Steel does not begin to melt until it reaches a consistent temperature of 2500 degrees for an extended period of time.
The majority of fuel from each the fully loaded planes that struck the World Trade Center was consumed in the massive fireball resulting from each initial impact.
The black smoke so prevalent in the WTC towers on 9/11 indicates a fire that is starved of oxygen, and therefore nowhere near the peak burning temperature of jet fuel, much less hot enough to soften steel.
Even though some have burned for days, no steel framed building anywhere in the world had ever collapsed because of fire before 9/11, and none have collapsed because of fire since 9/11. Yet WTC 2 collapsed 56 minutes after being hit by Flight 175, and WTC 1 collapsed 102 minutes after being hit by Flight 11.
Each of the Twin Towers stood completely still until the moment they began to collapse. There was no indication that fire had weakened the steel frame of the buildings to the point that they were near collapse (no sagging or bending steel), as would be expected in the event of a total steel-framed building collapse induced by fire (which, again, had not happened prior to 9/11 and has not happened since). They fell in one swift motion, straight down, at freefall speed. One hundred ten floors in ten seconds. That's better than ten floors per second, which is physically impossible without the use of explosives. In a true pancake-style collapse, the falling portion of the building would encounter at least some resistance from the still intact floors below as it fell. In the case of the World Trade Center Towers, there was no resistance. The buildings fell at the same speed as an object dropped in open air from the same height would.
There were multiple reports of explosions inside the Twin Towers before they fell, from firefighters and other people who were in the buildings and lucky enough to make it out. There were also several accounts of explosions in live news media coverage that day. Firefighters who entered the lobby of WTC1 shortly after the plane hit 80 floors up found ground level windows shattered, huge marble wall facades lying on the floor and a fine dust covering everything. There was no sign of fire or scorching. It appeared to many as if a concussion bomb had gone off in or near the lobby.
Large steel beams, which don't exactly float on air, were tossed horizontally up to 700 feet (more than the length of two football fields) away from the falling WTC towers.
Quoting firefighter Joe Casaliggi, from Engine 7, who worked at Ground Zero after the buildings collapsed:
"You have two 110 story office buildings. You don't find a desk. You don't find a chair. You don't find a telephone, a computer. The biggest piece of a telephone I found was half of the keypad, and it was about this big (holds thumb and index finger about 2 inches apart). The building collapsed to dust".
Is it really possible that a simple gravity collapse of a 110 story office building could turn everything inside it, including all the concrete, to dust?
Molten steel was still being removed from ground zero six weeks after 9/11, which is indicative of the presence of high-grade explosives in the buildings.
WTC7 collapsed late in the afternoon of 9/11, in exactly the same fashion as towers 1 and 2 had that morning, without having been hit by any airplane. There were a few small fires burning in the building.
Larry Silverstein, the leaseholder for the entire World Trade Center complex, admitted during a 2002 PBS documentary that they decided to "pull" (term for controlled demolition) WTC7 on the afternoon of 9/11. He has since tried to clarify his comments by claiming that when he said "pull it", he meant pull the contingent of firefighters that was in supposedly in the building shortly before the collapse.
Mr. Silverstein had owned WTC 7 since the late 1980's, and in July of 2001 purchased leases for the remainder of the complex (seven buildings in all, including the Twin Towers).
A 22 minute preview of a film about 9/11 by Alex Jones offers more detail on Mr. Silverstein and his connection to the horrible events of that day, as well as very compelling information on other aspects of the tragedy. You'll find a link to this preview at the end of this article.
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