Steel-Melting Fires
In the wake of the attack, numerous experts asserted that
fires in the Twin Towers
melted their structural steel.
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Although the impact of the jetliners was strong, it was the heat from
the explosion that most likely caused the buildings to collapse, experts say.
Richard Ebeltoft, a structural engineer and University of Arizona
architecture lecturer, speculated that flames fueled by thousands
of gallons of aviation fuel melted the building's steel supports.
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Hyman Brown, a University of Colorado civil engineering professor
and the Trade Center's construction manager [sic], speculated that flames
fuelled by thousands of litres of aviation fuel melted steel supports.
"This building would have stood had a plane or a force caused by a
plane smashed into it," he said. "But steel melts, and 90,850 litres
of aviation fluid melted the steel. Nothing is designed
or will be designed to withstand that fire."
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Each tower was struck by a passenger aeroplane,
hijacked by suicidal terrorists, but remained upright for nearly an hour.
Eventually raging fires melted the supporting steel struts,
but the time delay allowed hundreds of people to escape.
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"It was the fire that killed the buildings. There's nothing on earth
that could survive those temperatures with that amount of fuel burning."
aid structural engineer Chris Wise.
"The columns would have melted, the floors would have melted and eventually
they would have collapsed one on top of each other."
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[Professor of Structural Engineering at the University of Newcastle,
John Knapton] told BBC News Online:
"The world trade centre was designed to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707,
but that was unusual... we are trying to discover why they [ the towers ]
collapsed and what needs doing to rebuild them."
"The buildings survived the impact and the explosion but not the fire,
and that is the problem."
"The 35 tonnes of aviation fuel will have melted the steel...
all that can be done is to place fire resistant material around the steel
and delay the collapse by keeping the steel cool for longer."
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In his presentation
A New Standard For Deception
Kevin Ryan ennumerates several more "experts" who endorsed
the steel-melting fires idea:
- Scientific American (Eduardo Kausel)
- NOVA video (Matthys Levy)
- Henry Koffman from USC
- Tom Mackin from Univ. of Illinois
A Ludicrous Claim
Skeptics of the official collapse theory were quick to point out
that the claim that fires melted the steel is nonsensical.
On October 21, 2001 J. McMichael wrote a now-classic article
exposing many ludicrous claims by proponents of the gravity collapse theory,
including the fire-melts-steel claim.
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I try not to think about that.
I try not to think about a petroleum fire burning for 104 minutes,
just getting hotter and hotter until it reached 1538 degrees Celsius
(2800 Fahrenheit) and melted the steel
...
Whether the fuel burned gradually at a temperature below the boiling point
of jet fuel (360 C), or burned rapidly above the boiling point of jet fuel,
in neither case would an office building full of spilled jet fuel sustain
a fire at 815 degrees C.
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Later, Eric Hufschmid appealed to people's experience with hydrocarbon-fueled
fires, such as wood stoves and gas burners, to highlight the absurdity
of the fire-melts-steel claim in the video
Painful Deceptions.
In a slide show first presented on September 11, 2003,
Jim Hoffman noted the vast difference between the temperatures
achievable by open flames
and those required to melt steel.
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The Killer Fires Theory is Pure Fantasy
The simple facts of temperatures:
- 1535ºC (2795ºF) - melting point of iron
- ~1510ºC (2750ºF) - melting point of typical structural steel
- ~825ºC (1517ºF) -
maximum temperature of hydrocarbon fires
burning in the atmosphere without pressurization or pre-heating
(premixed fuel and air - blue flame)
Diffuse flames burn far cooler.
Oxygen-starved diffuse flames are cooler yet.
The fires in the towers were diffuse -- well below 800ºC.
Their dark smoke showed they were oxygen-starved --
particularly in the South Tower.
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Disingenuous Atttacks by
Popular Mechanics and Scientific American
Despite the fact that the fire-melts-steel claim was made by
numerous 'experts' defending the official line that the collapses
of the Twin Towers and Building 7 were caused, directly or indirectly,
by the jetliner crashes,
mainstream publications have portrayed the debunking of the claim
as a straw man argument.
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"Melted" Steel
CLAIM:
"We have been lied to,"
announces the Web site AttackOnAmerica.net.
"The first lie was that the load of fuel from the aircraft
was the cause of structural failure.
No kerosene fire can burn hot enough to melt steel."
The posting is entitled "Proof Of Controlled Demolition At The WTC."
FACT: Jet fuel burns at 800º to 1500ºF,
not hot enough to melt steel (2750ºF).
However, experts agree that for the towers to collapse,
their steel frames didn't need to melt,
they just had to lose some of their structural strength--and that
required exposure to much less heat.
"I have never seen melted steel in a building fire,"
says retired New York deputy fire chief Vincent Dunn,
author of The Collapse Of Burning Buildings: A Guide To Fireground Safety.
"But I've seen a lot of twisted, warped, bent and sagging steel.
What happens is that the steel tries to expand at both ends,
but when it can no longer expand, it sags and the surrounding concrete cracks."
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Such notions are easily refuted by noting that scientific theories
are not built on single facts alone but on a convergence of evidence
assembled from multiple lines of inquiry.
No melted steel, no collapsed towers.
For example, according to www.911research.wtc7.net, steel melts at a
temperature of 2,777 degrees Fahrenheit, but jet fuel burns at only
1,517 degrees F. No melted steel, no collapsed towers.
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This was apparently the first mainstream publication to mention
9-11 Research.
The website subsequently published a critique of Shermer's attack piece:
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Shermer's Melted Steel Straw Man
In the above excerpt, Shermer implies that our
argument for demolition is that the fires could not have melted the steel.
In fact, 911Research nowhere embraces the claim
that the melting of the structural steel was a prerequisite
for a gravity collapses of the towers.
What we do is debunk the claim made by apologists of the official story
that the fires melted the steel.
This claim appeared in several places, including
an article in Scientific American
itself,
in which M.I.T. professor of civil and environmental engineering
Eduardo Kausel states:
I believe that the intense heat softened or melted the structural
elements--floor trusses and columns--so that they became like chewing gum,
and that was enough to trigger the collapse.
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page last modified: 2010-10-22
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