4um: Towers were structurally sound, but fire proofing was not adequate

Title: Towers were structurally sound, but fire proofing was not adequate
Source: India Abroad
URL Source: [None]
Published: Sep 13, 2006
Author: Joseph, George
Post Date: 2006-09-13 08:18:19 by Jethro Tull
Keywords: None
Views: 191
Comments: 26

'WTC towers were structurally sound, but fire proofing was not adequate'

India Abroad

09-19-2003

At the halfway stage of the federally-mandated probe into the collapse of
the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, neither Dr. Shyam Sunder nor
Dr Shankar Nair has reason to doubt the structural merits of the Twin
Towers.

Their investigations, thus far, point to a combination of uncontrollable
fires and inadequate fire-proofing as the reason for the towers collapsing.

"We have not arrived at definite conclusions yet," Dr. Sunder, lead
investigator on the National Institute of Standards and Technology probe
told India Abroad.

"But our investigation shows the weaknesses in the fire-proofing system.
The towers withstood the impact of the planes that hit them, but they
crumbled after the fire that ensued."

The 24-month, $16 million study helmed by Sunder will continue for another
year before submitting its report; the NIST, under whose aegis the study is
being conducted, is a non-regulatory agency of the Commerce Department's
Technology Administration.

As chief of the Construction and Materials Research Division at NIST, it
fell on Sunder to lead the probe into the disaster.

Sunder has, as and when required, called on the expertise of outside
experts to facilitate his probe. Thus, the contract for the analysis of the
structural system was given to Teng Associates of Chicago, with Dr. Shankar
Nair, as principal structural consultant.

Dr. Nair, grandson of former Indian foreign secretary KPS Menon, is a
senior vice president at Teng and an acknowledged expert on tall
structures.

Ironically, part of Nair's brief, as chairman of the Council on Tall
Buildings and Urban Habitat from 1997 to 2001, was to assure people of the
safety and structural solidity of tall buildings.

Nair says structural system analysis includes design, analysis, and
behavior of high-rise steel buildings, lateral (wind) and gravity systems,
connection design, structural redundancy, and load redistribution; each of
these elements has to be probed, individually and collectively, to figure
out how and why the Towers collapsed in such dramatic fashion, and within
such a seemingly short period of time.

American Airlines Flight 11 had crashed into the north tower of the WTC at
8:45 am; United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the south tower at 9.03
am. The south tower collapsed at 9.50 a.m. and the north tower, at 10.29
a.m.

Dr. Sunder's study is limited to WTC Buildings 1 and 2 (Twin Towers) and
WTC Building 7, and will focus on the construction, the materials used and
all of the technical conditions that contributed to the WTC disaster.

The Twin Towers and WTC 7 are the only known cases of total structural
collapse in high-rise buildings where fires played a significant role;
hence, says Sunder, the study is important in the sense that it provides
previously unavailable data.

"The investigation is going well, we are getting very good co-operation
from various government agencies and the city of New York," Sunder told
India Abroad.

He believes the fires, and not the planes, caused the collapse. "If there
had been no fires after the planes hit the towers, they would have stayed.
But we cannot say for how long," he added.

Steel, Sunder points out, does not melt easily. The WTC fires were unusual,
in that temperatures reached peaks of 1,600 degree Celsius, where a typical
fire can produce temperatures touching 1,100 degree Celsius.

"What happened here was something unimaginable," Sunder says; he adds that
steel loses its strength under such intense heat; it does not burn, but it
softens, and then gravity and the sheer weight of the structure does the
rest.

The jet fuel in the planes could not, by itself, have caused the collapse.
The fuel, Sunder says, burnt out in less than ten minutes; by then,
however, it had ignited the contents of the thousands of offices housed in
the twin towers.

Sunder believes as and when the probe is completed, its findings could
result in improvements in future constructions. "But we are not a
regulatory agency," he says, making the point that his team will not
mandate any improvements. "It is for the private sector to utilize the
findings of the investigation."

Given the nature of his job, Sunder has had to make multiple visits to
Ground Zero. "Each time it was a sobering experience. Loss of human life is
sad thing."

"The investigation itself is overwhelming, there is no precedent for an
investigation, of such magnitude."

Sunder was all praise for Nair who, he said, is a noted expert on the
structural aspects of tall buildings; his probe, Sunder felt, would benefit
from Nair's expertise.

Nair for his part agreed with Sunder's assessment that the Towers were not
themselves at fault.

Lack of adequate safeguards, Nair felt, was a crucial reason. "Even now, we
don't have a sound system of fire proofing to avoid such catastrophes. So
the technology available during the construction of the towers was not up
to the mark."

Though the probe is a year from completion, Nair says on the basis of work
done thus far architects planning to construct such tall buildings in
future need to provide for improved was of evacuating inhabitants in case
of problems.

At the WTC, he points out, thousands were trapped on the upper floors; to
rectify the problem in future, exit systems should be separated from the
building proper to provide for easy escape.

The Twin Towers and WTC 7 are the only known cases of total structural collapse in high-rise buildings where fires played a significant role;

The jet fuel in the planes could not, by itself, have caused the collapse. The fuel, Sunder says, burnt out in less than ten minutes; by then, however, it had ignited the contents of the thousands of offices housed in the twin towers.

The fires that ensued were fueled by furniture, paper, floor tiles, and various office sundries. The fires “raged” for about one hour before softening steel. This has never happened before. The report doesn't address the people standing in windows while others jumped from the towers alive. And again nothing in this report explains Bld #7.

he acknowledges that the jet fuel had to burn off in a short time. they pre- positioned something to cause the huge flames. I don't think that the contents of offices cause the huge flames that we witnessed for long after 10 minutes. that's my impression. the huge flames IMHO were produced for show, so that the argument could be made that the fire brought the building down.

A long train of events led up to the 9-11 catastrophe ... we have had reason to expel this scum filled government for 100 years ... now it's time to remove them.

The fuel burnt out in less than 10 mins. 50 mins later, the towers came down. And again bld #7 was not struck, not to mention the owner is on record as saying that it was pulled. Pantload is the operative word.

#2, more than 1/3 of American believe that 911 was perpetrated by the government

Nice to know I can smelt steel with the leftover scraps from my Garage addition project and some old paperwork that needs burned up.

Like a poster on another thread said: "Every time I try to make steak in the oven the damn thing implodes upon itself in a perfect footprint without harming anything else in the kitchen"

yes, the opinion poll recently showed that about 36% of americans suspect that sept 11 attacks were an inside job that the people who rule us orchestrate. that is true. and yet it is taboo to talk about on the media and in the universities. and on the job if you talk about it you can be fired. and virtually none of our elected leaders will take this view publicly at least.

so the opinions of our people are just opinions and do not matter. they command no authority, no power, no policy, no army, no law, no judge, no police. the fascists who rule us command all of those things.

consider, in 2005 opinion polls were showing that 55% of americans wanted us to withdraw from Iraq. but also in 2005 they had a vote in the house of representatives where they were trying to tell bush to plan for an orderly withdrawal. Only 1% of the house members voted for this. but 55% of the americans favored it. today of course 65% want us to withdraw. It matters not, the people who rule are not influenced by this, nor are they in danger of being influenced by it.

the people who rule are able to do just exactly and precisely as they please. they murder who they want. they produce all the money they want for themselves. etc. etc. etc.

the people who make fireplace grates should teach the people who make steel beams & columns for buildings their secrets for making steel that does not melt or weaken in fires.

Of course, when I burn fire-wood in my fireplace the iron grate is weakened and sags and collapses after an hour. It's only an anti-american rumour produced by terrorist-sympathizers that steel grates in fireplaces aren't harmed by wood fires. I am a good American and I believe the lies.

As others have said before me; I do wish that someone would buy a steel beam just like the ones in the WTC, strip off the fire protection, apply a weight load on the top, slather it in jet fuel, put a match to it, and broadcast the results with a webcam live.

"If there’s another 9/11 or a major war in the Middle-East involving a U.S. attack on Iran, I have no doubt that there will be, the day after or within days an equivalent of a Reichstag fire decree that will involve massive detentions in this country."

MANGLED BEAMS FROM WTC TELL TALE OF HORROR BOULDER LAB EXAMINES WRECKAGE TO LEARN WHY TWIN TOWERS FELL

Denver Rocky Mountain News

09-11-2003

MANGLED BEAMS FROM WTC TELL TALE OF HORROR BOULDER LAB EXAMINES WRECKAGE TO LEARN WHY TWIN TOWERS FELL

Each of the rusted, mangled steel beams is a historic document that tells the story of colossal destructive forces unleased two years ago in lower Manhattan.
That's how engineer Thomas Siewert views the nearly 5 tons of twisted World Trade Center steel heaped into a 4-foot-high pile on the floor of a National Institute of Standards and Technology laboratory.

It's the NIST lab's job to decode the messages locked inside the steel and to help explain why the twin 110-story towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001.
Researchers are baking and pulling apart small chunks of the steel as part of a $16 million federally funded investigation. The two-year project is about half completed, and more than 600 tests have been conducted at the Boulder lab.
The engineers select the least-damaged samples they can find, then subject them to intense heat and stresses that mimic the 767 jetliner impacts and the subsequent tower fires.
``We have collected some of the pieces with the least amount of deformation, yet the level of damage here clearly illustrates the horrific nature of the event,'' said Siewert, deputy chief of NIST's materials reliability division.
The Boulder lab has more than 30 large pieces of World Trade Center wreckage: columns, floor trusses and spandrels from both towers. Each piece bears a spray-painted number that reveals its position before the towers collapsed.
It's just a pile of scrap metal, but the sight of it triggers deep emotional responses in first-time visitors to the lab, said J. David McColskey, a NIST scientist who hand-picked much of the steel from a New Jersey junkyard.
``Any time anyone comes out here to see this for the first time, they immediately have feelings of sadness,'' McColskey said Wednesday.
Siewert ran a hand along a 4-foot section of column labeled C-65. Unimaginable forces twisted the H-shaped column into a helix. Hanging vertically from a ceiling cable, it resembles abstract art more than structural steel.
Column C-65 came from the 86th floor of the north tower. The south tower was hit by a second 767, and nearly 2,800 people died when both towers collapsed.
Some engineers immediately speculated that burning jet fuel melted the towers' steel columns, causing the collapses.
But the NIST investigation has found no evidence that temperatures in the fires reached 2,500 degrees, the melting point of steel, according to lead NIST investigator Shyam Sunder.
Some also speculated that inferior steel was the root cause of the collapses.
But the NIST tests have demonstrated that the World Trade Center steel met or exceeded design requirements, Sunder said.
``What ultimately probably contributed to the collapse was the persistence of the fires in combination with the initial damage'' from the jet impacts, he said.
``What we have to sort out is the relative roles of each,'' Sunder said.
NIST will commemorate the World Trade Center disaster this morning.
Two U.S. flags will be raised, then lowered to half-staff.
The first flag will be raised at 8:05 a.m., MDT, when the south tower collapsed.
The second flag will be raised at 8:26 a.m., when the north tower fell. The ceremony, open to the public, will take place in front of the NIST building at 325 Broadway in Boulder.

Has anyone ever attempted to run a computer simulation of the impacts & fire to see what should have happened?

So....if the buildings were poorly or improperly constructed and/or maintained, are the owners/management liable for claims for the resulting death and destruction of 9/11? and if so, have ANY claims been filed? and if not, WHY NOT? Perhaps because so many of the wealthier survivors with means to sue were bought off? I have always wondered about liability issues here. Thoughts, anyone?

That's where you're mistaken. The authority comes from the people alone and that is why we will all collectively pay for this mass murdering, treasury looting, environment destroying gang of crimminals we have allowed to run amok for so so many years. The people are realizing what's happening exponentially and the perps are in for the worst time of their lives.

There is ZERO evidence of this. This 2003 report shows how early into the "investigation" that the predetermined conclusions were already drawn up.

In the floor model tests, with or without fireproofing, no model failed, no truss sagged.

If America is destroyed, it may be by Americans who salute the flag, sing the national anthem, march in patriotic parades, cheer Fourth of July speakers - normally good Americans who fail to comprehend what is required to keep our country strong and free - Americans who have been lulled into a false security (April 1968).---Ezra Taft Benson, US Secretary of Agriculture 1953-1961 under Eisenhower

I hear you. I haven't been able to find their final report. Has it been completed, or is it still a fiction in progress?

NIST had to resort to computer models to get the results they wanted. Then in only 1 of 9 did NIST get the floors to pull the outer girders in.

Its done and online. It around 10,000 pages. Kevin Ryan has done a couple breakdowns on it. The link above and guns and butter archives. Jim Hoffman also has done some great work.