Saturday, August 26, 2006

Old Documentaries of the WTC Construction

Good stuff, found via 911blogger:

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Saturday, August 12, 2006

Jeff Strahl, Mechanical Engineer

Believes the WTC was brought down by demolition.

He brings up the interesting concept of the "resistance paradox":
Interesting that you note the towers disintegrating, but do not note, or pretend to not note, the contradiction between the lower portions offering no resistance to the falling debris if you wish to explain the short collapse time, vs the top portions disintegrating as if encountering massive resistance. So, which is it, Mr Partridge? Did the lower portions offer zero resistance to explain the short collapse time (videos show the lower portions offering no more resistance than the nearby air), or did they offer high resistance, to account for the upper portions disintegrating ABOVE THE COLLAPSE ZONE, IN MID-AIR?


The fact that the towers collapsed top to bottom, where the only thing that appears to drive the collapse is a huge cloud of dust, is by itself strong proof that the collapses were not simple pancaking events.

POSTSCRIPT: It's also quite striking that there is no official modeling of the complete collapse sequence. I mean, three huge buildings go *poof*, and all NIST does is model the fires?

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Response to "A critical analysis of the collapses of WTC towers 1, 2 and 7 from an explosives and conventional demolition industry viewpoint", Part 1

The PDF document can be found here.

This letter was written by Brent Blanchard, an editor at "Implosionworld.com" and a director at Protec Documentation Services Inc., and is dated August 8th, 2006. He claims assistance from other employees of Protec. Protec Documentation Services Inc. is a company involved in documenting building implosions. Protec apparently was at Ground Zero following 9/11 and did some documentation.

A few preface remarks:

First, the title of the document is very interesting, referring to the "conventional demolition industry".

Is there an "unconventional demolition industry"?

Certainly, what happened at the WTC was unconventional demolition-- so maybe these guys aren't even the right people to talk about UNconventional demolition.

Second, the letter specifically declines to talk about any political or background motivations for what happened to the WTC. This is fine, if they simply want to refer to the appearances of the collapses, which is what they are most experienced with. Nonetheless, the financial and political motivations are a very important part of the story and shouldn't be dismissed. There ARE many reasons why people wanted the towers down besides the official 9/11 story-- such as that the towers had a very expensive asbestos clean-up slated for them.

Third, the article never considers the idea that the plane crashes were faked, and there is now compelling evidence for this. Taking away the idea that hijacked jets crashed into the towers completely alters the equation of what happened to the towers.

Fourth, the article never addresses three key issues that form the crux of why many people believe the towers were blown up:
-- the floor damage was not extensive enough and the fires were neither hot enough nor widespread enough to weaken the buildings such that a whole floor essentially broke free of all its supporting columns and collapsed down
-- one floor collapse was unlikely to have enough energy to bring the whole building down
-- the collapse occurred much too fast, almost at free-fall speed, as if there was almost no resistance from the intact structure

Now to the main assertions:
Assertion 1: the collapses looked exactly like controlled demolitions. The author says "no they didn't".


I agree they didn't look like controlled demolitions for WTC 1 and 2. Of course, they conveniently sidestep WTC7, which DOES look exactly like a controlled demolition.

They also claim that the only way the structures could have started collapsing exactly where the "planes struck" was either:
A) explosives were pre-planted and survived the initial impact and fires, or
B) explosives were planted after the plane crashes

I agree with them that scenario B is essentially impossible. But they also maintain that scenario A is impossible-- that no pre-planted explosives could survive the crashes and fires. I disagree, for three reasons:
-- it is quite possible that unconventional explosives were used that were resistant to fire.
-- many people, particularly firefighters, in the WTC towers reported explosions, and these explosions could certainly have been from pre-planted explosives going off ahead of time from the heat from the fires.
-- the plane crashes were faked and were mimicked by explosives and possibly missiles; thus there had to be explosives under tight control in the buildings

Assertion 2: the buildings fell straight down into their footprint. The author says "They did not. They followed the path of least resistance".


I agree the "footprint" description is misleading, and is not very apt for WTC1 and 2. Though again the author conveniently sidesteps WTC7, which was huge in its own right and DID fall nearly perfectly into its footprint. In any case, the WTC1 and 2 towers still fell in a remarkably small area given their incredible size. I also think the author is being a disingenuous by claiming that buildings tend to collapse straight down. If that was the case, there is surely no need for extensive preparations for controlled demolition and for actually "controlling" the explosive demolition.

The part about how the tops of the towers behaved normally after they broke off is also not right. The 30-story top of WTC2 tipped quite severely and had a significant amount of tipping momentum. Yet after starting to tip, the 30 story top is seen to suddenly turn into a cloud of dust in one or two seconds. There is no way to explain this by any conventional collapse. Only demolition of some type can explain what happened to this top. Stating that this section of building behaved normally is disingenuous at best.

Assertion 3: Explosive squibs can be seen shooting from several floors prior to collapse. Their response: this is just air and debris being discharged as a natural part of the collapse process.


This section is the weakest, as they are clearly hand-waving about how the squibs appeared.

Worse, they clearly lie when they say: "...neither building structurally failed at any location where plumes were visible... [their ellipses] nor did they fail at any place in advance of the single gravitational collapse sequence."

This is utter horseshit. The squibs appeared PRECISELY ahead of the collapse zone and precisely where the collapse would next occur. How they can say "...neither building structurally failed at any location where plumes were visible... [their ellipses] nor did they fail at any place in advance of the single gravitational collapse sequence" with a straight face escapes me. Their statement is a lie.

This right here, destroys the credibility of the author/authors as objective judges of the collapses of the buildings. There are also the other flaws I have pointed out.

This is where I will stop my rebuttal for now.

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