right when the towers began to come down. You can find a
screenshot of such a video on the right, together with a brief audio
clip. A more detailed discussion and several additional videos will be
discussed later on in this article.
Unfortunately it has become obvious that
microphones used by the media are primarily geared towards doing
interviews, thereby often muffling the sound of background explosions to
a considerable degree. This is unfortunate and makes witnesses all the
more important. |
|
One of the best videos
to hear the collapse sound (headphones!). A rumble, followed by a
thunderous boom - and only then a complete collapse of the tower. Even
the reporter himself calls it a "huge explosion". I'm not an expert, but
have been around high explosives and that's a very, very familiar
sound. |
Luckily there are many
such witnesses who actually describe one or more explosions preceding
the collapses.
On top of that, dozens of surviving firefighters
were absolutely convinced that numerous bombs were going off at the
World Trade Center site that morning. In a later stage these same
firemen clearly expressed bewilderment about the extreme heat below the
World Trade Center rubble, with below-surface temperatures of 1,500 to
2,000°F (800 to 1,100°C) not being controversial at all. One fire chief
at Ground Zero even told a reporter: "At one point I think they were about 2,800 degrees" (1,540 degrees Celsius), temperatures that had actually been measured by employees of Bechtel. [ 1]
These temperatures are just above the melting point of steel. Seeing
the evidence of steel beams literally having been fused together by the
heat in some locations, there's absolutely no doubt that temperatures
were this high immediately post-collapse. Temperatures like these also
mean that the numerous accounts of "molten steel" were accurate and not accidentally being confused with aluminum or some other metal. |
Many firemen seem to have
stopped just short of saying that something fishy had happened, more
than likely because it's not considered good manners or a career
enhancer to oppose |
Upper left: fused steel
and concrete block. Upper right and lower left: typical pictures
showing the extreme heat underneath the WTC pile of rubble. Lower right:
a September 16 overflight of a NASA plane showing hot spots up to 800
degrees fahrenheit (426 degrees celsius) at the WTC towers and - not
visible here - also at WTC 7. However, these were simply surface
temperatures, or close to it, as another overflight on September 23
showed the pile had cooled down, in complete contrast to the accounts
of firemen working there, who were still pulling out red hot steel beams
over a month after the attack. |
|
the opinions of immediate
superiors, the authorities or the media. And certainly in the early
stages of a tragic event like 9/11 the focus is not on figuring out what
happened, but on helping the victims. By the time anyone gets around to
making specific claims, the media is not paying attention anymore.
Looking at the faces of some of the firemen when
they are talking about explosions or the intense heat, one has to wonder
what they are thinking in private. Hopefully there will come a day that
the witnesses simply put up a few Youtube clips with their own
unfiltered opinions. However, we do have a lot already. Even the New
York Times captured many highly interesting statements, which were never
put in articles, but are nonetheless available in PDF form on their website through Google.
The numbers below are completely based on the
testimonies and visual descriptions that have been posted in full
further down in this article. I have been very careful not to select
quotes from people |
referring to the plane impacts. There are quite a few Youtube clips around in which witnesses talk about hearing explosions. But
then, upon careful analysis, it turns out to be a reference to one of
the plane impacts. So, not to worry about that - these have been
filtered out. I also went back to the original source in almost every
case and tried to provide as much context as possible, limiting the
possibility that things have been invented or taken out of context. If
the source has the affix "(Youtube)" it simply means that I personally
have seen this video clip. In time I'll try to relocate a lot of these clips again and upload them to the Youtube channel created for this page. |
Personally I hope that someone will
locate all the Youtube clips mentioned here, as well as all the
fully-sourced quotes, and puts them together in one long video. Right
now everything is still very much scattered around and mixed in with
nonsense and trivial stuff.
So, without further ado, here is the summary of witness statements contained in this article:
| WTC 1/2 |
|
|
Number of total witnesses/reports listed here on the collapses: |
|
147 |
Number of witnesses who said they heard one or more loud explosions: |
|
119 |
Number of witnesses who specifically referred to bombs or explosive devices (primarily that initiated the collapses): |
|
46 |
Number
of witnesses who were indicating that the WTC towers were brought down
by sequential explosions and/or a controlled demolition: |
|
19 |
Number of witnesses who reported seeing lower level flashes inside the building just before one of the collapses: |
|
4 |
| |
|
|
| Number
of witnesses found who reported that the North Tower was tilting over
or showing other signs of imminent collapse (likely rescue workers who
tried to keep themselves and others safe after the first sudden
collapse): |
|
3 |
| Number of witnesses found who reported that the collapses looked normal, without any signs of explosions or bombs: |
|
1 |
| |
|
|
| Relatively clear audio/video evidence for explosives: |
|
6 |
| WTC 1/2/7 post-collapse |
|
|
| Number of witnesses who spoke about molten steel and extreme heat below the WTC rubble in the weeks and months after 9/11: |
|
34 |
| FEMA report on heavy local sulfidation attacks on steel components: |
|
Confirmed |
| |
|
|
| WTC 7 |
|
|
|
|
2 |
| Audio evidence for explosives: |
|
3 |
| Expert testimony claiming it was controlled demolition: |
|
1 |
| Extreme heat specifically reported underneath WTC 7 rubble: |
|
2 |
As one can see, the evidence for controlled demolition of the Twin Towers based on |
Danny Jowenko,
owner of Jowenko Explosive Demolition, clearly showing his lack of 9/11
"Truth" background. Jowenko made no bones about it that he was
"absolute sure" that WTC 7 was demolished with explosives - which is
basically the only thing that makes sense. Going over the floor plan he
said it would be quite easy to do the same day if necessary and that it
may have been the preferred choice by building owner Larry Silverstein
(as well as the Blackstone Group) as the costs to replace the steel
beams would be enormous (mandatory when the steel has been exposed to
any kind of fire). However, Jowenko was not told of the testimonies of
Jennings and Hess that an explosion had already occurred in the building
early that morning. I conversed with him back in 2004 on Silverstein's
"pull it" comment, before anyone had heard of him, but apparently he
had not made the link to WTC 7. Early in 2011 I asked him to take a look
at these witness testimonies and videos in regard to WTC 1 and 2. He
didn't reply this time, which is not too strange considering the circus
that grew around him. I was planning on visiting him in person after
putting out this article - after all, he lives close-by. Unfortunately
he died in a single-car no-witness traffic accident in July 2011. Barry
Jennings had died earlier under unusual circumstances. Can't be sure, of
course, but if I were a demolition expert or witness to events at WTC
7, I would become very careful about speaking out in public. |
|
witness testimony alone is
not at all meager. In contrast, it is relatively strong. WTC 7 requires
a different approach. What is really bizarre is that almost no
witness reports have come out about this event, but the few that have
definitely indicate controlled demolition. Demolition expert Danny
Jowenko, who had no clue about WTC 7 having come down the same day as
the Twin Towers, explained that there's absolutely no question that the
building was brought down with explosives. He even indicated that it was
quite easy to do once given a floor plan of the building. He was not
told, however, about the accounts of Barry Jennings and Michael Hess that a massive explosion had already taken place in the lobby of the building early in the morning. But more than his usual "there's not much I can say about that" we wouldn't have had from him anyway.
Organizing the witness testimonies in a table like
the above one is not an exact science. Sometimes it's possible to
interpret statements in various ways. In some cases I've counted bystanders
who were nodding along with the person speaking, or only made very
brief statements in support of the primary witness. In other cases I
found a statement important enough to list below, but didn't put it in
the table. An example: Christopher Bollyn of American Free Press may
have added a fourth witness
to the flashes, but without a name of this witness I do not think the
account is reliable enough to be counted. Actually, if I'm very strict
(which most of the time I have been) there are only two witnesses to the
flashes, but one of them also spoke about his partner's similar observations. Personally I assumed the man
|
speaking the truth and
counted his partner as a separate witness. You may not agree, so
therefore, again: it's not an exact science - but nevertheless a good
reflection of witness reports from that day. |
WTC 1-2: Reports of explosions after impact and during collapses
-
September 11, 2001, NBC News Transcripts, 'Attack on America, 11:00 AM': "Chief
Albert Turi told me that he was here just literally 10 or 15 minutes
after the events that took place this morning. That is, the first crash.
... The chief of safe--the Chief of Safety of the Fire Department of
New York City told me that at--shortly after 9:00 he had roughly 10
alarms, roughly 200 men, in the building trying to effect rescues of
some of those civilians who were in there. And that, basically, he
received word of a possibility of a secondary device--that is another
bomb going off. He tried to get his men out as quickly as he could, but
he said that there was another explosion which took place. And then, an
hour after the first hit here, the first crash that took place, he said
there was another explosion that took place in one of the towers here.
So, obviously he--according to his theory, he thinks that there were
actually devices that were planted in the building. One of the secondary
devices, he thinks, that took place after the initial impact, was, he
thinks, may have been on the plane that crashed into one of the towers.
The second device, he thinks, he speculates, was probably planted in the
building. So, that's what we have been told by Albert Turi who is the
chief of safety for the New York City Fire Department. He told me that
just moments ago. Now we are continuing to hear explosions. We are
continuing to hear explosions here downtown. And what we've been told by
some of the fire officials is that there are some gas lines that
occasionally are exploding down there..." (Turi retired in 2002, along with many other supervisors and ordinary fireman in a "mass exodus".) August 7, 2002, New York Times, 'City's Fire Dept. Facing an Exodus of its Supervisors': "Scores
of New York City's Fire Department supervisors, including some of its
most senior surviving commanders, have retired since Sept. 11, and
hundreds more have notified their union that they expect to leave in the
next year. At the same time, the department's front-line firefighters
are retiring at more than double the usual rate, according to fire
officials. ... Also retiring is Albert Turi Jr., who was the
department's chief of safety... And of late, the rate of departure has
accelerated even more, with some 40 firefighters retiring every week on
average. A year ago, 40 firefighters might have retired in a typical
month.
October 23, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110142 (pdf on the site), interview with FDNY deputy assistant chief Albert Turi: "The
next thing I heard was Pete say what the fuck is this? And as my eyes
traveled up the building, and I was looking at the south tower,
somewhere about halfway up, my initial reaction was there was a
secondary explosion, and the entire floor area, a ring right around the
building blew out. I later realized that the building had started to
collapse already and this was the air being compressed and that is the
floor that let go."
-
Tyrone Johnson, one of three firemen catching a brake on 9/11, interviewed by a film crew and bystanders (Youtube) (FOIA release in December 2010, after a lawsuit): "[Fireman
1, a black man:] Yes it was. Definitely a secondary explosion. We were
inside waiting to go upstairs and on our way upstairs the whole fuckin'
place blew. It just collapsed on everybody inside the lobby. I don't
know about the first one [tower coming down from a secondary explosion].
But the second one, it was terrible. And there was a third one after
that one too. ... It was like three explosions after that [after the
plane crash]. We came in after the fire was going on already. We were in
the staging area inside the building, waiting to go upstairs. ... It
can't be more worse than this. You're in the building, trying to help
people, and it's exploding on you inside the building."
-
Jimmy Grillo, one of three firemen catching a brake on 9/11, interviewed by a film crew and bystanders (Youtube) (FOIA release in December 2010, after a lawsuit):
"People don't understand. There may be more [bombs]. Anyone of these
fucking buildings can blow up. This ain't done yet. ...
We were in the lobby gathering to go up to start
doing a search on the upper floors. As we were getting our gear on and
making our way to the stairway, there was a heavy duty explosion and
everybody just started running for the door. Everybody was trapped.
Eventually when the dust lifted, I saw some light and started screaming
for everybody to go out towards the light managed to get Tyrone out and a
couple other guys..."
-
Firefighter talking to Jimmy Grillo, who wants to start helping his trapped buddies again (Youtube) (FOIA release in December 2010): "Jimmy, don't go too close, Jimmy. They're still blowing up, Jimmy."
-
Fireman filmed in the WTC complex (Youtube): "There's a bomb in the building. Start clearing out."
-
New York Fire Department official on the radio (Youtube): "I got an eyewitness who said there was an explosion on floors 7 and 8, 7, 8."
-
New York Fire Department Official on the radio (Youtube): "And we've got another explosion on the tower, 10-13, 10-13."
-
Fireman on the radio (Youtube): "Tower 2, I've just had a major explosion and what appears to be a complete collapse surrounding the entire area."
-
Dusty fireman interviewed on 9/11 (Youtube): "We never even really got that close to the building. An explosion blew and knocked everybody over."
-
September 12, 2001, People.com, 'United in Courage': "Louie
Cacchioli, 51, is a firefighter assigned to Engine 47 in Harlem: We
were the first ones in the second tower after the plane struck. I was
taking firefighters up in the elevator to the 24th floor to get in
position to evacuate workers. On the last trip up a bomb went off. We
think there was bombs set in the building. I had just asked another
firefighter to stay with me, which was a good thing because we were
trapped inside the elevator and he had the tools to get out."
-
Engine 7 fireman in the documentary '911 – the
filmmakers': "The lobby was about six
stories high and the lobby looked as though a bomb had exploded there.
It's a ... all the glass was taken out, there were 10 foot by 10 foot, a
marble panels that were once walls that were loose from the wall of the
Trade Center." Could possibly be from the elevator falling down.
-
Evalle Sweezer, office worker (Youtube): "The
lobby was totally gone. ... A woman with her face blown off [lay here]
... As we were coming out, past the lobby, there was no lobby. So I
believe the bomb hit the lobby first. And a couple of seconds later the
first plane hit." Not counted. The lobby may have been damaged that bad by the falling elevator.
-
Engine 7 fireman in the documentary '911 – the
filmmakers': "I went around by the
freight elevator and I could see it was just blown. 30th floor. We hear
another ... explosion. And at that time we heard a huge explosion."
-
A group of Engine 7 firemen in the documentary '911 – the
filmmakers': Fireman one: "We made it at least two blocks and we started running.
Floor by floor it started popping out." Fireman two: (makes
sound and hand gestures to show how the floors popped out) "It
is if they had detonators..." Fireman one: "Yeah! detonators..." Fireman two: "It is if they had planned to take down the building…boom…boom
…boom…boom." Fireman one: "Yeah...detonators...all the way down, I watching it
and running."
-
Man in a New York Fire Department uniform states (Youtube): "... [we got?] so many people out, but then there were secondary explosions, and then the subsequent collapses." (talks very fast and the first part is somewhat hard to hear)
-
2002, Dennis Smith,
'Report from Ground Zero: The Story of the Rescue Efforts at the World
Trade Center', p. 18 (report of fireman Dennis tardio) man : "I
hear an explosion and I look up. It is as if the building is being
imploded, from the top floor down, one after another, boom, boom, boom."
-
2002,
Susan Hagen and Mary Carouba, 'Women at Ground Zero: Stories of Courage
and Compassion', pp. 65-66, 68 (account of army veteran and police
officer Sue Keane): "[It] sounded like bombs going off.
That's when the explosions happened. ... I knew something was going to
happen. ... It started to get dark, then all of a sudden there was this
massive explosion. ... [There was] another explosion [around the time
the North Tower came down]. That sent me and the two firefighters down
the stairs. ... I can't tell you how many times I got banged around.
Each one of those explosions picked me up and threw me. ... There was
another explosion, and I got thrown with two firefighters out onto the
street.""
-
2002, Cathy Trost and
Alicia C. Shepard, foreword by Tom Brokaw, 'Running Toward Danger -
Stories Behind the Breaking News of 9/11', p. 87: "John
Bussey | Foreign Editor, The Wall Street Journal: ... I heard this
metallic roar, looked up and saw what I thought was a very peculiar
sight of individual floors, one after the other exploding outward. I
thought to myself, "My God, they're going to bring the building down."
And they, whoever they are, had set charges. In fact, the building was
imploding down. I saw the explosions, and I thought, "This is not a good
place to be, because we're too close to the building, and it's too easy
for the building to topple over." So I went under the desk in the
office where I sought shelter." (Bussey gives no indication at a later point that he has came to a different conclusion)
-
2002, Chris Bull and
Sam Erman, 'At Ground Zero: 25 Stories From Young Reporters Who Were
There', p. 184: Beth Fertig, WNYC radio reporter and contributor to NPR: "The
Building came down so orderly, floor by floor, that I presumed it was a
controlled demolition. I hoped that it was. Maybe they all got the
people out and now they're bringing the building down to prevent mass
casualties."
-
2002, Cathy Trost and
Alicia C. Shepard, foreword by Tom Brokaw, 'Running Toward Danger -
Stories Behind the Breaking News of 9/11', p. 203: "Beth
Fertig | Reporter, WNYC Radio: I found out where the mayor was. He had
gone to a secret location in midtown. ... I spent the rest of the
afternoon at the mayor's command center. The reporters were
trying to figure out what happened. We were thinking that bombs had
brought the buildings down. The mayor talked to us and said he had no
evidence of bombs."
-
September 17, 2001, Christian Science Monitor, 'A Changed World', page 2 of 9: "Tom
Elliott was at work in his office at the Aon Corp., an insurance
brokerage firm, on the 103rd floor of the World Trade Center's other,
south tower. ... Elliott and two others headed down the building
stairwell, a narrow beige corridor with a yellow stripe painted down the
middle of concrete steps. They ran into a few other people as they
descended, but there still hadn't been any announcements, and the
absence of other escapees was making them feel as if they had
prematurely panicked. Then, as they reached the 70th floor, they heard
an announcement: The building was secure. No one needed to evacuate. One
woman in the small group said to Elliott, "Do you want to believe them?
Let's go!" They had descended three more floors when United Airlines
Flight 175 slammed into their own south tower like an arrow from a giant
crossbow [78th-84th floor]. It was 9:03 a.m. ... Although its
spectacularly televised impact was above Elliott, at first he and those
around him thought an explosion had come from below. An incredible noise
- he calls it an "exploding sound" - shook the building, and a tornado
of hot air and smoke and ceiling tiles and bits of drywall came flying
up the stairwell. "In front of me, the wall split from the bottom up,"
he says. ... In a flash of panic, people began fleeing higher into the
building. Then a few men began working on the crowd, calming people
down, saying that downstairs was the only way out. As they descended, a
few other survivors stumbled into the corridor. A construction painter,
his white T-shirt covered in blood, was helped downstairs by others. But
the stairwell was still far from jammed with evacuees. Elliott assumed
his was one of the final groups descending. They saw only two firemen
going up. They told them there had been an explosion near the 60th
floor."
-
2002, Dean E. Murphy, 'September 11: An Oral History', pp. 9-15 (Teresa Veliz): "Teresa Veliz was a manager for a software development firm. She was on the
47th floor of the North Tower when American 11 struck. Veliz was able to reach
the ground level at about the same time that the South Tower collapsed. Flung
to the ground in total darkness, Veliz and a colleague followed another person
who happened to have a flashlight. As she narrated later: "The flashlight
led us into Borders bookstore, up an escalator, and out to Church Street.
The explosions were going off everywhere. I was convinced that there were
bombs planted all over the place and someone was sitting at a control panel
pushing detonator buttons. I was afraid to go down Church Street towards Broadway,
but I had to do it. I ended up on Vesey Street. There was another explosion.
And another. I didn’t know which way to run."
-
Firefighter John Schroeder (Youtube): Apparently
interviewed by the Loose Change crew. Said he was saved by Willy
Rodriquez. Thinks bombs were in the building, just as his colleagues.
Comes across as overly dramatic. Together with Rodriquez and Loose
Change links... not going to cite.
-
May 26, 2002, New York Times, '102 Minutes: Last Words at the Trade Center': "Liz, this was a terrorist attack. I can hear explosions below me."
(The above quote is attributed to Edmund
McNally and supposedly was given in this New York Times article listed
as source. However, McNally and his wife Liz appear in this article,
but there's absolutely no reference to explosions. So this portion has
either been removed by the New York Times or it has been a mistake by
the 9/11 Truth Movement. However, Scott Forbes of Fiduciary Trust said
he knew this couple and the woman's claims about explosions.)
-
Fox Channel 5 News,
live on 9/11. Smoke is emerging from the base of the South Tower (which
has collapsed, unknown to the reporters): "[Narrator 1:] We
just heard that there was another explosion in the basement on one of
the lower levels of the World Trade Center. [Narrator 2:] It would seem
from that picture there that you are right, Dave. ... It certainly looks
like an awful lot of smoke. ... Now there seems to be coming a lot of
smoke from the lower portion of the World Trade Center. And we had a
report indicating that there was an explosion on the lower floors now."
-
Mat Meagher, reporter live on 9/11 (Youtube): "A
big explosion has just occurred. Everyone is running from the financial
district now. Smoke is filling the entire area. Let's go! Stop
shooting! Go!"
-
NBC Live coverage when the South Tower collapses - which the reporter can't see (Youtube): "We
are not exactly sure what happened, but there was an explosion on the
far side of one of the buildings from where we are standing. The
reverberation! And another explosion on the right hand side!"
-
Fox News, WCBS, Live during the first collapse (Youtube): "Suddenly,
while talking to an officer, who was questioning me about my press
credentials, we heard a very loud blast-explosion. We looked up and the
building literally began to collapse before us. ... People in the entire
perimeter, including myself, literally began to run for our lives. ...
Not clear now is why this explosion took place. Was it because of the
planes' dual attack this morning, or was there some other attack of
which there has been talk of on the street."
-
CBS 2, Live broadcast on 9/11 (Youtube): "CNN
is now reporting that there was a third explosion at the World Trade
Center. Probably an explosion from the ground that caused World Trade
Center 1 [she meant 2] to collapse on top of itself. Again, there was a
third explosion. It is unclear what caused it. Whether it was a bomb, or
whether the first [she means second] plane that crashed into the tower
had been booby-trapped with a bomb that was timed to explode later after
the crash had occurred."
-
Narrator on CNBC live on 9/11 (Youtube): "This
was clearly... The way the structure was collapsing... This was the
result of something that was planned. It's not accidental that the first
tower just happened to collapse and that the second tower just happened
to collapse in just the same way. How they accomplished this, we don't
know."
-
September 11, 2001, ABC News live coverage (Youtube): "[Reporter
Don Dahler:] The second building that was hit by the plane has just
completely collapsed. The entire building has just collapsed, as if a
demolition team set it off, when you see the old demolitions of these
old buildings, it folded down on itself, and it is not there any more.
... [Anchor Peter Jennings:] The southern Tower ... just collapsing on
itself. ... We have no idea what caused this. Anybody who has ever
watched a building being demolished on purpose knows that if you are
going to do it on purpose you have to get at the under-infrastructure of
a building and bring it down." ... "[Don Dahler:] Peter, eh, what
appeared to happen from my vantage point, the top part of the building
was totally involved in fire. There appeared to be no effort possible to
put that fire out. It looked like the top part of that building was so
weakened by the fire that the weight of it collapsed the rest of the
building. That's what appeared to happen. I did not see anything
happening at the base of the building. It all appeared to start at the
top and then just collapsed the building by the sheer weight of the top.
There was no explosion at the base part of it. But I did see that the
top part of it started to collapse. The walls started to bulge out."
-
CNN anchor about the collapses that took place some time earlier: "It almost looks like one of those planned implosions, but of course
there was nothing planned and it was not an implosion as you see."
-
September 11, 2001, Press Association, 'Other blasts may have toppled towers': "Simon
Reeve, author of The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef: Osama Bin Laden and The
Future of Terrorism, said: "It is the worst terrorist attack in living
history with an astonishing level of planning involved and
co-ordination. "It will have involved months and probably years of
planning. The terrorists could have been living in America for some
time. "I cannot see how the World Trade Centre could have collapsed just
on impact from the aircraft. "I suspect that there must have been
ground level explosions in the buildings possibly involving enormous
amounts of explosives or another type of device." Mr Reeve speculated
that the terrorist attacks were the work of Osama Bin Laden and his
supporters. He said: "There is no doubt that America will look for the
culprits and use force against them. If it is the work of Osama Bin
Laden it is very likely that America will use overwhelming force against
Afghanistan and Laden's supporters.""
-
September 11, 2001, Albuquerque Journal, 'Explosives Planted In Towers, N.M. Tech Expert Says': "Televised
images of the attacks on the World Trade Center suggest that explosives
devices caused the collapse of both towers, a New Mexico Tech explosion
expert said Tuesday. The collapse of the buildings appears "too
methodical" to be a chance result of airplanes colliding with the
structures, said Van Romero, vice president for research at New Mexico
Institute of Mining and Technology. "My opinion is, based on the
videotapes, that after the airplanes hit the World Trade Center there
were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers
to collapse," Romero said. Romero is a former director of the Energetic
Materials Research and Testing Center at Tech, which studies explosive
materials and the effects of explosions on buildings, aircraft and other
structures."
-
Immediately after the
South Tower collapse, person videotaping the WTC from several miles away
or a person standing next to him (Youtube): "I'm not going any closer. They had it wired for explosives obviously. Obviously there was a truck in there with explosives."
-
Ron Saladino, a WTC7
employee who moved out of the building soon after the first impact,
interviewed live on CNN on 9/11 (Youtube): "I turned and
looked around and the southern World Trade Center began to just buckle.
About 50 consecutive bangs and it fell down like a waterfall." (The reporter ignored this statement)
-
Woman interviewed by the Reuters (aired by the BBC) live on 9/11 (Youtube): "Not
much is being said about the people on the ground, but that was one
hell of an explosion when the building collapsed. It appeared to
collapse..."
-
Witness live on the MSNBC News on 9/11 (Youtube):
"I heard an explosion. At that point I got knocked out. I don't
remember anything. Then I got up. And I remember walking out. And it was
just total darkness in the corridors. I was in a dentist's office,
because there were dentist's chairs and tools. I looked out the windows
'cause the windows had exploded and the street below caved in. The whole
street caved in. You could see below the street. And at that point
there were like fireballs coming up. And I said, "alright, I'm not gonna
make it." I went back into the room I was in, shut the doors, put
towels on the bottom of each door."
-
2002, Cathy Trost and
Alicia C. Shepard, foreword by Tom Brokaw, 'Running Toward Danger -
Stories Behind the Breaking News of 9/11', p. 239: "Carol
Marin | Contributor, CBS news editor: ... I remember seeing this giant
ball of fire come out of the earth as I heard this roar..." (She
was very close to the North Tower when it collapsed. Hearing her full
testimony it is not clear if the "fireball" was the dust cloud hitting
the ground and growing from there or if it was a true fireball coming up
from the ground. In various statements she did say that she heard the
tower "blow" or "explode".)
-
Anne Thompson for NBC, live on 9/11 (Youtube): "As
soon as I got outside I heard a second explosion and another rumble.
... The chandeliers shook. Again black smoke filled the air. Within five
minutes we were covered again with more soot and more dust. And then a
fire marshal came and said we had to leave, because if there was a
third explosion this building might not last."
-
Unknown witness who was going down the stairwell of WTC 1 when WTC 2 collapsed (video not available anymore): "...and all of a sudden this huge cloud of dark gray smoke comes shooting up the stairway ... and it was hot - very, very hot."
-
Brad Waite, cameraman interviewed on 9/11, FOIA (Youtube): "First
we heard the explosions. Started shooting in the Twin Towers. We could
see tons of debris coming down. And then it sounded like another
explosion to the right of that which I believe was the front, which was
once the Marriott, just totally gone.
-
A black woman, covered in soot, interviewed by ABC (Youtube): "We
saw a shadow which looked like a plane. Next thing we know it's boom,
boom and the floors started shaking. And then we saw debris fall down.
And the next thing we know we had to get out of the building. We stuck
on the stairs for a while. We finally got down to the lobby [from 82th
floor of WTC1]. And then there was this big explosion. I don't know what
it was. Just a cloud like what you just saw. ... That's what we went
through before we came out of the building. Then when we get out of the
building then another smoke cloud came."
-
Witness 1 from a Youtube video (a considerable time after 9/11, so maybe not the most reliable): "The
thing that got me suspicious was when I saw the replay of everything
the next week and the weeks after, they took the explosions out. That's
when I knew something was up. And the detonations that took both
buildings down were exactly identical. First it started off with about -
I'm just guessing - six or seven seconds of this very low frequency
rumble. Then the detonations started. And they went boom! Boom! Boom! A
little less than a second apart. ... It was the exact, exact same
series of detonations [with the second collapse] ... I could tell you
that the air pressure changed. It was like being in a submarine 300 feet
below the surface." Not counted.
-
Witness 2 from a Youtube video (a considerable time after 9/11): "As
the first tower came down there were a series of explosions. It was
like boom! Boom! You could hear the echos of the explosions echoing off
the different buildings."
-
Witness interviewed live on 9/11 (Youtube): "Then
somebody said that they saw an airliner go into one of the towers.
Then, I don't know, an hour later than that, we had that big explosion
from much, much lower [appears mystified]. I still don't know what on
earth caused that."
-
Reporter for CNN live on 9/11:
"We've heard reports of secondary explosions after the aircraft
impacted, whether or not there was something else at the base of the
towers, that in fact were the coup de grace to bring them to the
ground."
-
Witness to CNN live on 9/11 (Youtube): "It
just went baboom, just like a bomb went off. ... We were finally
getting to the bottom, we were coming out ... and another explosion. It
sent everyone flying."
-
Witness on a hospital bed in a clip that reads 'America Responds', filmed on 9/11 (Youtube): "And
all of a sudden it sounded like gunfire -- you know, bang bang bang
bang bang -- then all of a sudden three big explosions."
-
Witness on an unknown TV show (Youtube): "I
was about five blocks away when I heard explosions -- three thuds --
and turned around to see the building we just got out of tend to tip
over and fold in on itself."
-
9/11 cop on ABC (Youtube): "There were numerous secondary explosions taking place in that building [Twin Towers]. There were continuous explosions."
-
September 11, 2001, New York Times, 'Thousands Feared Dead as World Trade Center Is Toppled', p. 3 of 4: "Closer to the World Trade Center, Ross Milanytch described seeing "small explosions on each floor."" Also see next article.
-
September 12, 2001, New York Times, ''U.S. Attacked': "Police officers warned people in the vicinity to move north, that the
buildings could fall, but most people found that unthinkable. They stayed
put or gravitated closer. Abruptly, there was an ear-splitting noise. The
south tower shook, seemed to list in one direction and them began to come
down, imploding upon itself. It looked like a demolition,” said Andy
Pollock. It started exploding,” said Ross Milanytch, 57, who works at
nearby Chase Manhattan Bank. “It was about the 70th floor. And each
second another floor exploded out for about eight floors, before the cloud
obscured it all." ... People started walking briskly north until the premonition
became real — another horrifying eruption, as one floor after another
seemed to detonate. ... Ross Milanytch: 'The dust was about an inch and a half
thick on the ground.'" (http://www.asne.org/index.cfm?ID=3423)
-
September 11, 2001, BBC, 'Eyewitnesses tell of horror': "There was smoke everywhere. I heard the bomb and saw both buildings crumble like biscuits," Ms Keller said."
-
November
17, 2005, Christopher Bollyn of American Free Press (granted, not the
most reliable source; then again, flashes have been reported by a few
other witnesses and undoubtedly is a very sensitive subject), 'Scientist
Supports 9-11 Demolition Theory': "This is consistent with
an eyewitness account given to me shortly after 9-11. The eyewitness
was standing on Church Street looking at the South Tower when he
observed "a number of brief light sources being emitted from inside the
building between floors 10 and 15." The emissions of light were
accompanied by "a crackling sound," and occurred immediately before the
tower collapsed, the witness said."
-
Neil deGrasse Tyson on
the website of the Planetary Society, of which he was vice-president
(put up an email dated September 12, 2001): "I hear a second explosion in WTC2, then a loud, low-frequency rumble
that precipitates the unthinkable -- a collapse of all the floors above the
point of explosion. ... I hear another explosion followed by a now all-too familiar rumble
that signaled the collapse of WTC1. ... I saw the iconic antenna on this
building descend straight down in an implosion twinning the first." (used to be located at: www.planetary.org/html/society/advisors/sept11account.html)
-
An account of an anonymous (and very religious) person that appeared on the internet: "So they escorted us thru the exit of World Trade 2 and I had just reached
the revolving door of the building that I heard a loud explosion and the whole
building collapsed."
-
December 6, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110253 (pdf on the site), interview with firefighter Richard Banaciski: "We
were there I don't know, maybe 10, 15 minutes and then I just remember
there was just an explosion. It seemed like on television they blow up
these buildings. It seemed like it was going all the way around like a
belt, all these explosions."
-
Unknown firefighter,
soon after the South Tower collapse, pushing people away from the North
Tower (NIST FOIA: Release 10, WTCI-329-I-#5, Youtube): "We are walking back, because the building is about to blow up. Moving back. Flames. Debris coming down."
-
January 17, 2002, New York Times, file no. 9110501 (pdf on the site), interview with firefighter Thomas Turilli: "[The
collapse] almost actually that day sounded like bombs going off, like
boom, boom, boom, like seven or eight, and then just a huge wind gust...
I looked to my left and actually I noticed the tower was down. I didn't
even know that it was when we were in there. It just seemed like a huge
explosion. "
-
October 10, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110035 (pdf on the site), interview with firefighter Daniel Rivera: "It
was a frigging noise. At first I thought it was -- do you ever see
professional demolition where they set the charges on certain floors and
then you hear “pop, pop, pop, pop, pop”? That’s exactly what -- because
I thought it was that. When I heard that frigging noise, that’s when I
saw the building coming down."
-
Firefighter Angel Rivera (Youtube audio): "When
we hit the 19th floor something horrendous happened. It was like a bomb
went off. We thought we were dead. The whole building shook. The door
to the hallway into the hotel blew off like somebody threw it all over
the place. We were thrown on the floor. The building was still shaking
and we're still hearing explosions going on everywhere. So we decided,
"let's get out of here"."
-
December 10, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110290 (pdf on the site), interview with firefighter Kenneth Rogers: "Meanwhile
we were standing there with about five companies and we were just
waiting for our assignment and then there was an explosion in the south
tower, which, according to this map, this exposure just blew out the
flames. A lot of guys left at that point. I kept watching. Floor after
floor after floor. One floor under another after another and when it hit
about the fifth floor, I figured it was a bomb, because it looked like a
synchronized deliberate kind of thing. I was there in '93."
-
January 10, 2002, New York Times, file no. 9110439 (pdf on the site), interview with firefighter Stephen Viola: "...
that's when the south tower collapsed, and it sounded like a bunch of
explosions. You heard like loud booms, but I guess it was all just stuff
coming down, and then we got covered with rubble and dust, and I
thought we'd actually fallen through the floor..."
-
November 7, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110192 (pdf on the site), interview with EMS captain Karin Deshore: "Whatever
this explosion [the collapse] was simply sucked all the oxygen out of
the air. ... Somewhere around the middle of the world trade center,
there was this orange and red flash coming out. Initially it was just
one flash. Then this flash just kept popping all the way around the
building and that building had started to explode. The popping sound,
and with each popping sound it was initially an orange and then a red
flash came out of the building and then it would just go all around the
building on both sides as far as I could see. These popping sounds and
the explosions were getting bigger, going both up and down and then all
around the building. I went inside and I told everybody that the other
building or there was an explosion occurring up there and I said I think
we have another major explosion."
-
December 10, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110285 (pdf on the site), interview with Engine 47 lieutenant William Wall: "At
that time, we heard an explosion. We looked up and the building was
coming down right on top of us, so we ran up West Street. ... Oh, when
we came out of the building and we were walking across West Street when
we first got out of the building, we're walking across the street and
all you heard was like bombs going off above your head. You couldn't see
it. It was just cloudy. And we found out later it was the military
jets. That was an eerie sound. You couldn't see it and all you heard was
like a "boom" and it just kept going. We couldn't see 50 feet above our
head because of the dust. So we didn't know if it was bombs going off
or whatever, but we didn't want to stay there. "
-
October
3, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110008 (pdf on the site), interview
with NYFD assistant commissioner Stephen Gregory: "I know I
was with an officer from Ladder 146, a Lieutenant Evangelista, who
ultimately called me up a couple of days later just to find out how I
was. We both for whatever reason -- again, I don't know how valid this
is with everything that was going on at that particular point in time,
but for some reason I thought that when I looked in the direction of the
Trade Center before it came down, before No. 2 came down, that I saw
low-level flashes. In my conversation with Lieutenant Evangelista, never
mentioning this to him, he questioned me and asked me if I saw
low-level flashes in front of the building, and I agreed with him
because I thought... I saw a flash flash flash and then it looked like
the building came down. ... No [the flashes were not near the fire], the
lower level of the building. You know like when they demolish a
building, how when they blow up a building, when it falls down? That's
what I thought I saw. And I didn't broach the topic to him, but he asked
me. He said I don't know if I'm crazy, but I just wanted to ask you
because you were standing right next to me. He said did you see anything
by the building? And I said what do you mean by see anything? He said
did you see any flashes? I said, yes, well, I thought it was just me. He
said no, I saw them, too... it's just strange that two people sort of
say the same thing and neither one of us talked to each other about it.
... I know about the explosion on the upper floors. This was like eye
level. I didn't have to go like this. Because I was looking this way.
I'm not going to say it was on the first floor or the second floor, but
somewhere in that area I saw to me what appeared to be flashes. I don't
know how far down this was already. I mean, we had heard the noise but,
you know, I don't know."
-
January 22, 2002, New York Times, file no. 9110505 (pdf on the site), interview with firefighter Craig Carlsen: "I
guess about three minutes later you just heard explosions coming from
building two, the south tower. It seemed like it took forever, but there
were about ten explosions. At the time I didn't realize what it was. We
realized later after talking and finding out that it was the floors
collapsing to where the plane had hit. ... You did hear the explosions
[when the North Tower came down]. ... The second one coming down, you
knew the explosions. Now you're very familiar with it."
-
November 9, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110205 (pdf on the site), interview with FDNY captain Michael Donovan: "Anyway,
with that I was listening, and there was an incredibly loud rumbling. I
never got to look up. People started running for the entrances to the
parking garages. They started running for the entrances. I started
running without ever looking up. The roar became tremendous. I fell on
the way to the parking garages. Debris was starting to fall all around
me. I got up, I got into the parking garages, was knocked down by the
percussion. I thought there had been an explosion or a bomb that they
had blown up there. The Vista International Hotel was my first
impression, that they had blown it up. I never got to see the World
Trade Center coming down."
-
October 9, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110017 (pdf on the site), interview with FDNY lieutenant Gregg Hansson: "Then
a large explosion took place. In my estimation that was the tower
coming down, but at that time I did not know what that was. I thought
some type of bomb had gone off. I was, I believe, ahead of the rest of
the firefighters and officers there. I made it to the corner, and I took
about four running steps this way when you could feel the rush of the
wind coming at you."
-
December 26, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110386 (pdf on the site), interview with firefighter Timothy Julian: "We
came out from 90 West, made a left, headed east, and right when we got
to the corner of Washington and Albany, that's when I heard the building
collapse. First I thought it was an explosion. I thought maybe there
was bomb on the plane, but delayed type of thing, you know secondary
device. ... You know, and I just heard like an explosion and then
cracking type of noise, and then it sounded like a freight train,
rumbling and picking up speed, and I remember I looked up, and I saw it
coming down."
-
December 3, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110216 (pdf on the site), interview with FDNY safety command chief Art Lakiotes: "Tower
one now comes down. Same thing but this time some of us take off
straight down West Street, because we realized later on, subconsciously
we wanted to be near buildings. We all thought it was secondary
explosives or more planes or whatever."
-
December 12, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110319 (pdf on the site), interview with Ladder 22 firefighter John Malley: "We
were walking into darkness. As we walked through those revolving doors
[of the South Tower], that's when we felt the rumble. I felt the
rumbling, and then I felt the force coming at me. I was like, what the
hell is that? In my mind it was a bomb going off. The pressure got so
great, I stepped back behind the columns separating the revolving doors.
Then the force just blew past me. It blew past me it seemed for a long
time. In my mind I was saying what the hell is this and when is it going
to stop? Then it finally stopped, that pressure which I thought was a
concussion of an explosion. It turns out it was the down pressure wind
of the floors collapsing on top of each other. At that point everything
went black, and then the collapse came. It just rained on top of us.
Everything came. It rained debris forever."
-
October 16 , 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110098 (pdf on the site), interview with FDNY assistant commissioner James Drury: "We
were in the process of getting some rigs moved when I turned, as I
heard a tremendous roar, explosion, and saw that the first of the two
towers was starting to come down. ... When the dust started to settle, I
headed back down towards the World Trade Center and I guess I came
close to arriving at the corner of Vesey and West again where we started
to hear the second roar. That was the north tower now coming down. I
should say that people in the street and myself included thought that
the roar was so loud that the explosive - bombs were going off inside
the building. Obviously we were later proved wrong. ... The sight of the
jumpers was horrible and the turning around and seeing that first tower
come down was unbelievable. The sound it made. As I said I thought the
terrorists planted explosives somewhere in the building. That's how loud
it was, crackling explosive, a wall."
-
October 1, 2001, New
York Times, file no. 9110001 (pdf on the site), interview with FDNY
deputy commissioner for administration Thomas Fitzpatrick: "Then
the building started to come down. My initial reaction was that this
was exactly the way it looks when they show you those implosions on TV. I
would have to say for three or four seconds anyway, maybe longer. I was
just watching."
-
January 9, 2002, New York Times, file no. 9110434 (pdf on the site), interview with firefighter Kevin Gorman: "Then
the building started to come down. My initial reaction was that this
was exactly the way it looks when they show you those implosions on TV. I
would have to say for three or four seconds anyway, maybe longer. I was
just watching."
-
October 12, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110065 (pdf on the site), interview with FDNY lieutenant Thomas Fitzpatrick: "I
looked up, and the building exploded, the building that we were very
close to, which was one tower. The whole top came off like a volcano.
... So now both towers have been hit by a plane. The north tower was
burning. So the explosion, what I realized later, had to be the start of
the collapse. It was the way the building appeared to blowout from both
sides. I'm looking at the face of it, and all we see is the two sides
of the building just blowing out and coming apart like this, as I said,
like the top of a volcano."
-
October 25, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110166 (pdf on the site), interview with battalion chief Brian Dixon: "I
was watching the fire, watching the people jump and hearing a noise and
looking up and seeing -- it actually looked -- the lowest floor of fire
in the south tower actually looked like someone had planted explosives
around it because the whole bottom I could see -- I could see two sides
of it and the other side -- it just looked like that floor blew out. I
looked up and you could actually see everything blew out on the one
floor. I thought, geez, this looks like an explosion up there, it blew
out. Then I guess in some sense of time we looked at it and realized,
no, actually it just collapsed. That's what blew out the windows, not
that there was an explosion there but that windows blew out. The
realization hit that it's going to fall down, the top's coming off. I
was still thinking -- there was never a thought that this whole thing is
coming down. I thought that that blew out and stuff is starting to fly
down. The top is going to topple off there."
-
December 5, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110238 (pdf on the site), interview with firefighter Keith Murphy:
"We came through what was a revolving door and it brings you into the
North Tower. ... There was tremendous damage in the lobby. There was
already things that were fallen or cracked, a lot of structural wall
damage and ceiling damage that you could see. There was also about four
or five inches of water on the floor. ... At the end of this elevator
lobby there was, it looked to me like something had exploded. I don't
remember how I heard it or who said it, but someone said I think an
elevator - when the plane hit it severed the elevator cable and it came
down and crashed. I don't know hundred percent if that's what happened,
but it looked to me like that could have been true. It looked like
something had fallen down, hit and exploded out. I mean the whole area
around it was maybe 25, 30 feet of really severe damage. ... We are
standing there and the first thing that happened, which I still think is
strange to me, the lights went out. Completely pitch black. Since we
are in that core little area of the building, there is no natural light.
No nothing, I didn't see a thing. Right before the lights went out, I
had heard a distant boom, boom, boom, sounded like three explosions. I
don't know what it was at the time. I would have said they sounded like
bombs, but it was boom, boom, boom and then the lights all go out. I
would say about 3, 4 seconds, all of a sudden this tremendous roar. It
sounded like being in a tunnel with the train coming at you. All of a
sudden I could feel the floor started to shake and sway. We were being
thrown like literally off our feet, side to side, getting banged around
and then a tremendous wind started to happen. It probably lasted maybe
15 seconds - 10 to 15 seconds. It seemed like hurricane force wind. It
would blow you off your feet."
-
December 11, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110288 (pdf on the site), interview with firefighter William Reynolds: "I
said, 'Chief, they're evacuating the other building [WTC 1], right?'
He said, 'No.' ... I said, 'Why not? They blew up the other one.' I
thought they blew it up with a bomb. I said, 'If they blew up the one,
you know they're gonna blow up the other one.'"
-
October 9, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110020 (pdf on the site), interview with Ladder 18 firefighter Kevin Murray: "When
the tower started -- there was a big explosion that I heard and someone
screamed that it was coming down and I looked away and I saw all the
windows domino -- you know, dominoeing up and then come down."
-
October 10, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110030 (pdf on the site), interview with EMS lieutenant Patrick Scaringello: "I
started to treat patients on my own when I heard the explosion from up
above. I looked up, I saw smoke and flame and then I saw the top tower
tilt, start to twist and lean. ... I was assisting in pulling more
people out from debris, when I heard the second tower explode."
-
October 3, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110003 (pdf on the site), interview with EMS division chief Mark Steffens: "[When
driving on West Street and one of the towers was collapsing] That's
when we heard this massive explosion and I saw this thing rolling
towards us. It looked like a fireball and then thick, thick black
smoke."
-
November 7, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110193 (pdf on the site), interview with EMS operations captain Janice Olszewski: "I
didn't know if it was an explosion. I didn't know it was a collapse at
that point. I thought it was an explosion or a secondary device, a bomb,
the jet -- plane exploding, whatever."
-
October 17, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110101 (pdf on the site), interview with EMS paramedic Neil Sweeting: "You
heard a big boom, it was quiet for about ten seconds. Then you could
hear another one. Now I realize it was the floors starting to stack on
top of each other as they were falling. It was spaced apart in the
beginning, but then it got to just a tremendous roar and a rumble that I
will never forget."
-
October 30, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110172 (pdf on the site), interview with EMS captain Jay Swithers: "I
took a quick glance at the building and while I didn't see it falling, I
saw a large section of it blasting out, which led me to believe it was
just an explosion. I thought it was a secondary device, but I knew that
we had to go."
-
October 25, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110156 (pdf on the site), interview with EMT David Timothy: "The next thing I knew, you started hearing more explosions. I guess this is when the second tower started coming down."
-
November 7, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110198 (pdf on the site), interview with battalion chief John Sudnik: "The
best I can remember, we were just operating there, trying to help out
and do the best we could. Then we heard a loud explosion or what sounded
like a loud explosion and looked up and I saw tower two start coming
down. Crazy."
-
North Tower collapse witness Paul Lemos interviewed live on 9/11 (Youtube): "All
of a sudden I looked up and twenty stories below ... the fire I saw,
from the corner, boom! Boom! Boom! Booboobooboom! [uses his hands to
show how the floors were popping out] Just like 20 straight hits. It
just went down. And then I saw the whole building just [go] down. And as
the bombs were going people just started running. I sat there and just
watched. A few of them exploded and at that point I just started running
for my life. [interviewer: "Because the top tipped over..."] No no no!
It went straight down. Now, they told me afterwards it wasn't
explosions. I was talking to one of the architects that they pulled in,
because he was talking to me about it. He said, "What did you see?" I
said I saw the fire and when I looked up ... and I could see the corner
and it just started going pop! Boom! Boom!"
-
(Skeptic) Gravy on
forums.randi.org. about the statements of Paul Isaac Jr., FDNY Auxiliary
Fire Lieutenant (NY911truth.org for a long time floated false
quotations attributed to him): "So the true statement was
that I heard explosions - not bombs - as I couldn't tell what the sounds
were, as I was blocks away and can not confirm what the noise was. As I
was approaching City Hall, the North Tower began the collapse. I heard
what sounded like thunder just prior to the collapse, then the popping
as the tower fell. I had my radio scanner and there were reports of
explosions within the complex over the PD and PAPD frequencies. As I
made my way closer, I could pick up on the FD Handie Talkie frequencies
and it sounded like hell. No one knew what was going to happen next,
but when the second tower began its fall there were what sounded like
loud popping coming from the tower as well as a sucking sound like
reverse air pressure."
-
September 11, BBC, 'Eyewitnesses tell of horror': "AP reporter Dunstan Prial said he heard a sucking sound just before the first building collapsed."
-
September 12, 2001, Los Angeles Times, 'America Attacked': "There were reports of an explosion right before the tower fell,
then a strange sucking sound, and finally the sound of floors collapsing.
Then came a huge surge of air, followed by a vast cloud of dirt, smoke, dust,
paper and debris. Windows shattered. People screamed and dived for cover...Not
long afterward, at 10:30 a.m., the second tower of the World Trade Center
collapsed. The top of the building exploded with smoke and dust. There were
no flames, just an explosion of debris, and then more vast clouds swept down
to the streets. People were knocked to the ground on their faces as they ran
from the building."
-
January 23, 2002, New York Times, file no. 9110486 (pdf on the site), interview with EMT
James McKinley: "So we get back over
to 222 Broadway [about 200 yards from the WTC complex] and we get inside
and I'm telling everybody: 'Listen, ... we're going to get out of here
because tower 1 is going to come down [too]. ... As we're walking to
the back of the building ... We start walking back there and then I
heard a ground level explosion and I'm like holy shit, and then you
heard that twisting metal wreckage again."
-
November 1, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110184 (pdf on the site), interview with EMT
Gregg Brady: "We were standing
underneath and Captain Stone was speaking again. We heard -- I heard 3
loud explosions. I look up and the north tower is coming down now, 1
World Trade Center. ... At that time, when I heard the 3 loud
explosions, I started running west on Vesey Street towards the water."
-
October 25, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110162 (pdf on the site), interview with paramedic Kevin Darnowski: "At
that time I started walking back up towards Vesey Street. I heard three
explosions, and then we heard like groaning and grinding, and tower two
[the South Tower] started to come down."
-
November 1, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110183 (pdf on the site), interview with EMT Orlando Martinez: "There was an explosion and after we started running..."
-
November 28, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110213 (pdf on the site), interview with EMT Linda McCarthy: "I thought the plane was exploding, or another plane hit. I had no idea it was coming down..."
-
October 21, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110072 (pdf on the site), interview with EMT James McKinley: "After
that I heard this huge explosion, I thought it was a boiler exploding
or something. Next thing you know this huge cloud of smoke is coming at
us, so we’re running. ... They said that the Air Force shot one down in
Pennsylvania. But they later found out that they had a struggle [crash
happened at 10:06]. At this point, something happened. I think we heard
some explosions or something [North Tower collapse was on 10:28], so the
dispatcher starts telling us to go up to 23rd street and Chelsea Piers.
My partner’s like maybe it’s gas or something, not just explosive gas.
Not like Con Edison gas but like sarin gas or something like that."
-
November 9, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110202 (pdf on the site), interview with EMT Julio Marrero: "I
was screaming from the top of my lungs, and I must have been about ten
feet away from her and she couldn't even hear me, because the building
was so loud, the explosion, that she couldn't even hear me."
-
October 10, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110037 (pdf on the site), interview with EMT Juan Rios: "I
didn't know if it was an explosion. I didn't know it was a collapse at
that point. I thought it was an explosion or a secondary device, a bomb,
the jet -- plane exploding, whatever."
-
October 16, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110093 (pdf on the site), interview with EMT Michael Ober: "Then
we heard a rumble, some twisting metal, we looked up in the air, and to
be totally honest, at first, I don't know exactly -- but it looked to
me just like an explosion. It didn't look like the building was coming
down, it looked like just one floor had blown completely outside of it. I
was sitting there looking at it. I just never thought they would ever
come down, so I didn't think they were coming down."
-
January 23, 2002, New York Times, file no. 9110486 (pdf on the site), interview with EMT
Jason Charles: "I grabbed her and the
Lieutenant picked her up by the legs and we start walking over slowly
to the curb, and then I heard an explosion from up, from up above ...
then I turned around and looked up and that's when I saw the tower
coming down. ... [With the North Tower:] We start walking back there and
then I heard a ground level explosion and I'm like holy shit, and then
you heard that twisting metal wreckage again."
-
December 30, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110412 (pdf on the site), interview with firefighter James Curran: "A
guy started screaming to run. When I got underneath the north bridge I
looked back and you heard it, I heard like every floor went chu-chu-chu.
Looked back and from the pressure everything was getting blown out of
the floors before it actually collapsed. "
-
January 2, 2002, New York Times, file no. 9110488 (pdf on the site), interview with Engine 202 firefighter Timothy Burke: "Then
the building popped, lower than the fire, which I learned was I guess,
the aviation fuel fell into the pit, and whatever floor it fell on
heated up really bad and that's why it popped at that floor. That's the
rumor I heard. But it seemed like I was going: 'Oh, my god, there is a
secondary device because the way the building popped.' I thought it was
an explosion."
-
October 12, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110064 (pdf on the site), interview with Battalion chief Dominick DeRubbio: "This
one here [the South Tower]. It was weird how it started to come down.
It looked like it was a timed explosion, but I guess it was just the
floors starting to pancake one on top of the other."
-
December 6, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110251 (pdf on the site), interview with firefighter Edward Cachia: "As
my officer and I were looking at the south tower, it just gave. It
actually gave at a lower floor, not the floor where the plane hit,
because we originally had thought there was like an internal detonation
explosives because it went in succession, boom, boom, boom, boom, and
then the tower came down."
-
December 4, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110224 (pdf on the site), interview with Ladder 11 firefighter Frank Campagna: "That's
when [the North Tower] went. I looked back. You see three explosions
and then the whole thing coming down. I turned my head and everybody was
scattering."
-
October 31, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110179 (pdf on the site), interview with New York Fire Department chief
Frank Cruthers: "And while I was
still in that immediate area, the south tower, 2 World Trade Center,
there was what appeared to be at first an explosion. It appeared at the
very top, simultaneously from all four sides, materials shot out
horizontally. And then there seemed to be a momentary delay before you
could see the beginning of the collapse."
-
October 9, 2001, New York Times, file no. 9110019 (pdf on the site), interview with Engine 28 firefighter
Brian Becker: "[When] we were in the
stairway heading up, the other plane probably hit the other tower. I
would say -- but we weren't aware of that. We had very poor handy-talkie
communications. We didn't hear much of anything. There must have been
Maydays galore out in the street. We didn't hear any of them. I didn't.
The chief didn't apparently either. ... I 'd say we were in the 30th or
31st, 32nd floor, or something like that ... when there was a very loud
roaring sound and a very loud explosion, and the -- it felt like there
was an explosion above us, and I had a momentary concern that our
building was collapsing . ... We didn't know, but apparently that was
the other building falling. ... [after this event, no one was going up
anymore and a total evacuation of firefighter personnel began] ... So I
think that the building was really kind of starting to melt. We were --
like, the melt down was beginning. The collapse hadn't begun, but it was
not a fire any more up there. It was like -- it was like that -- like
smoke explosion on a tremendous scale going on up there."
-
July
20, 2005, Greg Szymanski interview with firefighter Louie Cacchioli
(unreliable conspiracy source, although there's not that much reason to
question this interview as Cacchioli talked about his experiences
immediately after 9/11, reported by People.com (see no. 10): "As
he made his way up [the North Tower] along with men from Engine Co. 21,
22 and Ladder Co. 13, the doors opened on the 24th floor, a scene again
that hardly made sense to the seasoned fireman, claiming the heavy dust
and haze of smoke he encountered was unusual considering the location
of the strike. “Tommy Hedsal was with me and everybody else also gets
out of the elevator when it stops on the 24th floor,” said Cacchioli,
“There was a huge amount of smoke. Tommy and I had to go back down the
elevator for tools and no sooner did the elevators close behind us, we
heard this huge explosion that sounded like a bomb. It was such a loud
noise, it knocked off the lights and stalled the elevator. “Luckily, we
weren’t caught between floors and were able to pry open the doors.
People were going crazy, yelling and screaming. And all the time, I am
crawling low and making my way in the dark with a flashlight to the
staircase and thinking Tommy is right behind me. “I somehow got into the
stairwell and there were more people there. When I began to try and
direct down, another huge explosion like the first one hits. This one
hits about two minutes later, although it’s hard to tell, but I’m
thinking, ‘Oh. My God, these bastards put bombs in here like they did in
1993!’ “But still it never crossed my mind the building was going to
collapse. I really only had two things on my mind and that was getting
people out and saving lives. That’s what I was trained for and that’s
what I was going to do. “I remember at that point in the stairwell
between the 23rd and 24th floor, I threw myself down on the steps
because of the smoke. It was pitch black, I had my mask on and I was
crawling down the steps until I found the door on the 23rd floor.” When
Cacchioli entered the 23rd floor, he found a “little man” holding a
handkerchief in front of his face and hiding under the standpipes on the
wall, used for pumping water on the floor in case of fire. Leading the
man by the arm, he then ran into a group down the hall of about 35 to 40
people, finding his way down the 23rd floor stairwell and beginning
their descent to safety. “Then as soon as we get in the stairwell, I
hear another huge explosion like the other two. Then I heard bang, bang,
bang - huge bangs – and surmised later it was the floors pan caking on
top of one another. “I knew we had to get out of there fast and on the
12th floor a man even jumped on my back because he thought he couldn’t
make it any farther. Everybody was shocked and dazed and it was a
miracle all of us got this far.” When the group led by Cacchioli finally
made it to the lobby level, he was unable to open the door at first,
the concussion of the explosions or perhaps the south tower falling,
jamming the lobby door. Finally jarring it loose, the group entered the
lobby finding total devastation with windows blown out and marble
falling form the walls, but strangely no people. At that point, it was
either left or right to an exit, Cacchioli, the man he originally found
by the standpipes and another lady going right while the others went
left, a move which by the grace of God saved his life. “It seemed like
every move I made that morning was the right move,” said Cacchioli. “I
should have been killed at least five times. The people that went left
didn’t make it out, but we came out alive on West Street.” After making
sure the two civilians were attended to, Cacchioli went to his fire
truck finding Lance, the driver, who was attending to the truck and
waiting for the crew to return. Looking up at the north tower directly
above, Cacchioli recalls not having the slightest idea when he exited
that the south tower had already collapsed. He also remembers wondering
about the fate of his crew members, the driver telling him two were
missing and two others injured and already taken to the hospital. “Next
thing, we look up and see the tower collapsing. We saw it starting to
come down fast, Lance running towards the water to safety and I headed
down West Side Highway.” ... Cacchioli was called to testify privately,
but walked out on several members of the committee before they finished,
feeling like he was being interrogated and cross-examined rather than
simply allowed to tell the truth about what occurred in the north tower
on 9/11. “My story was never mentioned in the final report and I felt
like I was being put on trial in a court room,” said Cacchioli. “I
finally walked out. They were trying to twist my words and make the
story fit only what they wanted to hear. All I wanted to do was tell the
truth and when they wouldn’t let me do that, I walked out. “It was a
disgrace to everyone, the victims and the family members who lost loved
ones. I don’t agree with the 9/11 Commission. The whole experience was
terrible.” ... Asked if he ever was pressured to keep quiet about his
9/11 experience, he added: “Nobody has bothered me. I don’t think I
should be bothered. I know what happened that day and I know the whole
truth hasn’t come out yet. I have my own conscience, my own mind and no
one, I mean no one, is going to force Lou Cacchioli to say something
that didn’t happen and wasn’t the truth.”"
-
Witness live on CNN just after the second collapse: "The entire top of the building just blew up..."
-
Photographer Bolivar Arellano, interviewed live (Youtube) (translated from Spanish): "I
was actually trying to get some cover and saw both buildings in flames,
when I heard a "run, run, run!" ... and a big explosion ... then [with
the second collapse] there was a second explosion... Sort of inside the
building ... the force of the explosion threw me out about 20 feet ... I
ended up against a wall and that's how I hurt my knee pretty bad." Also: 2002,
Cathy Trost and Alicia C. Shepard, foreword by Tom Brokaw, Running
Toward Danger - Stories Behind the Breaking News of 9/11, p. 128: "We
heard the same sound as before, and everybody ran into the Financial
Center. The explosion came down quickly and elevated us. I was elevated
four feet into the air. I said to myself, “ Bolivar, you screwed up. You
survived the first one, but the second one is going to kill you.” I
crashed into the wall and then to the ground. I passed out for a few
minutes."
- Photographer Bolivar Arellano, interviewed live (Youtube) (translated from Spanish): "I
was actually trying to get some cover and saw both buildings in flames,
when I heard a "run, run, run!" ... and a big explosion ... then [with
the second collapse] there was a second explosion... Sort of inside the
building ... the force of the explosion threw me out about 20 feet ... I
ended up against a wall and that's how I hurt my knee pretty bad."
-
Live report on CBS-2 from a reporter on a chopper (Youtube): "We
just witnessed some kind of secondary, follow-up explosion on the World
Trade Center number 2, the one that is on the south that is difficult
to make out through the debris and the smoke. But it does appear that a
portion, the top portion of the building, has collapsed down to the
streets below."
-
Live report on CBS-2 from Marcia Kramer (Youtube): "Right
now police will have to determine whether that explosion was caused
from the initial impact of the plane or whether it was something
exploded on the ground. Generally speaking for a building to collapse in
on itself like that it would seem to indicate - obviously this is early
speculation - but it seemed to indicate that there could have been an
explosion, a bomb planted on the ground that would make the building
collapse within itself."
-
CNN live report at around 10:15 (CNN transcript on website): "Though, we have a report now of a fourth explosion at the Trade Center."
-
Reporter Aaron Brown, live on CNN, as the first tower collapses (transcript on CNN website):
"There has just been a huge explosion. We can see a cascade of sparks
and fire and now it looks almost like a mushroom cloud explosion and
I'll tell you that I can't see that second tower."
-
September 11, 2001, TCM Breaking News, 'Third explosion at World Trade Centre': "A
huge explosion has occurred at the second of the two twin towers hit by
planes in New York. The tower is now covered in smoke [it has
collapsed]."
-
FOX 5 News anchor live at 10 AM as the first tower collapses: "There is an explosion at the base of the building ... white smoke
from the bottom ... something has happened at the base of the building."
-
An emotional witness on FOX television (video that is possibly not available anymore): "We just heard a very loud blast... explosion."
-
Live report of a reporter named Patty on CNN (Youtube): "When
the first tower collapsed there was a massive explosion. ... That's
when I heard an explosion. That's when the second tower came down. "
-
Emotional reporter or witness on FOX television (video that is possibly not available anymore): "It's not clear now is why this explosion took place..."
-
ABC-7 news reporter live underneath the World Trade Center at the time of the collapse (Youtube): "This
is as close as we can get to the base of the World Trade Center. You
can see the firemen assembled here, the police officers, FBI agents. You
can see the two towers... [a rumble comes up, immediately followed by a
huge boom] ... a huge explosion now, raining debris on all of us! We'd
better get out of the way!!!"
-
ABC-7 interview with an unknown firefighter (Youtube): "Then when we came outside the tower just blew, the tower blew, and I found a mask on the floor as I was crawling."
-
Aid worker giving his account live on Fox News to Bill O'Reilly (Youtube): "We were there trying
to assist the medical personnel getting in. ... While we are standing
there we are underneath the overpass, thinking we were safe, thinking
if anything came off the building [we'd be protected]. At that point we
heard a large boom. I looked up and just saw the building coming at us."
-
Fox reporter Rick Leventhal interviews a policeman who clearly had to run for
his life (Youtube): "[Reporter:] Do...do
you know if it was an explosion or a building
collapse? [Policeman:] To me it sounded like, to
me it sounded like an explosion, but it was a huge explosion."
-
Fox reporter Rick Leventhal interviews a hispanic witness who just survived the WTC2 collapse (Youtube): "I think it was a bomb- two of them. ... When I tried to save people, that moment we heard a big explosion coming down. Everything went black."
-
Live witness report on CBS (Youtube):
"It was an explosion. It was way up where the fire was. And the whole
building at that point bellied out in flames and everybody ran."
-
Anonymous eyewitness to the collapse of the north tower, but who was too far away to hear the actual sound (Youtube): "That was a fucking bomb that did that. There's no goddamn way that could have happened."
-
Witness Jeremy Fox on WB11 live, apparent FOIA release (Youtube):
"What happened, I saw the second building blow and just crumble down
and I saw the core of the building just slowly crushed to the ground -
fall to the ground. ... When it went off, the second building, you saw
an explosion and then a humongous cloud of smoke go up and you saw the
building start to fall down and then you saw the core of the building
just start to disintegrate into itself. [reporter asks: "Did it
look like an implosion? ... Obviously we're speculating here, possibly a
bomb?] ... I can't [tell for sure (?)] ... It just looked like an
explosion below to where it was burning and then it just came down."
-
Fox reporter Rick Leventhal walks on the street, just after one of the collapses (Youtube): "Pandemonium
here a short time ago, when the building did collapse, or whatever it
was that happened, there was a huge explosion. ... The FBI is here as
you can see,
they have roped the area off, they were taking
photographs, securing this
area, just prior to that huge explosion that we
all heard... and felt."
-
September 2, 2004, Alex Jones is interviewing a witness of 9/11,
Andrea Ptsores during the huge demonstrations as the republican convention
in New York City: "Actually,
I was working in the World Trade Center complex the day of September
11th. I was in the building the night before, I am a member of a
professional association on the 44th floor of 1 World Trade. Some of the
key points are that there were explosives up through 6 World Trade that
I heard before either tower came down." Unreliable. Not a live report and not used. No reports of explosions coming from 6 World Trade.
-
Mr. Beller's Neighborhood (mrbellersneighborhood.com), a survivor from
the 81th floor of WTC 2 reported: "I was almost out. I got down to the lobby, right near the Border's book
store. And then there was this explosion. I don't know, I just got thrown
to the ground and all this stuff fell on top of me."
-
September 12, 2001, Guardian, ''Everyone was screaming, crying, running. It's like a war zone'': "In New York, police and fire officials were carrying out the first wave
of evacuations when the first of the World Trade Centre towers collapsed.
Some eyewitnesses reported hearing another explosion just before the structure
crumbled. Police said that it looked almost like a "planned implosion"
designed to catch bystanders watching from the street."
-
September 11, 2001, AFX Asia, 'World Trade Centre in flames after 2 planes crash into twin towers': "Two
planes deliberately crashed into the twin towers of New York's World
Trade Center, causing multiple explosions that left at least six people
dead and 1,000 injured, media reported."
-
September 11, 2001, Pakistan Newswire, 'US rocked by a series of attacks': "Two
hijacked passenger planes plunge into the twin towers of the World
Trade Center, the subsequent explosions and fires causing the buildings
to collapse."
-
September 11, 2001, ABC News, 'America Under Attack, 6:00 PM': "Unidentified
Woman #1: Mr. Mayor, based on the fact that the bombs--where the
buildings collapsed on each other, do you have any reason to believe
that there were bombs either on the planes or bombs that were in the
buildings, on the ground that would cause them to collapse the way they
did? Mayor GIULIANI: Commissioner, you want to? Unidentified
Commissioner: No, there's nothing to indicate that at this time."
-
September 11, 2001, Tuesday, Jerry Schwartz (AP), BC cycle, 'World Trade Center collapses in terrorist attack': "Within
the hour, an aircraft crashed on a helicopter landing pad near the
Pentagon, a car bomb exploded outside the State Department, and the West
Wing of the White House was evacuated amid threats of terrorism. And
another explosion rocked New York about an hour after the crash."
-
September 11, 2001, CBS Marketwatch, 'On the scene: 'It's the end of the world'': "Reached
by cell phone near the scene of the attacks, David Eng, an auditor at
FleetBoston Financial (FBF), said he was buying a cup of coffee at the
corner of the world famous landmark when he heard a loud explosion and
looked up to see a fireball engulf the top floors of one of the towers.
"The plane had taken out the top fifth of the first tower, but people
were standing around looking at it. It wasn't until the second attack on
the other tower that people started to run towards the water." While
details were still sketchy on what brought down the towers, Eng said he
heard a third explosion. "There could have been a car bomb at the base
of the towers," he said."
-
1010 WINS Radio presenter, live on 9/11 (Google Video):
"... and then just a while ago a third explosion which actually brought
down the South Tower. 1010 WINS reporter Juliet Papa is down around
City Hall."
-
September 11, 2001, CBS
News Transcripts, 'Investigations continue into alleged bombings at New
York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington, DC': "We
understand now there has been a secondary explosion on tower two. With
that, we will leave you and turn it over to Dan Rather. [Dan Rather,
anchor:] Now here's what we know. Just before 9 Eastern time this
morning, a plane crashed into one of the twin towers of the World Trade
Center along the Hudson River here in New York. A few minutes later, a
second plane crashed into the other tower. Both skyscrapers are on
fire."
-
September 11, 2001, CNN, 'America Under Attack: Terrorists Attacks in Both Washington D.C. and New York': "And
what this second explosion was, it took place about -- part of the
south -- that would be the south tower has apparently collapsed."
-
September 11, 2001, Agence France Presse, 'An timeline of series of attacks on US soil (as of 1600 GMT)': "One of the World Trade Center's two towers collapses following an explosion in a huge cloud of smoke and dust."
-
September 11, 2001, Agence France Presse, 'Panic grips New York as World Trade Center collapses': "Less
than an hour after the plane crashed, the tower collapsed into a heap
of dust and rubble. Minutes later, its twin, struck first by what
federal authorities believe was a hijacked American Airlines flight out
of Boston, also exploded, with tonnes of concrete and glass crashing to
the ground."
-
September 11, 2001, Press Association, 'Britons tell of Trade Center attack': "Stephen
Evans, BBC North America Business and Economics Correspondent, was on
the ground floor of one of the World Trade Centre Towers at the time of
the attacks. "There was a huge bang, it felt to me like somebody dropped
a skip full of rubbish, a great container full of rubbish from a great
height in the yard which separates the two huge towers which are the
World Trade Centre," he told BBC News 24. "The building physically
shook. It's one of those where you think, well something's happened on a
building site. "That's the way it is. But seconds later, there were two
or three similar huge explosions and the building literally shook.""
-
September 11, 2001, Japan Economic Newswire, '6TH LD: 2 planes slammed WTC in N.Y., Pentagon also hit': "One
tower later collapsed following an explosion. ... The south tower
collapsed at around 10 a.m. following an explosion, the third to hit the
landmark building."
-
Radio
interview with Scott Forbes, senior database administrator at Fiduciary
Trust, with his office on the 97th floor of the South Tower (Youtube): "About
three weeks prior to 9/11 our company, along with many others in the
towers, were given notice that there was going to be a power down in the
top 50 per cent of the floors in the southern tower. This was
unprecedented. As you can imagine, with all of the financial
institutions in the building, to have a complete loss of power meant a
complete loss of systems. And for an organization like my company it was
truly extraordinary. ... The power down was on the Saturday and Sunday
prior to 9/11. ... We were given three weeks notice. It was a
relatively short time notice period to make all the preparations needed.
And unprecedented. We had never experienced a power down in the towers,
as far as I'm aware. I have worked in the towers from 1998. My
colleagues who had been in the building well beyond that could not
remember an occasion such as this, apart from the bomb incident in the
early nineties. ... One of the main reasons why became suspicious was
that I got in touch with the Port Authority and I got in touch with the
9/11 Commission to register this piece of information, so that it would
be acknowledged, if only to be thrown away - and I had no
acknowledgement. They did not come back to me. I repeatedly called and
wrote letters to them. It is as if this information is of no interest to
anyone, but to me it seems to be part of the puzzle and should be
registered. ... I was not in the office on 9/11, because of working that
weekend. I had the day off on Tuesday. So I was in my apartment that
overlooked the Trade Center. ... And as soon as I saw the South Tower go
down, I was highly suspicious. It just didn't look correct. It looked
like a controlled demolition." December 24, 2005, Killtown, interview with Scott Forbes: "You
have to understand how unprecedented the power down was. To shutdown
all of our financial systems, all inter-related and with connections and
feeds to may outside vendors and suppliers was a major piece of work.
Additionally, the power outage meant that many of the 'ordinary'
building features were not operating, such as security locks on doors,
cameras, lighting, etc. ... I can't give you the absolute numbers, but I
know it was the 'top half ' of WTC 2, so I'd say from floor 50 or so.
... Not to my knowledge [was there a simultaneous power outage in the
North Tower]. ... As far as I recall it was for re-cabling, though I
don't remember the wording on official documents or the detail, as I
wasn't in the Management Loop. ... The building was retro, some of the
features were so old, like the central heating and a/c systems, which
were really really bad and inefficient. ... Off on Saturday afternoon -
around 12 noon I think - and back on at about 2 pm on the Sunday (my
timings on this are hazy). ... Well there were several guys in overalls,
carrying building gear, toolboxes, etc inside the building. Remember
there were no security locks on doors or security cameras, so access was
free unless a door was locked by a manual key. Seeing so many
'strangers' who didn't work at the WTC was unusual. ... Not directly
that I spoke to [people who reported hearing explosions in the WTC], but
I am aware of one member of staff who was lost whose wife reported that
he told her on the phone that explosions were going off. ... No, apart
from broken glass from the plane impacts and crashing elevators. Several
elevators cables were broken/slashed so they crashed to the ground. ...
Sure, some did and have [agreed with my conspiracy-point-of-view], but
many remain skeptical and frankly many do not want to revisit that time,
as it was very painful."
WTC 1-2: Reports of explosions after the collapses
-
September 11, 2001, CBS News Transcripts, 'Planes crash into World Trade Center and Pentagon': "[Dan]
Rather: ... And then at 10:28 AM Eastern time, the second tower of the
World Trade Center collapsed. Then there was a fourth explosion; a
fourth counted big explosion rocked the collapsed remains of the World
Trade Center. That was at about 10:38 AM Eastern time. ... Now dateline
London: Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden warned three weeks ago that he
and his followers would carry out "an unprecedented attack"--that was
his quote--on US interests for its support of Israel."
-
September 11, 2001, Associated Press Worldstream, ''New York is crying' With US-Terrorist Attacks': "Mike
Smith, a fire marshal from Queens, [was] recovering at the fountain
outside a state courthouse, shortly after the second tower collapsed.
Workers from the Trade Center offices wandered lower Manhattan in a
daze. Looking down West Broadway, brown and black smoke billowed. Ash,
two inches ( five centimeters) deep, covered the streets. Police and
firefighters gasped for air as they emerged from the sealed-off area. At
least three explosions were heard, perhaps from gas lines." September 11, 2001, AP Press State and Local Wire, 'Pandemonium, horror outside Trade Center as people jump, towers collapse': "At least three explosions, perhaps from gas lines, could be heard after the buildings collapsed."
-
CBS footage live on 9/11 after the collapse of the Twin Towers (Youtube):
"[Huge boom in background] [A bystander
says:] "There's another one." [The narrator:] Hours after the attack
many smaller explosions rumbled through downtown."
-
Cameraman on 9/11 in the neighborhood of WTC 7 amidst firemen (Youtube): "[Police
officer on phone:] Yeah, here's one of the guys. He can tell I'm okay,
alright? Hold on." "[Fireman takes over phone:] Hey, you wanna call your
mother, or something?" [Huge deafening explosion nearby. Everyone gets
startled.] "[Someone:] What the hell are...? [Lots of people speaking at
the same time]."
WTC 7: Foreknowledge of the building coming down
-
Youtube clip of unknown documentary (featured in '911: The Explosive Reality'): "[Official
in suit on the scene talking to rescue workers:] Stand back. Stay as
close as you can where you are not in the way. [Narrator:] But for hours
they stood cut off from the rubble, feeling both fierce and helpless as
they were not allowed into the rescue area. In the midst of a
frustrating afternoon, evidence of why they had not been sent in. Number
7 World Trade Center collapsed. [shows frustrated rescue workers]"
-
MSNBC, 'Attack on America', live (featured in '911: The Explosive Reality'): "Not
to put those rescue workers in danger themselves. … We were told by a
couple of people who were in there, before rescue workers [were pulled
back], that there are bodies, a number of bodies lying around in the
debris and on the street there. Obviously part of the job is to bring
them out. We are also told by Port Authority officials that the building
over there, which is building Number 7, which you can see, that there
is some concern on the part of Port Authority officials about the
stability of that building at this point."
-
CNN on 9/11 (featured in '911: The Explosive Reality'): "The fire fighters thought it might collapse [Building 7]. ... rescue workers pushed people away from the scene."
-
Latin American-sounding soldier briefly interviewed on ABC (featured in '911: The Explosive Reality'): "Building is going to collapse. Nothing informations. [pushes away camera] "
-
Bill Blakemore to Peter Jennings at ABC live after collapse of WTC 7 (featured in '911: The Explosive Reality'): "Peter,
it was an astonishing thing [the collapse of WTC 7] ... Things have
become so bizarre down here that the hundreds of firemen standing around
looked at it, felt a bit shocked, but then just said: "Well, we're
gonna have even more work to do." Associate producer Lucy Carrigen has
been over near that building just a little bit earlier and a policeman
had told her that they feared the building was going to come down, that
they were evacuating people from around it." [Jennings then starts
hinting at controlled demolition].
-
CNN live, around 4:14 p.m., Aaron Brown, standing in front of the New York skyline with WTC 7 still erect (Youtube): "We
are getting information now that one of the buildings, building 7, in
the World Trade Center complex is on fire and has either collapsed, or
is collapsing." Building 7 only collapsed at 5:21 p.m.
-
BBC World live report,
with reporter Jane Standley, reporting live at 4:57 p.m. (collapse at
5:20 p.m.) from New York with Building 7 behind her (Youtube): "[News
anchor:] Now more on the latest building collapse in New York. You
might have heard a few moments ago us talking about the Salomon Brothers
building [WTC 7] collapsing, and indeed it has. Apparently that's only a
few hundred yards away from where the World Trade Center towers were.
And it seems this was not the result of a new attack;it was because the
building had been weakened during this morning's attack. We'll probably
find more about that from our correspondent Jane Standley. Jane,
what more can you tell us about the Salomon building and its collapse?
[Jane Standley:] Well, only really what you already know. Details are
very very sketchy. ... As you can see behind me, the trade center
appears to be still burning [everybody can see that WTC 7 is still
standing erect as she moves her head]. ... [screen starts to distort]
... [News anchor:] Well, unfortunately, I think we’ve lost the line with
Jane Standley in Manhattan. Perhaps we can rejoin her and follow that
up later." BBC World live report, with reporter Jane
Standley standing front of screening showing live video of the World
Trade Center (it is, however, evening already): "[Host
Bill Turnbull:] After the collapse of the Solomon building, Jane, are
the other buildings in that area stable? [before she can answer the
sound cuts out]" Richard Porter, head of BBC World News, to Dylan Avery of 'Loose Change' (Youtube):
"I think you will have to put it into context of what was an incredibly
chaotic day for everybody involved in trying to cover the story. The
investigations we have carried out suggest very strongly that, er, we
were working on the basis of an incorrect news agency report. We have
this statement from Reuters, it came some time after our original
enquiries, but what it says is: "On september the 11th, 2001, Reuters
incorrectly reported that one of the buildings of the New York World
Trade Center, 7 WTC, had collapsed before it actually did. The report
was picked up from a local news story and was withdrawn as soon as it
emerged that the building had not fallen." Jane Standley interviewed by the BBC (Youtube):
"I was thrown not a question, but a statement of fact. I don't know
where that came from. I mean, it is very very difficult being in that
position: no communication, no access to information and that just comes
out of left field. It was very upsetting about a year ago, because of
the level of persecution and the virulence in which I was spoken about.
And its just very unfortunate that this whole conspiracy, kind of I
think a rather ridiculous situation, has grown out of what is really a
small and honest mistake." So it seems the origin is Reuters.
-
Reporter Ashleigh Banfield live for MSNBC, near WTC 7, just before the collapse (Youtube):
"That building right there, the brown building, the tall one, is number
7 World Trade Center. I've heard several reports from several different
officers that that is the building that is gonna go down next. In fact,
one officer told me, they are just waiting for that to come down at
this point, that there is no way that it is going to be recovered and
they can stabilize it."
-
NYFD Lieutenant David Restutio (phonetic) on the telephone live to MSNBC, one minute after WTC 7 came down (Youtube):
"We had heard reports that the building was unstable and that
eventually it needed to come down on its own, or it would be taken down.
I would imagine it came down on its own. "
-
CBS-2 live, immediately after observing the collapse of WTC 7 (Youtube):
"This is something they've been watching all day. In fact, Paul [?]
just told us many hours ago that that building looked to be in danger of
falling, as did the Twin Towers."
-
September 13, 2001,
Arlington Cemetery, 'Getting the photo of a lifetime' (About Tom
Franklin, a photographer who was wandering around WTC 7 when it came
down): "Firemen evacuated the area as they prepared for the collapse of Building Seven."
-
Chief of Department NYFD Daniel Nigro (his superior died on 9/11), September 23, 2007: "Regarding
WTC 7: The long-awaited US Government NIST ... report on the collapse
of WTC 7 is due to be published at the end of this year (although it has
been delayed already a few times [ adding fuel to the conspiracy
theorists fires!]). That report should explain the cause and mechanics
of the collapse in great detail. ... I made the decision (without
consulting the owner [Larry Silverstein], the mayor [Rudolph Giuliani]
or anyone else - as ranking fire officer, that decision was my
responsibility) to clear a collapse zone surrounding the building and to
stop all activity within that zone. Approximately three hours after
that order was given, WTC 7 collapsed. Conspiracy theories abound and I
believe firmly that all of them are without merit."
-
September 9, 2005, press statement of Mr. Dara McQuillan, a spokesman for Silverstein Properties: "In
the afternoon of September 11, Mr. Silverstein spoke to the Fire
Department Commander on site at Seven World Trade Center. The Commander
told Mr. Silverstein that there were several firefighters in the
building working to contain the fires. Mr. Silverstein expressed his
view that the most important thing was to protect the safety of those
firefighters, including, if necessary, to have them withdraw from the
building. Later in the day, the Fire Commander ordered his firefighters
out of the building and at 5:20 p.m. the building collapsed."
WTC 7: Evidence of demolition
-
The penthouse on top of the
roof, in the center of the building to be exact, is the first
part to collapse after a loud boom. Seconds later,
the outside of the building collapses over the inside, creating
a perfect demolition.
-
November 29, 2001, New York Times, 'A Nation Challenged': "Experts said no building like it [WTC 7], a modern, steel-reinforced
high-rise, had ever collapsed because of an uncontrolled fire, and engineers
have been trying to figure out exactly what happened and whether they should
be worried about other buildings like it around the country."
-
CNN footage: cameraman on 9/11 in the neighborhood of WTC 7 amidst firefighters (Youtube): [A
giant explosion is heard] [Person 1:] You hear that? [Person 2:] Keep
your eye on that building. It will be coming down soon." ... [new shot,
but at same street and at almost the exact same location] [Person 3:]
That building is about to blow up. Moving back. ... [again skips a few
seconds of footage] ... We are walking back, because that building is
about to blow up. [roaring sound is already heard in the background].
Flame. Debris coming down."
-
Reporter Ashleigh Banfield live for MSNBC, near WTC 7, just before and during the collapse (Youtube):
"[Host:] Monica, I have to go to Ashleigh Banfield, we might have had
something [happening] on the ground. Ashley? [Banfield:]... Ah, well, at
first Brian, we thought we'd heard another explosion, but I think its
just a truck heading down to the south. But I just wanted to let you
know that we are starting to see people moving north. In fact,
you were just told by police that you should move out of your apartment,
Fabiana ... [individual cracks can be heard in background half-way
through this sentence since, say 0:00, followed by a more consecutive
rumble around 0:06 when the reporter takes notice. Smoke is already
increasing at 0:02/0:03, indicating the building is on its way down.]
Look behind us, please pan this way. Be careful of your baby. This is
it. [background at 0:11/0:12: "That's the building coming down"] Oh my
God! Oh my God! Oh my God! No, listen , we'll be alright. We're gonna
have to move. We're gonna have to move. That cloud is coming this way."
-
1010 WINS NYC News Radio on 9/11 (Youtube):
"[Reporter:] I'm here with an NYU medical student. He was down there
[at the collapse of WTC 7]. He was trying to help people. His name is
Daryl. [Daryl:] "Yeah, so I was standing there. You know, we were
watching the building as it was on fire - the bottom floors of the
building were on fire. And we heard this sound that sounded like a clap
of thunder. We turned around and we were shocked to see that the
building was, what looked like a shockwave ripping through the building
and the windows all busting out. It was horrifying. And then, you know,
about a second later the bottom floor caved out and the building
followed after that."
-
Craig Bartmer, first
responder, former New York Police Department (Youtube) (report not live
made on 9/11, so tricky. Then again, Bartmer has become very sick due to
his work at Ground Zero): "Walked around [WTC7]. Saw a
hole. Not a hole big enough to knock a building down though. Yeah, there
was definitely fire in the building. ... I didn't hear any indication
that it was gonna come down. And all of a sudden the radios exploded and
everybody started screaming: "Get away! Get away! Get away from it!"
And I was like a deer in the headlights and I look up. I think I
remember pretty clearly two guys that I knew who were on the transit
radio. I don't know if those tapes are out there. I can try and look for
'em and show you. Then you know exactly what I'm talking about. It was
that moment and I looked up. It was nothing that I would have ever
imagined seeing in my life. The thing started peeling in on itself.
There was an umbrella of crap 7 feet over my head that I just stared at.
Somebody grabbed my shoulder and I started running and the shit is
hitting the ground behind me. And the whole time you're hearing thum,
thum, thum, thum. And think I know an explosion when I hear it. [laughs]
I was real close to WTC 7 ... And I don't know, that didn't sound like a
building just falling down when I was running away from it. There's a
lot of eyewitness testimony down there hearing explosions. I didn't see
any reason for that building to fall down the way it did and a lot of
guys should be saying the same thing."
-
Larry Silverstein, leaseholder building 7, in the September 2002 PBS documentary America Rebuilds (Youtube): "I
remember getting a call from the fire department commander, told me
they weren't sure if they were able to contain the fire. I said, "You
know, we've had such terrible loss of life. Maybe the smartest thing to
do is to pull it." And they made that decision to pull and then we
watched the building collapse." Years later, Silverstein indicated
the term meant "pull out" (of firefighters) instead of " pull down" (of
the building). It's hard to decide what makes less sense: Silverstein
explanation or him having made the initial comment at all.
-
Sunday,
September 10, 2006, Zembla (VARA, Dutch television), Danny Jowenko
interview about 9/11 (Youtube) (died in a car crash in 2011): "[Is
shown a video of the WTC 7 collapse] Do you see the top go first? No,
it goes from the bottom. Right? They just blew the columns; it has been
demolished with explosives. ... This is controlled demolition. I'm
absolute sure, it has been demolished with explosives. This was done at
someone's direction. A team of experts has done this. ... The same day
[as WTC 1 and 2?] The same day? Are you sure? Are you sure it was the
11th? That can't be true. Really? Then they worked really fast. ... This
a professional job, no doubt. These boys know what they are doing. ...
They did have the advantage that there was already so much destruction
in the environment that they didn't need to be that precise. ... I am
talking about the placement of packet charges instead of all that blow
torch work and linear shaped charges. Just rigorously because it was
already a mess. Just charges against the beams and just really fast. ...
Oh, those aren't even that many columns. That explains a lot. You can
demolish this quickly. You could even do this with blow torches and
cutting charges. ... A cutting charge against it with a piece of duct
tape is no-time, a minute per charge, not even - half a minute. ...
That's not much work [connecting everything]. Everybody knows his job.
...
You must have experienced men, but if you would
have maybe 30 or 40 persons [it's possible within 7 hours]. ... Several
with a blow torch, the rest attaches [the explosives], other people
attach the det cords with the boosters. ... and another persons puts on
the electrical systems. ... They didn't put out the fire [before putting
in the explosives]? Yeah, that weird, I agree, I have no explanation
for that. ... If it has become heated [during a fire] you will have to
replace those columns. Do you know what it will cost to replace those
columns at the bottom and to rebuild everything else? Then you'll say:
be gone with it. Right? ... That could have been a reason for
that Mr. Silverstone or Silverstein, or whatever he is called, the owner
of the building, to have said: "Look, this is just gonna cost a lot of
money and what do I get back? Still the same old building." And at that
moment I think Giuliano (sic) would have given off a permit to
demolish: "If you can get rid of it, as soon as possible." ... This has
been done by people. No, no [there's no discussion]. It's also done on
orders. Mr. [Silverstein] has said so himself. You can hear him say it:
"Pull it down. Be gone with it." [The smoke puffs at WTC 7:] Yeah, it
could be. You don't know if those are charges. ... it could be materials
breaking.... So, no I don't believe those are charges. That's also not
necessary. ... If this is a consequence of the coming down of the WTC
towers, that would highly surprise me. I just cannot imagine that. ...
Take that building of Timothy McVeigh. That was half gone. And it still
had to be demolished with explosives [that's how unlikely a collapse
through fire is]. ... There will be more deaths in the coming years [due
to asbestos]. " Is of the opinion that the smoke puffs at WTC 1 and 2 were the results of downward pressure. Not much time spent on that.
WTC 7: Evidence for explosives planted before 9/11
-
Michael D. Hess phone interview by UPN 9 News on September 11, around noon (Youtube): "I
was up in the Emergency Management Center on the 23th floor and when
all the power went out in the building another gentleman [Barry
Jennings] and I walked down to the 8th floor and there was an explosion
and we've been trapped on the 8th floor with thick smoke all around us
for about an hour-and-a-half. But the New York Fire Department, as
terrific as they are, came in and got us out. " Hess has been filmed on 9/11 as he is screaming for help from the position he and Jennings were trapped in. Businessweek biography of Michael D. Hess: "Yale...
Harvard... Mr. Hess served as the Corporation Counsel of City of New
York under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani [until December 2001]. As the chief
lawyer for the City, he supervised a Law Department of over 1,500
staff, including 700 attorneys. The Law Department is among the largest
public law offices in the nation. ... Mr. Michael D. Hess is a Partner
and Senior Managing Director at Giuliani Partners LLC. Mr. Hess is also
the founder of Giuliani Partners LLC [in January 2002].
-
September
11, 2001, BC Cycle (Helen O'Neill, AP correspondent), ''I just saw the
top of Trade Two come down.'' (Barry Jennings story): "After
the initial blast [impact], Housing Authority worker Barry Jennings,
46, reported to a command center on the 23rd floor of 7 World Trade
Center. He was with Michael Hess, the city's corporation counsel, when
they felt and heard another explosion. First calling for help, they
scrambled downstairs to the lobby, or what was left of it. "I looked
around, the lobby was gone. It looked like hell," Jennings said."
September 11, 2001, AP Press State and Local
Wire, 'Pandemonium, horror outside Trade Center as people jump, towers
collapse': "At least three explosions, perhaps from gas
lines, could be heard after the buildings collapsed. After the initial
blast, Housing Authority worker Barry Jennings, 46, reported to a
command center on the 23rd floor of 7 World Trade Center. He was with
Michael Hess, the city's corporation counsel. They were the only ones
there. They felt and heard another explosion, probably the collapse of
one building. He broke a window and screamed for help. Then they went
down a stairwell. "I told Hess, 'We've got to try to get out of here."'
They got to the lobby, or what was left of it. "I thought I was dead.
The whole building shook. ... I looked around, the lobby was gone. It
looked like hell. It was like a bad movie." Though covered in soot,
Jennings was not physically injured. He said Hess escaped safely as
well." Barry Jennings original story when he was interviewed on 9/11 by an ABC reporter (Youtube): "We
made it to the eight floor [of WTC 7, well before the Twin Towers came
down. Walking down from the 24th]. Big explosion. Blew us back into the
eight floor. And I turned to Hess and said: "This is it. We're dead.
We're not gonna make it out of here." I took a fire extinguisher and
busted a window out. This gentleman here heard my cry for help." Barry Jennings (Deputy Director of Emergency Services Department, NY City Housing Authority) (Youtube): "My
name is Barry Jennings. I'm 52 years old. I worked for 33 years at one
location. ... As I told you guys before, it was very funny. I was on my
way to work and traffic was excellent. I received a call that a small
Cessna had hit the World Trade Center. I was asked to go and man the
Office of Emergency Management at World Trade Center 7 at the 23rd
floor. As I arrived there, there was police all in the lobby. They
showed me the way to the elevator. I got up to the 23rd floor. Me and
Mr. Hess [Senior Managing Director of Giuliani Partners], whom I didn't
know was Mr. Hess at the time, we got to the 23rd floor. We couldn't
get in. We had to get back down. Then security and police took us to the
freight elevators. They took us back up and we did get back in. Upon
arriving into the OEM/EOC, we noticed that everybody was gone. I saw
coffee that was on a desk. The smoke was still coming off the coffee. I
saw half eaten sandwiches. And only me and Mr. Hess were up there. After
I called several individuals, one individual told me to leave and leave
right away. Mr. Hess came running back in. He said, "We are the only
ones up here. We need to get out of here." He found a stairwell. So we
subsequently went to the stairwell, and we are going down the stairs.
When we reached the 6th - 8th floor, the landing we were standing on
gave way. There was an explosion and the landing gave way. I was left
there hanging. I had to walk back up to the 8th floor. After getting up
to the eight floor, everything was dark. It was dark and very, very
hot. I asked Mr. Hess to test the phones. I took a fire extinguisher and
broke out the windows. The firefighters came to the window, because I
was gonna come out on the fire hose. I didn't wanna stay there any
longer. I mean, it was too hot. ... They came to the window. They
started yelling: "Do not do that. It won't hold you." And then they ran
away. See, I didn't know what was going on. That's when the first tower
fell. ... Then I saw them come back. Now I saw them come back with more
concern on their faces. Then they ran away again. The second tower fell.
As they turned and ran the second time, the guys turned and said,
"don't worry, we'll be back for you." And they did come back. This time
they came back with ten firefighters. And they kept asking me, "Where
are you? We don't know where you are." I said, " I'm on the north side
of the building." ... All this time I'm hearing all kinds of explosions.
All this time I'm hearing explosions. When they finally got to us, and
they took us down, to what what they called the lobby ... He said, "This
was the lobby". And I said, "You've got to be kidding me." It was total
ruins. Now, keep in mind, when I came in there, the lobby had nice
escalators, it was a huge lobby. And for me to see what I saw was
unbelievable. And the firefighter that took us down kept saying, "do not
look down." And I kept saying, "Why?" "Do not look down." We were
stepping over people. And you know you can feel when you are stepping
over people. They took us out through a hole. I don't who made this hole
in this wall. ... Well, I'm just confused about one thing and one thing
only. Why World Trade Center 7 went down in the first place. I'm very
confused about that. I know what I heard. I heard explosions. The
explanation I got was, "It was the fuel oil tank". I'm an old boiler
guy. If it was a fuel oil tank, it would have been one side of the
building. When I got to that lobby, the lobby was totally destroyed. It
looked like King Kong had come though it and stepped on it. And it was
so destroyed I didn't know where I was. And it was so destroyed they had
to take me out through a hole in the wall. A make-shift hole that I
think the Fire Department made to get me out. Me and Mr. Hess out. ... I
got into the building a little before nine - a little after nine. I
didn't get out of there until, like, one. ... The explanations that were
given to me were totally unacceptable. Totally unacceptable. ... And it
wasn't until some years later that I testified in front of them [to a
group part of the 9/11 Commission]. And to tell you, it was very scary.
They look like very important people. They were questioning me about
certain things. I don't know if they liked the answers I gave. ... They
asked me the same questions that you guys are asking me. And at that
point they said, "Okay, thank you." They sent me on my way [and never
heard of them again]. I couldn't stop watching it [on TV]. And that's
when I found out building 7 had come down. And I was so surprised. And
I'm saying to myself, why did that building come down? And I knew why it
came down. Because of the explosions. And it was not no fuel oil
tanks." September 16, 2008, Infowars, 'Key Witness to WTC 7 Explosions Dead at 53': "Updated
Sept. 17 4:05 PM CST: NYC Housing Authority spokesman Howard Marder has
now officially confirmed that Barry Jennings indeed passed away
approximately a month ago after several days in the hospital, matching
confirmations from several other employees at the Housing Authority.
Marder commented that Jennings was a great man, well liked by everyone
at the Housing Authority, and that he would be missed. No other details
were available. ... It is very unusual that a prominent — and
controversial– 9/11 witness would die only days before the release of
NIST's report on WTC7 and shortly after a firestorm erupted over his
testimony that he heard explosions inside the building prior to collapse
of either tower and that there were dead bodies in the building’s
blown-out lobby. The BBC aired The Third Tower in July in attempt
to debunk Barry Jennings’ account– which is both contradictory and
damaging to the official 9/11 story– by making issue over whether or not
he said he "saw" dead bodies in the lobby."
WTC-1-2-7: Flaws in the investigation of the physical evidence
-
November 13, 2010,
Geraldo at Large (live) on Fox News, '9/11 Group Asks NYC City Council
to Investigate WTC Building 7 Collapse' (This interview was a response
to a New York City ad campaign, shown on TV about 350 times,
'Buildingwhat.org'. Geraldo keeps steering, talking himself, and
interrupting in the few minutes the interview lasts) (Youtube): "[Tony
Szamboti, Mechanical Engineer:] Scientifically, it's impossible for
fire to have done what we see." "[Geraldo:] And these 1,300 architects
and engineers and some of the other relatives and families who agree
with you [that the collapse of WTC 7 was by controlled demolition]
...". "[Bob McIlvaine:] I believe it was an inside job, okay. Please,
but the thing is we don't have enough time to get into the reasons of
that. ... I've talked to so many firemen, so many EMS workers,
policemen, who talk about the explosions. And I know you don't wanna go
into my son's death, but I feel that my son died from an explosion. I
went to all the 9/11 Commission hearings. I've been researching this for
nine years. I want truth. I've been lied to. It's beyond reasonable
doubt that the 9/11 Commission did not tell the story. "[Geraldo:] "I am
certainly much more open minded about it then I was."
-
Kevin Ryan in the documentary '9/11 Birth of Treason' (Youtube): "I
was previously a division manager for Environmental Health
Laboratories, a division of Underwriter Laboratories [UL]. ... I have a
degree in Chemistry from Indiana University. I have a certification for
Quality Engineering, which is very closely related to standards in the
National Institute for Standards and Technologies. I was Laboratory
Manager at UL for years, so I know about testing samples for national
standards. ... I first sent a formal question to our Chief Executive
Officer at Underwriter Laboratories in late 2003. And laid out these
concerns to him. I said, "You told us that we had tested the steel and
certified the steel. This steel has been destroyed now. There are
alternative explanations as to what has happened." He responded a month
later. He did confirm that UL had tested the steel used in the World
Trade Center buildings. I have quite a number of statements in writing.
Clearly this Chief Executive Officer, who was a Harvard-trained lawyer,
by the way, not an engineer, had fully accepted the official story and
been given information himself about testing done 40 years ago by our
company to certify the steel of the World Trade Center. ... He asked me
to be patient and wait for the official report of the NIST, because UL
was working closely together with them to try and figure out what
happened and eventually there would be an explanation. I did wait for
another year. The report came out and it contained a great deal of
contradictory information. They had done physical tests, both at UL and
NIST, which showed that the steel could not have softened and that the
floors could not have collapsed. And yet the report was coming out
suggesting that these things actually did happen. ... The final story
has been summarized kind of in seven steps. And if you walk through
those and clearly summarize them and look at known facts about the
buildings, look at the report itself to see if it is self-consistent,
just look at the story to see if it is realistic, and in all three cases
you can see that it is not. It is actually false in everyone of those
seven steps. And this is just the collapse initiation sequence. They
don't actually describe the actual dynamics of the buildings falling.
They just say, "global collapse ensued". In that way they can ignore a
whole lot of evidence that points to an alternative hypothesis, like
explosions, from witnesses hearing explosions, or demolition squibs
coming off of the buildings. The speed of the collapse is a very
important piece of evidence. They can ignore all of that by just saying
"global collapse ensued". Period. The biggest problems with that story
are the fire proofing being lost ... Tests that were done by NIST, very
weak, numble tests, prove that actually the fire proofing could not have
been lost in the buildings. There was no energy for it - no mechanism
for it to occur. And probably the biggest problem is the idea that the
external columns would bow inward, which is primary to the official
story. There's actually no physical testing to support that. There's no
intuitive reasoning behind it. The only support is from a highly
manipulated computer model, in which the temperatures were exaggerated,
the fire times were exaggerated, all the fire proofing was stripped off.
And the floors were disconnected. ... The floors are disconnected.
There's no force to pull the columns in. How did it happen? We are
talking about a phantom force now in a highly manipulated computer
model. And that's what we are basing our future on. ... There were
also still comments being made about jet fuel melting steel, by experts
supporting the official story. So I wrote to the NIST and I asked them
to please clarify the ideas that were being stated in the media and in
the report. And I was fired for writing the letter. I was fired for
nothing else, but writing this letter. I hadn't violated any policies
and I had been promoted just earlier that year to a top-management
position in my division."
-
January 2002, Fire Engineering Magazine, Bill Manning in Editor's Opinion, '$elling Out the Investigation': "Did
they throw away the locked doors from the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire? Did
they throw away the gas can used at the Happyland Social Club Fire? Did
they cast aside the pressure-regulating valves at the Meridian Plaza
Fire? Of course not. But essentially, that's what they're doing at the
World Trade Center. For more than three months, structural steel from
the World Trade Center has been and continues to be cut up and sold for
scrap. Crucial evidence that could answer many questions about high-rise
building design practices and performance under fire conditions is on
the slow boat to China, perhaps never to be seen again in America until
you buy your next car. Such destruction of evidence shows the astounding
ignorance of government officials to the value of a thorough,
scientific investigation of the largest fire-induced collapse in world
history. I have combed through our national standard for fire
investigation, NFPA 921, but nowhere in it does one find an exemption
allowing the destruction of evidence for buildings over 10 stories tall.
Hoping beyond hope, I have called experts to ask if the towers were the
only high-rise buildings in America of lightweight, center-core
construction. No such luck. I made other calls asking if these were the
only buildings in America with light-density, sprayed-on fireproofing.
Again, no luck-they were two of thousands that fit the description.
Comprehensive disaster investigations mean increased safety. They mean
positive change. NASA knows it. The NTSB knows it. Does FEMA know it?
No. Fire Engineering has good reason to believe that the "official
investigation" blessed by FEMA and run by the American Society of Civil
Engineers is a half-baked farce that may already have been commandeered
by political forces whose primary interests, to put it mildly, lie far
afield of full disclosure. Except for the marginal benefit obtained from
a three-day, visual walk-through of evidence sites conducted by ASCE
investigation committee members- described by one close source as a
"tourist trip"-no one's checking the evidence for anything. ... However,
respected members of the fire protection engineering community are
beginning to raise red flags, and a resonating theory has emerged: The
structural damage from the planes and the explosive ignition of jet fuel
in themselves were not enough to bring down the towers. Rather, theory
has it, the subsequent contents fires attacking the questionably
fireproofed lightweight trusses and load-bearing columns directly caused
the collapses in an alarmingly short time. Of course, in light of there
being no real evidence thus far produced, this could remain just
unexplored theory. ... Some citizens are taking to the streets to
protest the investigation sellout. Sally Regenhard, for one, wants to
know why and how the building fell as it did upon her unfortunate son
Christian, an FDNY probationary firefighter. And so do we. Clearly,
there are burning questions that need answers. ... The destruction and
removal of evidence must stop immediately."
-
2002, FEMA, 'Building
Performance Study', Jonathan Barnett, Ronald R. Biederman and R. D.
Sisson, Jr., 'Appendix C: Limited Metallurgical Examination': "Two
structural steel members with unusual erosion patterns were observed in
the WTC debris field. The first appeared to be from WTC 7 and the
second from either WTC 1 or WTC 2. Samples were taken from these beams
and labeled Sample 1 and Sample 2, respectively. A metallurgic
examination was conducted ... Summary for Sample 1: 1) The thinning
of the steel occurred by a high-temperature corrosion due to a
combination of oxidation and sulfidation. 2) Heating of the steel
into a hot corrosive environment approaching 1,000 °C (1,800 °F) results
in the formation of a eutectic mixture of iron, oxygen, and sulfur that liquefied the steel.
3) The sulfidation attack of steel grain boundaries accelerated the
corrosion and erosion of the steel. ... Summary for Sample 2: 1)
The thinning of the steel occurred by high temperature corrosion due to a
combination of oxidation and sulfidation. 2) The sulfidation attack
of steel grain boundaries accelerated the corrosion and erosion of the
steel. 3) The high concentration of sulfides in the grain boundaries
of the corroded regions of the steel occurred due to copper diffusing
from the HSLA steel combining with iron and sulfur, making both discrete
and continuous sulfides in the steel grain boundaries. ... The severe
corrosion and subsequent erosion of Samples 1 and 2 are a very unusual event. No clear explanation for the source of the sulfur has been identified.
The rate of corrosion is also unknown. It is possible that this is the
result of long-term heating in the ground following the collapse of the
buildings. It is also possible that the phenomenon started prior to
collapse and accelerated the weakening of the steel structure. A
detailed study into the mechanisms of this phenomenon is needed to
determine what risk, if any, is presented to existing steel structures
exposed to severe and long-burning fires."
-
Possibly a new pet
theory of the future: September 21, 2011, Agence Presse France, 'Were
Twin Towers felled by chemical blasts?' (quite possibly an amazing piece
of disinformation that will one day be brought forward when the
evidence for explosions becomes too widely known): "A mix
of sprinkling system water and melted aluminium from aircraft hulls
likely triggered the explosions that felled New York's Twin Towers on
September 11, 2001, a materials expert has told a technology conference.
"If my theory is correct, tonnes of aluminium ran down through the
towers, where the smelt came into contact with a few hundred litres of
water," Christian Simensen, a scientist at SINTEF, an independent
technology research institute based in Norway, said in a statement
released Wednesday. "From other disasters and experiments carried out by
the aluminium industry, we know that reactions of this sort lead to
violent explosions." The official report blames the collapse on the
over-heating and failure of the structural steel beams at the core of
the buildings, an explanation Simensen rejects. Given the quantities of
the molten metal involved, the blasts would have been powerful enough to
blow out an entire section of each building, he said. This, in turn,
would lead to the top section of each tower to fall down on the sections
below. The sheer weight of the top floors would be enough to crush the
lower part of the building like a house of card, he said. The
aluminium-water scenario would also account for explosions from within
the buildings just prior to their collapse that have fueled conspiracy
theories suggesting that the structures had been booby-trapped. Simensen
presented his theory at an international materials technology
conference in San Diego, California, and has detailed his calculations
in an article published in the trade journal Aluminium International
Today. ... A meltdown period of 30 to 45 minutes would be consistent
with the timing of the explosions and subsequent collapse of both
buildings in relation to the moment of impact."
-
Interesting contrast to
the following section: 2007, Dr. John L. Gross, "responsible for the
Structural Fire Response and Collapse aspects of the NIST World Trade
Center Investigation." (www.nist.gov) during a Q&A at the
University of Texas at Austin (Youtube): "First of all,
let's go back to your basic premise that there was a pool of molten
steel. I know of absolute no eyewitnesses who said so, nobody has
produced it. I was on the site. I was on the steel yards. So I don't
know that that's so. Steel melts around 2,600 degrees fahrenheit. I
think it's probably pretty difficult to get those kind of temperatures
in a fire."
-
Another interesting
contrast to the following section: February 7, 2004, Firehouse magazine,
'A Look Inside a Radical New Theory of the WTC Collapse': "Dr.
Frank Gayle, Metals Expert: "Your gut reaction would be the jet fuel is
what made the fire so very intense, a lot of people figured that's what
melted the steel. Indeed it didn't, the steel did not melt. ... The
investigators have found that the windows between the columns blew out,
fueling the fire and bringing so much oxygen in that it weakened the
structure underneath, which then collapsed. ... And while the planes'
wings and engines weakened some areas, scientists don't think that was
enough to make the towers fall. They're now focusing on the floor truss
supports where white foam fireproofing may not have been as strong as
builders believed. The reality is that more than two years later,
investigators are still uncertain why the towers fell."
WTC 1-2-7: Post-collapse: reports of molten metal
-
2006, 'Collateral Damages' DVD (Youtube): "[Firefighter
Philip Ruvolo:] You'd get down below and you would see molten steel.
Molten steel! Running down the channel rails. Like you're in a foundry.
[two firefighters in background: "Like lava. Like a volcano."] Like
lava!"
-
September 5, 2006, Spike TV special 'Metal of Honor', a firefighter explains (Youtube): "You
saw some of the thickest steel I have ever seen bent like a pretzel.
And you just couldn't imagine the force that that took. When the
grabbers were pulling stuff out, big sections of iron that looked
literally on fire on the other hand. They would hit the air and burst
into flames, which was pretty spooky to see."
-
September 5, 2006, Spike TV special 'Metal of Honor', another firefighter explains (Youtube): "You
would create an air pocket by moving steel, fueling the fires
underground. ... These underground fires were just like the fires of
hell." Extra note: "The last fire was extinguished December 19, 2001".
-
Fire chief at the WTC site (Youtube):
"You see how this debris is still smoking? That's from the fires that
are still burning. Eight weeks later we still got fires burning. Every
now and then one of the pieces of equipment will dig in, they'll open up
a small area, the oxygen will rush in and you'll get this plume of
brown and black smoke coming up. That's because that fire just got more
oxygen. That means these things are burning. At one point I think they
were about 2,800 degrees [1,538 degrees celsius]."
-
May 17, 2002, EHStoday.com, 'Safety Professionals Recount Time Spent at Ground Zero':
"However, within hours of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Safety,
Health and Environmental (SH&E) professionals for the Bechtel Group
found themselves at Ground Zero, working side-by-side with city, state
and federal agencies as part of the massive emergency recovery effort.
... On the morning of Sept. 11, [Norman] Black was at a project office
in midtown Manhattan, and [Jeffrey] Vincoli had just landed at
Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia when the second
plane hit the World Trade Center (WTC). Within hours of the attack,
Black was attending a chaotic meeting of state and city officials near
Ground Zero that led to the formation of a Ground Zero SH&E team. At
the request of officials, more Bechtel SH&E professionals led by
Burkhammer headed to New York City to join the team. ... Thermal
measurements taken by helicopter each day showed underground
temperatures ranging from 400 degrees °F [200 degrees °C] to more than
2,800 degrees °F [1540 degrees °C] due to the ongoing underground fires.
The heat melted the soles of workers' shoes and it became a safety
concern for the search-and-rescue dogs. Many were not outfitted with
protective booties. More than one dog suffered serious injuries and at
least three died while working at Ground Zero. The underground fire was
"extinguished" on Dec. 19."
-
Fire chief from 27th Battalion, FDNY, filmed while working at the WTC site (Youtube): "Oh,
it's unbelievable. And this is six weeks later. Almost six weeks later.
And as we get closer to the center of this it gets hotter and hotter.
It's probably 1,500 degrees [815 degrees celsius]. We've had some small
windows into what we thought was the [??] some point and it looks like
an oven. It's just roaring inside. Just a bright, bright reddish-orange
color. See that stuff he's pulling. We're gonna hold off on the water.
It's red hot.".
-
2002, Stanford
University, Les Robertson, one of the chief structural engineers of the
World Trade Center, giving a presentation (Youtube): "The
project was on fire for months. Once we were down at the B1 level and
one of the firefighters said: "I think you will be interested in this."
And they pulled out a big block of concrete and there was like a little
river of steel flowing."
-
Good-looking female police officer talking to a reporter (Youtube): "Steel-toed
boots is one of the biggest things. Steel-toed boots. Out on the rubble
it is still, I believe, 1,100 degrees [593 degrees celsius]. The guys'
boots just melt within a few hours."
-
Voice of a construction worker on the History Channel (Youtube): "It
was literally steaming. Your boots would melt in certain areas. That's
how hot it was. Steel was coming out red in certain areas in the first
couple of weeks at least."
-
Reporter talking to a person at construction site (Youtube): "[Person
1:] This fused element of molten steel and concrete and all of these
things all fused by the heat into one single element. [Other person:]
And almost like a chunk of lava from Kallawaya or Iceland where there
are very sharp, but breakable shards on the end here."
-
2002, Matt Siegel, 'Three Nights at Ground Zero' (Youtube): "They've
begun using heavy equipment to haul away the wreckage of Building
Number 7, regardless of the fact that it is still burning. At the
canteen we hear some of the truck drivers complaining that some of these
girders are so hot they cause the beds of the dump trucks to crack and
split open."
-
Clip about a bent steel beam of the WTC (Youtube): "[Narrator:]
This eight-ton steel I-beam is six inches thick. It was selected to be
preserved for future generations for the near perfect horseshoe-like
bent, formed during the collapse. [Construction worker:] I found it hard
to believe that it had actually bent because of the size of it and
there are no cracks in the iron. It bent without almost a single crack
in it. It takes thousands of degrees to bend steel like this. [Person 3
agrees:] Typically you have buckling and tearing on the tension side.
There is no buckling at all."
-
April 1, 2003, C-Span
2, Ken Holden, director New York Department of Design and Construction
who is active at the World Trade Center site, tells the 9/11 Commission
(Youtube): "... numerous fires were still burning and
smoldering. Underground it was still so hot that molten metal dripped
down the sides of a wall from building six."
-
May 19, 2004, Rudolph Giuliani to the 9/11 Commission (Youtube): "There were fires of 2,000 degrees fahrenheit [1,093 degrees celsius] below the ground. "
-
Major George Polarek, incident commander at Ground Zero, in the 2002 CBS TV special 'Hymns of Hope and Healing' (Youtube): "And
all of a sudden he comes out of this tunnel, screaming: "Wait 'til you
see what I found!" And he pulls in ministers and officials and there,
this cross is fully extended, melted together with the intense heat. The
two beams were never initially part of the same structure. Heat
literally melted them together. And the piece of metal that was draped
over was molten metal that had literally fallen over one of the arms."
-
Sarah Atlas, of New Jersey's Task Force on Urban Search and Rescue, to Penn Arts & Science, summer 2002 issue: "Fires burned and molten metal flowed in the pile of ruins still settling beneath my feet."
-
October 2001, volume VI, issue II, Structural Engineers Association of Utah, 'WTC a Structural Success', p. 3: "[Leslie
Robertson, the structural engineer responsible for the design of the
World Trade Center Towers, is quoted as saying:] As of 21 days after the
attack, the fires were still burning and molten steel was still
running." Interestingly, Robertson had "no recollection" of having
made this statement when asked about it by debunkers site 911myths.com.
-
May 1 and 8, 2006, issue #18 and 19, American Free Press, 'Professor Says ‘Cutter Charges’ Brought Down WTC Buildings': "The
unexplained presence of molten metal at the World Trade Center (WTC)
puzzled Jones and he contacted this writer to confirm the reports first
published in American Free Press in 2002. These reports came from two
men involved in the removal of the rubble: Peter Tully of Tully
Construction of Flushing, N.Y., and Mark Loizeaux of Controlled
Demolition, Inc. of Phoenix, Md. Tully told AFP that he had seen pools
of "literally molten steel" in the rubble. Loizeaux confirmed this:
"Yes, hot spots of molten steel in the basements," he said, "at the
bottom of the elevator shafts of the main towers, down seven levels."
The molten steel was found "three, four, and five weeks later, when the
rubble was being removed," he said. He confirmed that molten steel was
also found at WTC 7, which mysteriously collapsed in the late
afternoon."
-
2002, History Channel,
'World Trade Center: Rise and Fall of an American Icon', "debris removal
specialist" Richard Riggs (general manager Aman Environmental
Construction, "a full service demolition, environmental remediation and
construction contracting firm" one of the firms hired to clean up the
WTC site (little info on it; also, Riggs looks like he doesn't believe
much of his own explanation of office fires melting steel): "The
fire is burning from the bottom because you have so many million
squares of office space that are in those towers. What kind of
combustibles are in a million square feet of office space? The paper,
the furniture, the carpets. The fires got very intense down there and
actually melted beams where it was molten steel being dug out."
-
2002, Times
Herald-Record, 'The Chaplain's Tale Featuring the unabridged transcript
and audio [of the words of Chaplain Herb Trimpe]: "I
realized it was actually warmer on site. The fires burned, up to 2,000
degrees [1,093 degrees celsius], underground for quite a while before
they actually got down to those areas and they cooled off. I talked to
many contractors and they said they actually saw molten metal trapped,
beams had just totally had been melted because of the heat. So this was
the kind of heat that was going on when those airplanes hit the upper
floors. It was just demolishing heat."
-
Late fall 2001
magazine, John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 'Mobilizing
Public Health: Turning Terror's Tide with Science': ""Fires
are still actively burning and the smoke is very intense," reports
Alison Geyh, PhD. "In some pockets now being uncovered, they are finding
molten steel." Geyh, an assistant scientist with the School's
Department of Environmental Health Sciences (EHS), heads the team of
scientists sent by the School in response to a request by the National
Institute of Environmental Health Sciences for a coordinated study of
the disaster's potential health effects to those in the immediate
environment. "
-
September 2003, National Environmental Health Association, 'Messages in the Dust', p. 40: "Ron
Burger, a public health advisor at the National Center for
Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ...
arrived in New York to help September 11, but didn't arrive at the
Ground Zero site until the night of September 12... A veteran of
disasters from the Mississippi floods to Mt. St. Helens, Burger said it
reminded him most of the volcano, if he forgot he was in downtown
Manhattan. "Feeling the heat, seeing the molten steel, the layers upon
layers of ash, like lava, it reminded me of Mt. St. Helens and the
thousands who fled that disaster," he said."
-
September 3, 2002, Structural Engineer, p. 6: ""They
showed us many fascinating slides," he [Dr. Keith Eaton] continued,
"ranging from molten metal which was still red hot weeks after the
event.""
-
May 29, 2002, Knight-Ridder Newspapers, 'Recovery worker reflects on months spent at Ground Zero': "Joe
"Toolie" O'Toole, a Bronx firefighter ... Underground fires raged for
months. O'Toole remembers in February seeing a crane lift a steel beam
vertically from deep within the catacombs of Ground Zero. "It was
dripping from the molten steel," he said."
-
December 2011, Guy Lounsbury of the New York Air National Guard's 109th Air Wing, writes for the National Guard Magazine: "One
fireman told us that there was still molten steel at the heart of the
towers’ remains. Firemen sprayed water to cool the debris down but the
heat remained intense enough at the surface to melt their boots."
-
March 3, 2004, New York Post, 'Unflinching look among the ruins': "These
candidly shaken macho guys recall scenes still haunting their
nightmares two years after 9/11 - a 4-foot-high pile of bodies hurled
from the towers, finding faces that were ripped from heads by the
violence of the collapse, and heat so intense they encountered rivers of
molten steel."
-
April 1, 2002, Waste
Age magazine, 'D-Day: NY Sanitation Workers' Challenge of a Lifetime'
(information seemingly given by Kathy Dawkins, spokeswoman for the New
York City Department of Sanitation: "But for about two and a
half months after the attacks, in addition to its regular duties, NYDS
played a major role in debris removal — everything from molten steel
beams to human remains — running trucks back and forth between Ground
Zero and Fresh Kills landfill, which was reopened to accommodate the
debris."
-
2002, William Langewiesche, 'American Ground', back cover and p. 32: "Within
days after September 11, 2001, William Langewiesche had secured unique,
unrestricted, round-the-clock access to the World Trade Center site.
... In the early days, the streams of molten metal ... leaked from the
hot cores and flowed down broken walls inside the foundation hole."
-
2007, U.S. News and
World Report, 'Memories: They came to help at Ground Zero. What they
experienced they can't forget' (seen on original site, but no more
specific date is given than "2007"): "Lee Turner, a
bewhiskered paramedic... Turner himself crawled through an opening and
down crumpled stairwells to the subway, five levels below ground. He
remembers seeing in the darkness a distant, pinkish glow–molten metal
dripping from a beam–but found no signs of life."
-
September 9, 2002, Government Computer News, 'Handheld app eased recovery tasks': "The
working conditions were hellish, said Greg Fuchek, vice president of
sales for LinksPoint Inc. of Norwalk, Conn. For six months after Sept.
11, the ground temperature varied between 600 degrees Fahrenheit [315
degrees celsius] and 1,500 degrees [815 degrees celsius], sometimes
higher. 'In the first few weeks, sometimes when a worker would pull a
steel beam from the wreckage, the end of the beam would be dripping
molten steel,' Fuchek said."
-
October 20, 2003 Volume 81, Number 42, Chemical and Engineering News magazine, 'Chemical analysis of a disaster': "The
fires, which began at over 1,000 °C, gradually cooled, at least on the
surface, during September and October 2001. USGS's AVIRIS also measured
temperatures when it flew over ground zero on Sept. 16 and 23. On Sept.
16, it picked up more than three dozen hot spots of varying size and
temperature, roughly between 500 and 700 °C. By Sept. 23, only two or
three of the hot spots remained, and those were sharply reduced in
intensity, Clark said. However, Clark doesn't know how deep into the
pile AVIRIS could see. The infrared data certainly revealed surface
temperatures, yet the smoldering piles below the surface may have
remained at much higher temperatures. "In mid-October [a month after the
attack], in the evening," said Thomas A. Cahill, a retired professor of
physics and atmospheric science at the University of California, Davis,
"when they would pull out a steel beam, the lower part would be glowing
dull red, which indicates a temperature on the order of 500 to 600 °C.
And we know that people were turning over pieces of concrete in December
that would flash into fire--which requires about 300 °C. So the surface
of the pile cooled rather rapidly, but the bulk of the pile stayed hot
all the way to December.""
Reports of additional explosions during or just after the impacts
- Stephen Evans live interview on phone by the BBC about the first impact (Youtube): "People
are running away very very quickly. There are more explosions further
down the building ... I was at the base of the building when it
happened. There was one huge bang and the building physically shook.
Then two or three bangs and the building again shook and the people came
screaming past me."
- August 7, 2002, The Scotsman, 'Twin Towers tape reveals full horror of jet attacks': "An
[FBI] informant fitted with a wiretap device made the recording during
an undercover investigation of tax fraud. ... The cassette, leaked
yesterday to the New York Daily News. ... The pair were attending a
breakfast meeting with a suspected tax fraudster in the Marriott World
Trade Centre hotel. ... A muffled boom follows, then a second, much
louder explosion. It continues for almost half a minute, gathering
intensity. An alarm goes off, and people can be heard scattering. ...
After several more chilling exchanges, a loud rumbling fills the air. It
is now 8.58am, 12 minutes after American Airlines Flight 11 hit the
first building. "People," says an official. "You’re going to have to
move on." Mr McArdle makes his way down to the street, and the second
plane crashes into the south tower at 9:03am."
- September 11, 2001, NBC News Transcripts, 'Planes crash into World Trade Center': "Ms.
[Elliott] Walker: ... And we were in a position where we could see the
Trade Center almost immediately between the other buildings, and an
enormous fireball that must have been 300 feet across was visible
immediately [as the plane hit], a secondary explosion, I think, and then
plumes of smoke."
- September 2002 issue, Chief Engineer Magazine, 'We Will Not Forget': "Joe
Shearin, the 36 year-old Assistant Chief Engineer at the World Trade
Center, began his day by distributing work orders to his crew. ... On
the 38th floor, Joe Shearin exited the elevator and began his walk down
the hallway to meet with the tenant who had requested to see him. About
50 feet down the hallway, he heard a loud explosion and was lifted into
the air. "I can't even tell you how far I traveled," he recalled. When
he landed, people were already coming out of their offices into the
hallway. "They were screaming, hollering," he said. "They were asking
what they should do and where they should go". Joe directed them down
the stairwells and out of the building. ... What Joe first believed was
that an equipment room on the 43rd floor, which had an electrical
substation, had blown up. He proceeded up the 5 floors to that level.
Upon reaching the 43rd floor, "there were patches of ceiling that was
just down on the floor, water pipes were broken, water was gushing like a
brook or river that was just running down the corridor of the machine
room". He began yelling to see if anyone was in the room and received no
reply." Not unimportant to know, a sky lobby was located in floor 44, onto which one or more elevators could have crashed.
Basement-related testimony (watch out for Rodriguez)
-
September 2002 issue, Chief Engineer Magazine, 'We Will Not Forget': [Stationary
engineer] Mike Pecoraro had gotten up from bed at 4 a.m. ...
Mike's assignment that day [in WTC1, the North Tower] would be to
continue constructing a gantry that would be used to pull the heads from
the 2,500 ton chillers, located in the 6th sub- basement level of the
tower. ... Deep below the tower, Mike Pecoraro was suddenly interrupted
in his grinding task by a shake on his shoulder from his co-worker. "Did
you see that?" he was asked. Mike told him that he had seen nothing.
"You didn't see the lights flicker?", his co-worker asked again. "No,"
Mike responded, but he knew immediately that if the lights had
flickered, it could spell trouble. A power surge or interruption could
play havoc with the building's equipment. ...
Mike told his co-worker to call upstairs to their
Assistant Chief Engineer and find out if everything was all right. His
co-worker made the call and reported back to Mike that he was told that
the Assistant Chief did not know what happened but that the whole
building seemed to shake and there was a loud explosion. They had been
told to stay where they were and "sit tight" until the Assistant Chief
got back to them. By this time, however, the room they were working in
began to fill with a white smoke. "We smelled kerosene," Mike
recalled, "I was thinking maybe a car fire was upstairs", referring to
the parking garage located below grade in the tower but above the deep
space where they were working. The two decided to ascend the stairs to
the C level, to a small machine shop where Vito Deleo and David Williams
were supposed to be working. When the two arrived at the C level, they
found the machine shop gone. "There was nothing there but rubble, "Mike
said. "We're talking about a 50 ton hydraulic press ? gone!" The two
began yelling for their co-workers, but there was no answer. They saw a
perfect line of smoke streaming through the air. "You could stand here,"
he said, "and two inches over you couldn't breathe. We couldn't see
through the smoke so we started screaming." But there was still no
answer. The two made their way to the parking garage, but found that it,
too, was gone. "There were no walls, there was rubble on the floor, and
you can't see anything" he said. 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. One was a female Carpenter and the other an Elevator
Operator. They were both badly burned and injured. Realizing he
had to get help, Mike ascended to the Lobby Level where he met Arti
DelBianco, a member of his work crew. People were now coming down the
same stairway from above the lobby and Arti and Mike had to stay where
they were to direct people out of the stairway door and into the
building's lobby. If they didn't, people descending could walk past the
lobby door and unwittingly keep descending into the sublevels of the
building."
-
2002, NY1 News, 'Honoring The Survivors', Construction worker Phillip Morelli video interview: "I
go downstairs [underneath WTC, the North Tower], the foreman tells me
to go remove the containers. As I am walking by the main freight
corridor building, in the corridor, that's when I got blown. I mean, the
impact of the explosion of whatever happened threw me to the floor and
that's when everything started happening. It knocked me right to the
floor, you didn't know what it was of course. You're assuming something
just fell over in the loading dock, something very heavy, something very
big. You don't know what happened and all of a sudden you just felt the
floor moving and get up and the walls... and then ... now I'm hearing
that the main freight car, the elevator fell down. I was right near the
main freight car, so I'm assuming what that was. Then ... you know ...
you heard that coming towards you. I was racing, I was going towards the
bathroom ... all of a sudden ... I opened up the door ... I didn't know
it was the bathroom and all of sudden a big impact happening again and
all of the ceiling tiles were falling down, the light fixtures were
falling down, swinging out of the ceiling. And I come running out the
door and everything ... the walls were down and now I start running
towards the parking lots ... I just assumed a car or something exploded
on B1 or something big or heavy thing fell over ... when the floor is
moving underneath you ... there was a lot of smoke down there, a lot of
people screaming ... and were running up the ramps ... you gotta go
clear across the whole from one to two world trade center ... and then,
all of a sudden, it happened all over again; building 2 gets hit. And
again, I don't know that, I just know that something else hit us to the
floor. Right in the basement you felt it, walls were caving in,
everything that was going on. I mean, I know people that got killed in
the basement, I know people who got broken legs in there in the
basement, people got surgery, because the walls hit them in the face."
-
September 11, 2001, CNN interviews WTC janitor William Rodriguez: "I
was in the basement, which is the support floor for the maintenance
company, and we hear like a big rumble. Not like an impact, like a
rumble, like moving furniture in a massive way. And all of sudden we
hear another rumble, and a guy comes running, running into our office,
and all of skin was off his body. All of the skin." This is all
Rodriguez said on 9/11. In later years he became a very prominent
skeptic of the 9/11 Commission and was regularly interviewed by the
mainstream and alternative media, to which he claimed to have felt a
low-level basement explosion immediately prior to the
impact. Something is clearly wrong here. His association with James
Randi, a reported pedophile [444] who sat on the board of the CIA-linked
False Memory Syndrome Foundation[55], is just too suspect to ignore. Rodriguez's testimony should be ignored completely. September 11, 2002, New York Sun, 'A janitor's heroism 'opens a lot of doors'': "Mr.
Randi, a debunker of psychics and faith healers, took Mr. Rodriguez on
as an assistant in his campaign against charlatans. Mr. Rodriguez, with
his cleaner's uniform and unlimited self-assurance, went back stage to
gather intelligence on faith healers like W.V. Grant. "He has always
managed to do the impossible," Mr. Randi wrote of his pupil. Mr.
Rodriguez says he learned so much that "I could start my own church and
perform my own miracles." ... The books had little to do with his day
job: arriving at 8 a.m. and changing into his blue uniform in a basement
locker-room, Mr. Rodriguez would ride the elevator to Windows on the
World, on the 107th floor. His friends who worked there - most of them
are now dead - gave him a free breakfast, and by 8:30, he would be on
the stairs with a broom, a dustpan, and a rag. Sweeping one of the
building's three stairwells took three hours. But Mr. Rodriguez got to
work late the morning of September 11. He was still in the basement when
the plane hit the tower."
WTC 1-2-7: Exploding van reports
- September 11, Rick Sanchez live for CNN (Youtube): "I
spoke with some police officials moments ago, Chris, and they told me
that they have reason to believe that one of the explosions at the World
Trade Center may have been caused by a van that was parked inside the
building that may have had some type of explosive device in it."
- Reporter Rick Sanchez on the phone with MSNBC, live on 9/11 (Youtube): "I'm
in that area ... where West Broadway and Hudson come together, right at
Chambers. That would put us a block and a half away from the site of
where the explosion was. That area has just been evacuated because
police have found what they describe as a suspicious device and they
fear that it might be something that could lead to another explosion.
Obviously there's a real sense of caution here on the part of police. I
spoke with some police officials moments ago, Chris, and they told me
they have reason to believe that one of the explosions at the World
Trade Center aside from the ones that may have been caused by the impact
of the plane with the building, may have been caused by a van that was
parked in the building that may have had some type of explosive device
in it, so their fear is that there may have been explosive devices
planted either in the building, or in the adjacent area, and that's why
they are being so cautious."
- September 11, 2001, reporter Jack Kelley live to USA Today (Youtube):"Apparently
what appears to have happened was that at the same time the planes hit
that the FBI most likely thinks that there was a car or truck packed
with explosives underneath the building which also exploded at the same
time and brought both of them down. ... That is the working theory at
this point. That is still unconfirmed. That is what the FBI is going on
at this point."
- Jeffrey Beatty, president of Total Security International live on CNN on 9/11 (taken from CNN website transcript): "They
don't have the ability to check all those vehicles to make sure that
they don't pose a threat. So we're yet to determine -- we've heard
reports of secondary explosions after the aircraft impacted -- whether
in fact there wasn't something else at the base of the tower in fact
were the coup de gras to bring them to the ground."
- September 12, 2001, The Record (Bergen
County, NJ), 'Five men detained as suspected conspirators; maps connect
them to attack; similar van was in Liberty Park' (from Lexis Nexis, this
report was not copied by other newspapers): "About eight
hours after terrorists struck Manhattan's tallest skyscrapers, police in
Bergen County detained five men who they said were found carrying maps
linking them to the blasts. The five men, who were in a van stopped on
Route 3 in East Rutherford around 4:30 p.m., were being questioned by
police but had not been charged with any crime late Tuesday. The Bergen
County Police bomb squad X-rayed packages found inside the van but did
not find any explosives, authorities said. However, sources close to the
investigation said they found other evidence linking the men to the
bombing plot. "There are maps of the city in the car with certain places
highlighted," the source said. "It looked like they're hooked in with
this. It looked like they knew what was going to happen when they were
at Liberty State Park. " Sources also said that bomb-sniffing dogs
reacted as if they had detected explosives, although officers were
unable to find anything. The FBI seized the van for further testing,
authorities said. Sources said the van was stopped as it headed east on
Route 3, between the Hackensack River bridge and the Sheraton hotel. As a
precaution, police shut down Route 3 traffic in both directions after
the stop and evacuated a small roadside motel near the Sheraton. Sources
close to the investigation said the men said they were Israeli
tourists, but police had not been able to confirm their identities.
Authorities would not release their names. East Rutherford officers
stopped the van after the FBI's Newark Field Office broadcast an alert
asking surrounding police departments to look for a white Chevrolet van,
police said. "We got an alert to be on the lookout for a white
Chevrolet van with New Jersey registration and writing on the side,"
said Bergen County Police Chief John Schmidig. "Three individuals were
seen celebrating in Liberty State Park after the impact. They said three
people were jumping up and down. " The East Rutherford officers
summoned the county police bomb squad, New Jersey state troopers, and
FBI agents, who waited alongside the van as prosecutors from the U.S.
Attorney's Office tried to obtain a warrant to search the van late
Tuesday, Schmidig said. By 10 p.m., members of the bomb squad were
picking through the van and X-raying packages found inside, Schmidig
said. Sources said the FBI alert, known as a BOLO or "Be On Lookout,"
was sent out at 3:31 p.m. It read: "Vehicle possibly related to New York
terrorist attack. White, 2000 Chevrolet van with New Jersey
registration with 'Urban Moving Systems¬ sign on back seen at Liberty
State Park, Jersey City, NJ, at the time of first impact of jetliner
into World Trade Center. "Three individuals with van were seen
celebrating after initial impact and subsequent explosion. FBI Newark
Field Office requests that, if the van is located, hold for prints and
detain individuals. " FBI spokeswoman Sandra Carroll declined to comment
on the incident late Tuesday. State police Lt. Col. Barry W. Roberson
confirmed the traffic stop at a late night news briefing at state police
headquarters in Trenton. He would not elaborate, however. Business
records show an Urban Moving Systems with offices on West 50th Street in
Manhattan and on West 18th Street in Weehawken. Telephone messages left
at the businesses Tuesday evening were not immediately returned.
Business records show the owner as Dominik Suter of Fair Lawn. A woman
answering the telephone at Suter's home acknowledged he owned the
company but refused to comment further. She also declined to identify
herself. It was not clear Tuesday whether the van stopped by police is
related to Suter's company. A business traveler staying at the Homestead
Studio Suites Hotel said she watched state troopers drive the suspects
away in a procession of state police cars about 5 p.m. The woman, who
asked not to be identified, said the people detained appeared to be
white men, but she could not give more details."
September 12 reports that a van "packed with
explosives" had been stopped close to the George Washington Bridge were
probably referring to the above story. More on the story:
September 15, 2001, The Record (Bergen County, NJ), 'Five hijack suspects had links to J.J.': "East
Rutherford police stopped an Urban Moving Systems van on Route 3
Tuesday and detained five men inside, at least some of them company
employees. The occupants said they were all Israelis. They were being
detained because they are in violation of immigration regulations, and
all have expressed a desire to leave the country on their own, according
to an Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman. An employee of
Urban Moving Systems, who would not give his name, said the majority of
his co-workers are Israelis and were joking on the day of the attacks.
"I was in tears," the man said. "These guys were joking and that
bothered me. These guys were like, 'Now America knows what we go
through.¬""
December 13, 2001, New Jersey
Department of Law and Public Safety, Division of Consumer Affairs,
'State Granted Access to Moving Company's Storage Facility': "The
State, at the same time, filed a lawsuit in Hudson County
Superior Court against Urban Moving Systems and its owner Dominick
Suter...According to the complaint, on or about September 14,
2001, Suter departed from the United States and left no one acting as an
agent for Urban."
Audio/video evidence for explosives
Now that everyone has read all the witness
testimonies (you did?), it's time to take a look at the audio/video
evidence for a controlled demolition. As already said, in 2005 I spent a
considerable amount of time to find a single video that somewhat
clearly captured the collapse sound from the very first second,
preferably also while the camera is pointed at the building. I found one video
at the time and the sound actually blew me away. Today it's quite a
well known clip.* It is the one in which a blond ABC-7 reporter says:
| |
"This is as close
as we can get to the base of the World Trade Center. You can see the
firemen assembled here, the police officers, FBI agents. You can see the
two towers... [a rumble comes up, immediately followed by a huge boom]
... a huge explosion now, raining debris on all of us! We'd better get
out of the way!!!" |
* At least one HD version I've
seen online of this clip seems to have the sound of the explosion
muffled. Check more than one version of the video when in doubt.
The reporter just barely survives the rainstorm of
debris. But what is important here is to calculate as precisely as
possible the moment that this loud boom took place. Unfortunately, the
cameraman has not yet pointed his camera up to where the impact zone is
when the initial ruble comes up, but the relevant floors are in sight by
the time the boom is heard. At the moment the floors come in sight, not
a whole lot appears to be happening yet. They are only slightly
crumbling. The building has begun to tilt (not visible from this angle
and only then in a frame by frame analysis), but none of the floors
have been crushed yet at this point.

This observation is more than a
little important, because sound moves quite a bit slower than light -
there is always time delay. The tower is 415 meters high. A good
estimate of the distance between the camera and the floors would be
about 300 meters. On average sounds moves at 343 meters per second, so a
quick calculation gives us a delay of approximately 0,87 seconds at
this distance. What does that tell us? It tells us that the boom took
place AT LEAST half a second BEFORE the floors blew out and began to
pancake. Even a person who tries to be as conservative as possible
cannot argue that the loud boom - which is very distinct from the
continuous rumble - happened as the result of pancaking floors.
Something else must have caused it.
As for the rumble that precedes the loud boom, that aspect will be discussed a bit later.
The loud boom is actually heard reverberating around the World Trade Center complex on another video,
in which it sounds more like a clap of thunder. The picture below
actually shows the process of how certain conclusions were reached.

Because of a prominent flash on the
South Tower when a beam apparently snaps in two, it was possible to
synchronize the video with another one in which the observer has a good
view of what is happening at the relevant floors. Estimated distance
from the relevant floors is about 400 meters, resulting in a sound delay
of 1.17 seconds. Both videos were captured at 30 framer per second, so
we need to go back 35 frames from when the boom is first heard in order
to figure out the moment it originally took place. The images above
again show that the building was still standing erect when this boom
happened; there's was only some slight crumbling. So again, collapsing floors are not the cause of this loud boom.
At you have just read well over a
hundred accounts saying that the collapse started with a loud explosion -
and here is the auditory evidence for it.
There's another relevant video. It appears to be part of a documentary and was uploaded in 2007 to Youtube under the name "South Tower collapse from East".

I cannot tell if the audio has been
tampered with or if it even belongs to the camera in question. It is a
real recording though, with people screaming as the tower comes down.
The amazing thing of the sound is that it starts with a loud boom,
followed by what appears to be a pretty clear sound of the first floor
popping out. In any case, if the video and audio belong together and has
not been tampered with in any way, it's possible to - yet again - draw
the conclusion that the boom begins a split second before the top of
the building gives way.
There's a fourth collapse video
of the South Tower that reveals the loud boom. It's unfortunate that
the video begins a fraction of a second too late and that a white fade
in effect has been added; otherwise it would probably have been the best
video to prove that the collapse was initiated by a loud explosion.
Anyone can pause the video right at the moment when it cuts to the
collapse segment. The boom sound is there immediately with frame one. At
that point the floors are at the beginning stages of popping out. With a
sound delay of about 0,80 seconds, its easy to conclude that the
explosion sound is heard before the floors begin to blow out and
pancake.
There also exists at least one video of the North Tower collapse
which appears to have recorded a similar explosion as with the South
Tower. It is the exact same story: an explosion is heard about half a
second before the floors sudden give way.

Finally there is the Sorensen video,
with the camera aimed at the south tower again. It's possible to hear
and see the tower up to half an hour before the collapse. Nothing out of
the ordinary is heard until seconds before the collapse. A brief
"klunk" is heard (not in video segment here), followed by a louder
"ka-klunk" that happens about one second before a very loud
metallic-sounding "roooom!" "roooom!" sound comes up. Floors 77 and 78
begin to crumble immediately upon the start of this sound. A distinct
loud boom is not heard from this angle, possibly because the rumbling
sound is so overwhelming.

So what is this apparently
deafening sound? What is going on inside the tower that explains it?
Maybe it was the shearing of metal columns due to the impending
collapse, although I personally have trouble believing that. I would
expect a collapse of this kind to be a somewhat more gradual process.
Maybe a more likely explanation - considering all the evidence for a
demolition - is that a multitude of smaller charges were going off,
ripping metal columns apart. Most witnesses reported the loud explosion,
but several also mentioned many smaller charges going off. In any case,
the loud noise starts when the building is still standing tall, even if
it is just a fraction of a second.
Visual and scientific evidence for the use of thermite/thermate
Thermite: theory and history
Thermite is a mixture of a metal powder and metal
oxide. The oxide is normally red iron rust, but copper oxide and
likely other forms have also been experimented with. The metal powder
can be iron, aluminum, magnesium, copper, or even lead. It's very easy
to make, but depending on the mixture, one needs gunpowder or magnesium
to ignite it. Once ignited, thermite burns at temperatures of about
2,500°C/4,500°F. What the iron rust molecule actually does is provide
the metal powder with enough oxygen to make the combustion as intense
as it is. There's not enough oxygen in the surrounding air to initiate
or sustain these type of intense chemical reactions. In similar sense,
potassium nitrate is the oxidizer in gunpowder while ammonium nitrate
did the job for McVeigh in Oklahoma. There are many other oxidizers.
Thermite was discovered in the late 19th century
and used extensively in railroad welding. Experimentation with
different mixtures began almost immediately. In many cases sulfur was
added to the mix, officially rebranding the substance to "thermate".
At least three different compositions, listed below, have been used by
the military.
| Therm-8 (TH1) |
|
| Iron oxide |
61.0% |
| Aluminum |
22.8% |
| Barium nitrate |
15.0% |
| Sulfur |
0.90% |
| Castor oil |
0.30% |
|
|
| Therm 8-2 (TH2) |
|
| Iron oxide |
55.2% |
| Aluminum |
25.0% |
| Barium nitrate |
19.5% |
| Sulfur |
0.30% |
| |
|
|
|
| Therm 64-c (TH3) |
|
| Iron oxide |
43.8% |
| Aluminum |
24.9% |
| Barium nitrate |
29.0% |
| Sulfur |
2.0% |
| Binding agent |
0.3% |
|
|
Combined with a magnesium casing, TH3 and possibly
the other variations were used in over 40 million AN-M50 incendiary
bombs dropped during World War II over Japan and Germany. [2] Compared to the original thermite formula, this TH3 version of thermate was said to "increase [the] thermal effect ... and significantly reduce the ignition temperature". [3]
Looking at the added substances, barium nitrate makes the mixture
easier to ignite (using aluminum instead iron powder also makes this
process easier) while sulfur quickly degrades steel.
Even though little is known about it, research into
thermite has not been sitting entirely still since World War II. In
recent years, and possibly inspired by all the fuss surrounding 9/11,
the U.S. Navy has become interested in developing "nanostructured super-thermites" [4]. Apparently this is the kind of thermite that was found in the World Trade Center dust. [5]
Also, it was Kevin Ryan who years ago pointed to U.S. patent number
5,532,449, issued in 1996, regarding a thermite demolition device. The
purpose of this device would be to "demolish a concrete structure
at a high efficiency, while preventing a secondary problem due to noise,
flying dust and chips, and the like." In this device the thermite is mixed with a gas to generate a "plasma torch". It is this torch that cuts through the steel. [6]
However, there's no evidence that this device was ever produced, let
alone used in any demolition of the World Trade Center. However, the
patent was issued to Komatsu Ltd., a relatively interesting Japanese
firm that will be given some attention in part 2 of this article.
Thermite on 9/11
There are various videos of the South Tower showing what appears to be molten metal
falling from the corner that Flight 175 was moving towards upon impact.
There has been speculation that this was either thermite or molten
steel due to the presence of thermite. I never paid much attention to
it, not knowing at the time that there were so many accounts of extreme
heat and molten steel at the World Trade Center clean-up site. While
synchronizing the two collapse videos discussed earlier, I was reminded
once again of this phenomenon. In the minutes before the collapse this
continuing stream of "something" is clearly visible. Now with the
virtual certainty that thermite was used, I decided to do my own
analysis of the stream.
Let's first be a little bit
specific about the "minutes" comment. The first time a little bit of
apparently molten metal is falling is three minutes and 34 seconds
before collapse. Almost exactly a minute later another blob of glowing
metal comes down. Little is seen again (from far away at least) until
exactly 1,5 minute before the collapse. At this point the glowing
material breaks through, causing regular showers of white and yellow hot
metal. Looking at the streams up close, the following observations can
be made:
- No flames are visible anywhere: not at the top and not when the liquid comes down.
- White smoke can often be seen coming from this
liquid, while flames in other parts of the building generate thick black
smoke - the kind of smoke burning jet fuel creates.
- Especially when the liquid comes down, the
stream appears to be of a rather thick, lava-like consistency. It
doesn't seem to behave like a watery substance as gasoline.
- The stream is rather sparkly when disturbed in any way.
- At the very center the liquid is quite white,
indicating a temperature of about 1,200°C/2,200°F, whether it is
aluminum or steel. The temperature drops off quickly. Most parts of the
stream are bright yellow to orange, indicating average temperatures in
the neighborhood of 1,000°C/1,850°F.
All these observations indicate we are dealing
with molten metal. One would expect that it is possible that this is
aluminum from the jetliner, which crashed towards the corner in question
after impact. Unsurprisingly, this is actually what NIST concluded
after being questioned about it by Dr. Steven Jones, the
earlier-mentioned engineer who is skeptical about the collapses. NIST
uploaded a similar conclusion to their online FAQ. The reply to Jones read:
| |
"NIST concluded that
the source of the molten material was aluminum alloys from the aircraft,
since these are known to melt between 475 degrees Celsius (900 degrees
Fahrenheit) and 640 degrees Celsius (1,200 degrees Fahrenheit)—depending
on the particular alloy—well below the expected temperatures (about
1,000 degrees Celsius or 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit) in the vicinity of
the fires." [ 7] |
It's nice to see that everybody is on the same page
whether or not we're looking at a liquid metal here: it's metal. About
the temperature inside the building it's possible to have endless
debates. NIST claims sustained temperatures of 1,000°C are an acceptable
estimate. Looking at all the smoke and the very limited amount of fire
at the exact location where the material comes down from, a lot of
people are skeptical about that. Then there's the fact, known to every
fireman and every thinking person, that the temperature of the actual
fire seldom matches the temperature of the surrounding material.
Certainly in the case of metal, heat is transported away from the flame
in record time (just think about the purpose of CPU coolers). Unless a
material is fully immersed in a fire for some time and therefore doesn't
have the ability to transport its heat, it will reach similar
temperatures as the flames.
Jones also pointed out the same thing that I
myself had noticed: aluminum has a tendency towards turning quickly
back into its gray metallic form. Certainly if aluminum is only heated
to about 1,800°F/980°C, as would have been the absolute theoretical
limit at the World Trade Center, I would expect to see a dull, unsparkly
yellow color already turning grayish by the time it falls from the
building. This is not what we see, however. We see bright white, yellow
and orange colors, many sparks, and no indication that the material is
turning grayish. Instead, it turns bright and then dull orange. In my
unprofessional opinion it is almost certainly steel, likely mixed in
with a little bit of remaining thermate.
What is interesting is that NIST actually tried to
prove to Jones that the aluminum was glowing because it was "probably"
mixed in with office materials (indicating that they know the aluminum
would not have been heated even close to 1,800°F/980°C for it to start
glowing a little bit). Jones and his team experimented with this. It
turned out to be total bunk. Mixing office materials in with molten
aluminum had absolutely zero effect. Half of the time the materials
wouldn't even mix. [8]

The basic problem with NIST is that they are
covering things up. They don't even acknowledge the dozens of witness
testimonies, combined with visual evidence, that there was heat intense
enough to (partially) melt and fuse steel beams weighing many tons. This
position was perfectly captured when Dr. John L. Gross, "responsible for the Structural Fire Response and Collapse aspects of the NIST World Trade Center Investigation", gave the following reply when questioned about the reports and evidence for molten steel at the World Trade Center site:
| |
"First of all, let's
go back to your basic premise that there was a pool of molten steel. I
know of absolute no eyewitnesses who said so, nobody has produced it. I
was on the site. I was on the steel yards. So I don't know that that's
so. Steel melts around 2,600 degrees fahrenheit. I think it's probably
pretty difficult to get those kind of temperatures in a fire." |
Gross invited the person who asked the question to
send him any information regarding the extreme heat and molten steel at
the clean up site. However, after the speech Gross refused to provide
his contact information to the person in question. What does this mean?
It means that Gross is lying - and he knows it. As for NIST's official
position, to be found in its online FAQ:
| |
"[NIST] found no evidence that would support the melting of steel in a jet-fuel ignited fire in the towers prior to collapse." |
This appears to carefully crafted lawyer-talk. They don't say: "We found no evidence of molten steel."
Instead they argue that they found no evidence that burning jet fuel
could have melted steel - implying they never had to look into reports
of molten steel. NIST's FAQ goes on to explain that this has indeed been their policy:
| |
"The condition of the
steel in the wreckage of the WTC towers (i.e., whether it was in a
molten state or not) was irrelevant to the investigation of the collapse
since it does not provide any conclusive information on the condition
of the steel when the WTC towers were standing.
"Under certain circumstances it is conceivable
for some of the steel in the wreckage to have melted after the buildings
collapsed. Any molten steel in the wreckage was more likely due to the
high temperature resulting from long exposure to combustion within the
pile than to short exposure to fires or explosions while the buildings
were standing." |
So not only didn't NIST investigate the claims and
evidence for molten steel, they think it is irrelevant whether or not
steel melted or came close to melting - because, apparently, "under certain circumstances",
ordinary fires can melt steel. According to them, it is possible that
fires which were not able to melt steel high up in the buildings, when
the floors were saturated with jet fuel, would have been able to do so
after the floors were disintegrated and mixed in with hundreds and
hundreds of tons of (cold) steel of more than 200 additional floors.
Does that sound logical? Not to me.
Their is something else NIST refused to do, which may have proved the existence of thermate inside the building. FAQ:
| |
"NIST did not test
for the residue of these [thermite] compounds in the steel. ...
[because] NIST [had already] concluded that there were no explosives or
controlled demolition involved in the collapses of the WTC towers." |
There is very good reason why NIST should have tested for these residues, because the initial 2002 World Trade Center Building Performance Study of FEMA actually provided a high degree of scientific evidence that the buildings had indeed been |
You're looking at what
used to be a WTC 1 or 2 I-beam, which, looking at the design of the WTC,
in all likelyhood came from the core. Some mysterious
sulfur-containing compound burning at high temperatures managed to
quickly "liquefy" much of the steel. Was thermate placed against this
beam? It's likely. |
|
weakened by a thermate
variant of thermite, despite the fact that investigators, for obvious
reasons, didn't ponder this explanation. Appendix C of the report described the discovery of two pieces of structural steel in the rubble that had "unusual erosion patterns". The first piece "appeared" to belong to WTC 7 and the other to one of the two towers. The report described that the steel had been thinned "due to a combination of oxidation and sulfidation", resulting "in the formation of a eutectic mixture of iron, oxygen, and sulfur that liquefied the steel." The report goes on to describe that the "sulfidation attack of steel grain boundaries accelerated the corrosion and erosion of the steel" and concluded that this is "a very unusual event" where "no clear |
explanation for the source of the sulfur has been identified."
What is so very interesting about this is: A) that experts found no
explanation for what they observed; and B) that the thermate variant of
thermite includes sulfur in order to increase its ability to burn
through steel. Sulfur causes the iron to become brittle. Together with
oxygen, which is also released during the burning of thermite/thermate,
it is a substance that is carefully removed from steel during the
processing stages. |
Despite the fact that NIST refused to look for
molten steel or test for thermate compounds, they did find time to
theorize a bit on how much of an ineffective substance thermite would
have been for achieving a controlled demolition. From the NIST FAQ:
| |
"Analysis of the WTC
steel for the elements in thermite/thermate would not necessarily have
been conclusive. The metal compounds also would have been present in the
construction materials making up the WTC towers, and sulfur is present
in the gypsum wallboard that was prevalent in the interior partitions." |
So according to NIST, gypsum wallboard is the most
likely reason that steel beams may have been liquefied. If that is a
serious suspicion of them, maybe they should be ringing the alarm bells,
because gypsum wallboard is extremely common in office buildings.
Here we
actually enter the territory again of Dr. Steven Jones, the physicist
who examined the World Trade Center dust. He claimed that there were
unusual amounts of sulfur, tiny |
Jonathan H. Cole,
convincingly disproving here that gypsum wall board could have been
responsible for any erosion of the WTC beams, even under the most
extreme conditions. |
|
iron spheres and the
oxidizer potassium permanganate in them - all of them indicating
thermate reactions. There seems to be virtually no one who is willing to
challenge these claims, except for a few badly produced Youtube clips.
In them the NIST claim is repeated that gypsum wallboard is the most
likely source for the sulfur found in the world trade center dust, that
paint and electronic devices have been responsible for the iron spheres
and that potassium permanganate can be found in structural steel,
paint, batteries and ceramics. Most of these arguments appear to be
quite shaky and certainly always isolated from the bigger picture.
One person who actually went out and disproved the claim from NIST that gypsum wallboard could have |
| been responsible for the
extreme degradation in the controversial FEMA debris pieces, is
Jonathan H. Cole, a civil engineer by profession. In a December 2010
Youtube clip entitled 9/11 Experiments: The Mysterious Eutectic Steel,
he wrapped gypsum wallboard all around a large I-beam, added
diesel fuel, bound everything together with a steel net and left it out
on a fire for 24 hours. After two days, when the pile had cooled down,
he inspected the I-beam: no intergranular melting had taken place
whatsoever and certainly no holes could be detected. |
Cole convincingly debunked another claim that can be found in the FAQ on the NIST website:
| |
"While a thermite
reaction can cut through large steel columns, many thousands of pounds
of thermite would need to have been placed inconspicuously ahead of
time, remotely ignited, and somehow held in direct contact with the
surface of hundreds of massive structural components to weaken the
building. This makes it an unlikely substance for achieving a controlled
demolition." |
| Information on thermate
is so lacking that even today, anno 2012, it is still impossible to find
much detail on its use in demolition work or even exactly how good it
is in cutting steel. |
Unsurprisingly, there
have been at least two attempts by the mainstream media to help NIST in
supporting the theory that thermite could not have been used to bring
down the world trade center towers. National Geographic proudly
demonstrated how 175 pounds of thermite stashed around a steel column
in the open air was unable to melt it. Mythbusters then failed to melt
a car in two pieces with half a ton of thermite. All of sudden it
didn't matter anymore that the structural strength of the steel would
have been severely compromised during these experiments. Weakening, not
melting, had always been the major premise of the World Trade Center
collapses. But that was put aside for a moment.
There's zero structure in the experiments done
and the claims made by all these mainstream sources. This |
|
Jonathan H. Cole,
proving here that thermate can easily be used as demolition compound. If
the burning process is focused, it will cut through steel like butter.
However, details of the WTC collapse indicate that thermate was actually
used in huge quantities. |
in contrast to other experiments done by Jonathan Cole. In his November 2010 Youtube clip 9/11 Experiments: The Great Thermate Debate,
he set out to answer three basic questions: 1) Can thermate melt
steel? 2) Can thermate cut steel horizontally or vertically? 3) Does it
take massive quantities to do any real damage? He welded two large
steel I-beams together in his backyard and began experimenting with a
home-made thermate compound consisting of iron oxide, aluminum, barium
nitrate and sulfur. His first experiment, in which he pressed five
pounds of thermate to each side of a beam, failed; it didn't affect the
construction at all. Then he began using a modified steel box tube
with a slot milled along one edge, forcing the thermate out in one
direction (similar to the idea behind a shaped charge). All of a sudden
1,5 pounds of thermate turned out to be enough to cut through the
steel. In later set ups he demolished large vertical beams, bolts and
box columns, all of which were present at the World Trade Center. He
also made his thermate deflagrate, causing the typical "pressure pulses"
and "dust puffs" seen on various occasions on 9/11. For those thinking
that there is a conventional explanation for this phenomenon, NIST
actually claimed that "the sources for the pressure pulses … and/or dust puffs … are unknown". So who knows what they were, especially the ones that took place while the buildings were still standing. |
Evidence for the use of massive amounts of thermate to simulate a collapse
The evidence for thermate is strong - ridiculously
strong to be exact. Questions that remain at this point is how much
thermate was actually used and where it was placed in the building. As
for the latter question, the primary idea of Kevin Ryan, who
investigated some of the steel of the World Trade Center, seems to be
that there was thermite in or behind the fireproofing on some floors. It
is indeed a fact that the floors from which the collapses were
initiated, had received additional fireproofing in the years before
9/11. According to NIST:
| |
"In the years between
1995 and 2001, thermal protection was upgraded in a number of the
floors affected by the fires on September 11, 2001. Specifically, in WTC
1, floors 92 through 100 and 102 were upgraded; and in WTC 2, floors
77, 78, 88, 89, 92, 96 and 97 were upgraded." [ 9] |
The WTC 1 impact floors were 94 to 98 and for WTC 2
they were 78 to 84. The primary floor to fail in the collapse of WTC 1
was clearly 98 (also according to NIST). In case of WTC 2 this
appears to have been floors 77 and 78. And as the reader can see, these
floors all had their fireproofing upgraded in the years before 9/11.
One major problem, however, is the lack of details when these floors
were actually upgraded. A list of modifications made to various World
Trade Center floors, appearing in a different segment of the NIST
report, fails to mention some of the floors where reportedly the
fireproofing was upgraded. [10]
There are also very few details as to what type of modifications were
actually made, precisely when they were made and who carried them out.
Basically, the theory that thermate was placed inside the buildings via
fireproofing upgrades comes down to speculation, especially when
these upgrades were done several years prior to 9/11. However, it does
remain a viable theory.
Jonathan Cole, on the other hand, primarily focuses
on the idea that small thermite charges were brought into the
building and attached to I-beams and perimeter box columns.
Unfortunately he doesn't focus on the core columns, which were
(massive) box columns up until floor 85 of both buildings, with lighter
I-beams being used above that.

1) WTC core columns being cut
up and shipped off prematurely. 2) Crumpled I-beams. 3) Perimeter box
columns, including a square hole used to tighten the bolts after the
columns have been stacked on top of each other.
To me it does make sense that bolts of the
perimeter box columns were attacked. The rather symmetrical smoke puffs
along the corners of the building and at least one bright flash may even
provide a degree of evidence for that. 60% of the weight of the
building was carried by the core; 40% by the perimeter columns, with
the towers having been designed five times stronger than they needed
to be. Anybody interested in taking the buildings down, would probably
not take any changes and just sever the perimeter box columns from each
other in various places. The alternative is that the core may go down
much faster than the outside of the building, making the pancake theory
considerably harder to sell.
This information really makes one think. How is it
even possible that in case of the north tower 9 floors fail (at floor
98) and manage to crash straight through 97 floors below it, 92 of which
were fully intact. Central core columns used on lower floors were much
bigger and stronger than the I-beams in use on the upper-most floors.
How come that these 8 ton, 20 ton and 50 ton columns sticking straight
up from the ground failed in a way like they weren't even there - often
without any visible damage on them. How did this happen? And... at what
point wouldn't the building have completely collapsed from top to
bottom? If the hijackers had flown into the 100th to 104th floor of the
North Tower, would the building still have collapsed to the ground in
mere seconds? If the official version is true, it sounds as if the
World Trade Center towers had a few serious design flaws in them.
These kind of theoretical questions really aren't
necessary though. We have already found a ton of evidence that the
collapses of the towers were aided by explosives and thermite. And it
seems that heat played a major part in many of these beams failing.
Below the reader can find two pictures of columns that were bent during
the collapse.

In the 2002 Relics from the Rubble
documentary on the History Channel the beam on the right was shown
to two metal workers. This is what they had to say about it:
| |
"[Narrator:] This
eight-ton steel I-beam is six inches thick. It was selected to be
preserved for future generations for the near perfect horseshoe-like
bent, formed during the collapse. [Metalworker:] I found it hard to
believe that it had actually bent because of the size of it and there
are no cracks in the iron. It bent without almost a single crack in it. It takes thousands of degrees to bend steel like this. [A colleague of the metalworker:] Typically you have buckling and tearing on the tension side. There is no buckling at all." |
Having so much evidence for the use of thermate and
assuming that this wasn't the only beam (apparently) deformed by
extreme heat, all of a sudden many other deformed columns look
suspect. There were many beams in the World Trade Center rubble that
were crumpled in very smooth ways, quite possibly indicating great
heat. I would like to see a few experiments as to how steel bents under
various temperatures, but for the time being I side with those people
who think that deformations like the following suspect.

Even that one 8 ton beam just discussed presents us with a bit of a problem. It is actually NIST that has explained why:
| |
"[Thermite] burns
slowly relative to explosive materials and would require several minutes
in contact with a massive steel section to heat it to a temperature
that would result in substantial weakening. Separate from the WTC towers
investigation, NIST researchers estimated that at least 0.13 pounds of
thermite would be required to heat each pound of a steel section to
approximately 700 degrees Celsius (the temperature at which steel
weakens substantially)." |
Having some limited experience with thermite, this
seems to be quite a fair estimate. But that would mean that over 1,000
pounds of thermite had to be lighted inside the building to reach
temperatures necessary for this one beam to bend in the way it did -
and even that is on the assumption that burning jet fuel and office
furniture would have extensively preheated the beam. Considering that
this beam was at floor 98 and that there were 46 core columns in total,
we are looking at a minimum of about 46,000 pounds of thermite that
would have been necessary to heat all the steel to the point that the
building would almost certainly collapse. If we assume that thermate was
used, a few thousand pounds less may have done the job - it burns
hotter and quicker through steel.
Possibly these estimates are overstated. Thermate
placed against or inside a column would locally result in temperatures
of 1,800°F/1,000°C or higher (as the FEMA study alone
demonstrated). Still, evidence from ground zero shows that entire beams
were heated to the point of glowing red hot, orange, yellow and even
white - so 46,000 pounds, or 20 tons per building may not at all be an
unrealistic estimate. Thermite is the only way to have made the
collapses look natural and/or limit the amount of (noisy) explosives
needed to bring the towers down. Whoever decided to put the material in
there is unlikely to have been conservative with the amount used. An
estimated amount of 20 tons or more also immediately explains the
extreme heat underneath the World Trade Center clean up site which
lasted for months. How likely is it that even 5 or 10 tons of thermate
for both towers and WTC 7 - largely burned up by the time the towers
collapsed - could produce temperatures of "more than 2,800 degrees F [1540°C]" [11]
in such a giant pile of heat-conducting rubble? It's my personal
estimate that probably a lot more than 5 or 10 tons of thermate was
used in those buildings.
Let's say 50,000 pounds
of thermate and explosives were brought into each building. Depending on
the crew needed, it would take anywhere between 10 and 25 small moving
|
vans to transport the
materials to the WTC's underground parking lot. From there everything
would have been taken up the elevators and placed in predetermined
positions. However it was done, security appears not to have paid much
attention. Unfortunately we need unedited 24-hour-a-day security footage
of the WTC to ever verify if suspicious activity was going on in the
days and weeks before 9/11. Unlikely to happen.
One interesting question to ponder is why both
thermate and explosives were used, as the latter largely ruined the
chances of producing a natural, unsuspicious collapse. Most likely
charges were used to control the collapse. The buildings had to
collapse all the way to the ground for maximum dramatic effect and
insure popular support for new, massive incursions into the Middle East.
If the columns would have been weakened with thermate alone, most
likely the towers would have been decapitated with the top portions
falling over, but the remainder of the tower still standing erect.
Blowing the charges allowed sudden, full-on |
|
The more you think
about it, the more ridiculous it becomes that relatively few and light
weight floors, especially in case of the North Tower, were able to crash
straight through the buildings without breaking apart or sliding off.
At the bottom there were core columns of up to 50 tons. Going higher
columns were 20 tons and closer to the top more like 8 tons. Talk about
taking the path of maximum resistance. |
collapses and made it
possible to advance the pancaking theory. Thermate may just have been
used to limit the amount of explosives needed and weaken the steel to a
point that there's not to much resistance on the way down. None of this
is certain, of course. |

Smoke over Lower Manhattan
after the South Tower collapse. Besides crushed concrete floors, might
any of this be related to the white smoke thermate is known to produce?
9/11 timeline including evidence for explosions and thermate
Now that we have discussed all the
evidence for explosives and thermate at the World Trade Center, it might
be interesting to put together a brief timeline of events. The
following timeline is completely based on the above eyewitnesses
testimonies and some of the visual evidence. It's basically a summary of
events for that day.
| Brief timeline |
| September 8-9 |
According to Scott Forbes,
senior database administrator at Fiduciary Trust, it was this weekend
that power in the upper half of the South Tower was shut down. Three
weeks notice was given, considered by Forbes to be on relatively short
notice. Apparently this had never happened since the period of the
first WTC bombing in 1993. Forbes said that the Port Authority and 9/11
Commission were not interested in recording this information. |
| 8:46 AM on 9/11 |
1) Flight 11 impact at the 94th to 98th floor of WTC 1, the North
Tower, 33 minutes after the first signs of trouble with the airliner.
All the floors are occupied by Marsh and McLennan, an insurance firm
with many peculiar connections.
2) Reported explosion
around the 43rd floor at the same time as the impact of Flight 11. It
sends people flying on considerably lower floors. A water pipe breaks
and patches of ceiling can be found on the floor. Explanation: this
could well be an elevator crashing down to the sky lobby at the 44th
floor.
3)
Explosions in subbasement level B/C of both
towers during plane impacts, which can be explained by 20-ton
elevators with burning kerosene slamming into the loading docks.
4)
An audio recording may have captured additional
explosions or, maybe more likely, elevators coming down. |
| 8:58 AM |
A FBI recording made that day records how "a loud rumbling fills the air ... 12 minutes after American Airlines Flight 11 hit the first building."
No fighter jets were in the area at this moment and Flight 175 was
still five minutes out, leading to the obvious question what was being
recorded on tape at this very moment. Possibly it's a honest mistake,
but the article on the recording clearly states that Flight 175 impacted
at 9:03 AM and appears to talk about the period between this noise and
the impact of Flight 175. Possibly it was the explosion going off in
WTC 7 that almost killed Barry Jennings and Michael Hess. |
| 8:58 AM (possibly) |
Barry Jennings and Michael Hess, a lawyer for Mayor Giuliani, go up the 23rd floor of WTC 7, to the Office of Emergency Management. Already on his way over did Jennings hear that a "small Cessna"
hit the World Trade Center. Jennings and Hess learn that building 7 was
abandoned after the initial World Trade Center impact. The lights
suddenly go out and they decide to take the stairs back down. After
making it to about the 7th floor, there's a large explosion that
wipes out the lobby and collapses the staircase, trapping them inside
the building. They won't be saved until noon. Both Jennings and Hess
provide their accounts to the media live on 9/11. Jennings later
explained that he heard many other explosions during his involuntary
stay at WTC 7, apparently coming from inside. |
| 9:03 AM |
1)
Flight 175 impacts the 78th to 84th floor of WTC 2, the South Tower,
22 minutes after the first signs of trouble with the airplane. Baseline
Financial Services and Fuji Bank are located here, both with very
important connections that are very similar to those of Marsh and
Mclennan.
2) A camera picks up strong vibrations about
15 seconds before impact, which may or may not be the result of
explosions. Many spots with smoke puffs appear at the upper portion of
the North Tower at the exact moment that Flight 175 impacts the South
Tower - completely on the other side of the other building. This has
been my own observation after theorizing that the impact of Flight 175
would be an ideal time to blow a few additional charges on the South
Tower. If that has been the case, I can't say for sure, of course. Go
look it up yourself.
3)
People at the 67th floor think that an explosion
below them has taken place when debris and smoke is coming up the
staircase. The sky lobby is still 23 floors below them and firemen
coming up the building report an explosion "near the the 60th floor".
For what it's worth, Morgan Stanley's offices are located on the 59th to 74th floor. |
| 9:37 AM |
According to NIST: "The
video shot from the WTC plaza captured an intriguing event at 9:37:04
a.m. A jet of air, dust, and a large piece of debris was ejected from a
window, 77-355, on the 77th floor at an extremely high velocity. Longer
distance videos show that puffs of smoke and or dust appeared
simultaneously on the east face from several open windows near the
center of the 78th floor and from open windows on the north side of the
79th floor." Actually, "pressure pulses" become visible at floor 80
about 1,7 seconds after the first "pressure pulse" on floor 77. They
force a man to climb out of the window, causing him to fall down. These
floors belong to Baseline Financial Services and Fuji Bank. |
| 9:45 AM (approx.) |
According to NYFD chief Albert Turi,
an explosion is heard in one of the towers and he speculates that one
bomb might have been on board the airplane and another planted inside
the building. At this point his men are already evacuating the towers
because it appears to them that a "secondary device" has gone off. The
reporter interviewing Turi says they "are continuing to hear explosions", although fire officials explain that they might be exploding gas lines. |
| 9:55 AM |
Molten
metal is first spotted coming down from one corner of the South Tower.
Molten steel due to the use of thermate is a major suspect these days.
At 9:57 AM the molten metal really breaks through the outside wall of
the building, causing regular showers that are visible to people on
the streets below. |
| 9:59 AM |
1)
Sudden collapse of the South Tower, initiated by a loud rumble
immediately followed by a huge boom. Virtually every witness on the
ground talks about one or more explosions and how the collapse looks
like a controlled demolition.
2) EMS worker Karin Deshore reports seeing flashes "around the middle"
of the South Tower immediately prior to its collapse. She is clearly
hinting at controlled demolition. The offices in this area are rented by
Morgan Stanley (floor 56 and 59-74) and just below that, floors 47-55,
by Guy Carpenter, owned for decades by Marsh and McLennan. Wedged in
between the offices of Morgan Stanley, on floors 57 and 58, is Bridge
Information Systems, at the time "the second-biggest dispenser of financial news and data in the world". The company is bought by Reuters a month after 9/11.
3) Two senior firefighters,
Lieutenant Evangelista and assistant commissioner Stephen Gregory, see
flashes around the first and second floor when the collapse begins.
They are so flabbergasted by what they see that it takes a while before
they dare to admit it to each other. Two mechanical floors of the WTC
tower can be found at the location in question.
4) A less reliable reporter has quote a witness saying he also saw flashes immediately prior to the collapse, around floors 10 to 15. |
| 10:28 AM |
Collapse of the North Tower. The last people out of the building, including police officer Sue Keane
and firefighter Louie Cacchioli, report being thrown around by
explosions immediately prior to the collapse. Explosions are reported
on the lower floors of 7 and 8 (possibly during the collapse of the other tower) and at at least two locations near the 24th floor. |
| 10:38 AM |
A huge explosion
is heard in the vicinity of the World Trade Center complex. In total at
least three are heard in the aftermath and some are recorded on tape. |
| 5:21 AM |
WTC 7 collapse.
Virtually no witnesses about the collapse are cited in the media, but
the few live reports that are available clearly indicate controlled
demolition, as does the visual evidence. |
Summary of part 1: controlled demolition: yes or no?
I still can't believe it myself, but the evidence
discussed up until this point is really more or less conclusive: the
World Trade Center was demolished by a combination of explosives and
thermate. Maybe it will always be impossible for outsiders to say with
certainty that the towers were brought down with explosives, but let's
be realistic, it is irrational at this point to accept the official
version of events with so much evidence pointing towards an entirely
different direction. Scientific thinking is about picking the theory
that fits all of the facts best, and for now, I'm sorry to say, that is
controlled demolition. More evidence is absolutely welcome though.
Primary arguments for controlled demolition made in this article include:
- It's the only position that absolutely no one is allowed to take, certainly not in the media or in political circles.
- Just about every witness on the ground that day
reported that the collapses were initiated by loud explosions.
Virtually no one described a collapse in the traditional sense of the
word: creaking and squeaking, visible signs of instability, partial
collapse, full collapse. A traditional collapse would also have been
more believable if the fires hadn't been diminishing as time went on.
- Loud booms were indeed caught on video, just as
the witnesses have described. As this article has demonstrated, these
booms definitely and conclusively were not the result of pancaking
floors.
- Both towers collapsed with near free fall speed.
This is especially peculiar with the North Tower: the 9 upper-most
floors fail and the entire building comes crashing down to the ground
within seconds. Keep in mind that the columns on lower floors were much
thicker and much stronger than at the top of the building, but somehow
got pushed out of the way like they weren't even there.
- Personnel working on ground zero in the
aftermath of the attacks all describe extreme underground heat which
lasted for months and in certain places melted their boots. Temperatures
measured were high enough to melt steel, which was actually observed
in many places. This is not even remotely possible with office fires,
or even with smaller amounts of thermate. Tons of this incendiary
material would have had to be present in the buildings to explain the
extreme heat. NIST denies knowing anything about molten steel, despite
all the publicly available evidence.
- FEMA found clear evidence that thermate had
partially liquefied a steel I beam inside one of the World Trade Center
towers. NIST refused to do any follow-up analysis, despite having been
pressured over the issue by various private investigators.
- The clean up of steel from ground zero began
immediately. No one tested the steel for traces of explosives, thermate
or extreme heat. The vast majority of the steel was soon shipped off to
China where it was smelted.
- The 9/11 Commission never looked into the
question of controlled demolition. From the very beginning it had
decided that Middle Eastern terrorists were to blame and primarily
focused on the question why U.S. government agencies had been unable to
prevent the attack.
Important websites
As far as I'm still aware:
Notes
| [1] |
May 16, 2002, American Society of Safety Engineers, 'Members Recall Massive Devastation, Sorrow While Working at WTC': "Within
hours of the 9/11 terrorist attacks the Safety, Health and
Environmental (SH&E) professionals for the Bechtel Group found
themselves at the door of hell, the World Trade Center (Ground Zero) ...
Thermal measurements taken by helicopter each day showed underground
temperatures ranging from 400 degrees F to more than 2,800 degrees F due
to the ongoing underground fires." |
| [2] |
June 22, 2010, CML Army Chemical Review, 'Dragons in flight: the common CBRN lineage of the Army and Air Force': "Another
incendiary bomb procured by the CWS was the AN-M50 series, which was
modified from a British incendiary bomb. This was a small, 4-pound,
magnesium-cased bomblet with a thermite core and a fuze. The bomblet
burned at extremely high temperatures for up to 7 minutes. The USAAF and
U.S. allies dropped more than 30 million AN-M50s (which were normally
dropped in 500-pound clusters) on Europe and more than 10 million on
Japan." |
| [3] |
Document on www.ammunitionpages.com, 'Incendiary bomb TH3 M50A3': "This
small incendiary bomb was filled with thermate and it had a total
weight of 1.6kg. Thermate is an incendiary pyrotechnic composition, a
thermite-like compound used for military applications. Thermate, whose
primary component is thermite, also contains sulfur and sometimes barium
nitrate, both of which increase its thermal effect, create flame in
burning, and significantly reduce the ignition temperature. Various
mixtures of these compounds can be called thermate, but, to avoid
confusion with Thermate-TH3, one can refer to them as thermite variants
or analogs. The composition by weight of Thermate-TH3 (in military use)
is: 68.7% thermite, 29.0% barium nitrate, 2.0% sulfur and 0.3% binder." |
| [4] |
'Low-Cost
Production of Nanostructured Super-Thermites'. Navy SBIR 2008.1 - Topic
N08-020 NAVAIR - Mrs. Janet McGovern - navair.sbir@navy.mil Opens:
December 10, 2007 - Closes: January 9, 2008: "OBJECTIVE: Develop a
safe, low-cost, high performance, high production rate method of
preparing nanostructured super-thermite materials."
www.navysbir.com/n08_1/n081-020.htm |
| [5] |
The
Open Chemical Physics Journal (Bentham Open), pp. 7-31, Steven E.
Jones, Kevin R. Ryan a.o., 'Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust
from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe'.
www.benthamscience.com/open/tocpj/articles/V002/7TOCPJ.pdf |
| [6] |
www.patentbuddy.com/Patent/5532449: "US
Patent No: 5,532,449: Using plasma ARC and thermite to demolish
concrete ... Issued date: Jul 1, 1996. Fling date: Aug 28, 1994. ...
Status: Expired. ... A plasma arc can be employed to demolish a concrete
structure at a high efficiency, while preventing a secondary problem
due to noise, flying dust and chips, and the like. The concrete
structure can be demolished by melting a surface of the concrete
structure by generating a plasma arc from a plasma torch (15) of a
plasma arc generator, mixing thermite powder (T) with a supply gas (Gc)
for the plasma torch (15), directing the plasma arc at the surface of
the concrete structure, and controlling the rate of supply of the
thermite powder (T) to the plasma torch (15) in response to the
operation of the plasma arc, including initiating and stopping the
supply of the thermite powder (T) to the plasma torch (15) in a manner
coordinated with the initiation and stoppage of the plasma arc, thereby
controlling the heat generated by the thermite reaction, and melting the
surface of the concrete structure. The plasma generator (1) can be
provided with a feeder (20) for mixing the thermite powder (T) with the
supply gas (Gc), and controller (30) for controlling the rate of supply
of the thermite powder (T) or for stopping the supply of the thermite
powder (T). ... Patent owner: KOMATSU LTD. ... Inventor name: Murakami,
Taku ... Address: Irvine, CA." |
| [7] |
April
14-15, 2007, Steven Jones, speech for Project for the New American
Citizen, University of Austin Texas. Shows a slide with replies from
NIST. |
| [8] |
Ibid. |
| [9] |
NIST report, NCSTAR1-6A, p. xxxvii. |
| [10] |
NIST report, NCSTAR1-1H, pp. 56-57. [copies: WTC1 and WTC2 alterations] |
| [11] |
May 16, 2002, American Society of Safety Engineers, 'Members Recall Massive Devastation, Sorrow While Working at WTC': "Within
hours of the 9/11 terrorist attacks the Safety, Health and
Environmental (SH&E) professionals for the Bechtel Group found
themselves at the door of hell, the World Trade Center (Ground Zero) ...
Thermal measurements taken by helicopter each day showed underground
temperatures ranging from 400 degrees F to more than 2,800 degrees F due
to the ongoing underground fires." |
|