After 2536 days of waiting, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) issued a report on the collapse of World Trade Center 7 On August 21, 2008, NIST found that the building which many engineers and architects believe was the result of controlled demolition, collapsed due to fire (the third steel framed building to do so in history--following WTC towers One and Two).

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The 9/11 Widows relentlessly lobbied Washington for an investigation of the collapse of World Trade Towers One and Two, but much to the families' frustration, the 9/11 Commission didn't even begin their investigation until 442 days after that fateful day.

What many Americans still don't realize is there were three buildings that collapsed on 9/11. The 9/11 Investigation which has since been renounced as flawed by both the Chair and Vice Chair of the Commission, didn't even attempt to explain WTC 7. In fact, the "definitive report" didn't even mention it.

Finally, after 2536 days of waiting, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) issued a report on the collapse of World Trade Center 7 on August 21, 2008. NIST found that the building collapsed due to fire (the third steel framed building to do so in history--following WTC towers One and Two).  According to NIST, the expansion of a heated steel girder caused the lateral support of a critical column to buckle, which resulted in a "cascade of local floor failures."

The report cautioned: "The reader should keep in mind that the building and the records kept within it were destroyed, and the remains of all the WTC buildings were disposed of before congressional action and funding was available for this investigation to begin. As a result, there are some facts that could not be discerned, and thus there are uncertainties in this accounting. Nonetheless, NIST was able to gather sufficient evidence and documentation to conduct a full investigation upon which to reach firm findings and recommendations.

The following are edited excerpts from the Director of NIST, Dr. Sivaraj Shyam-Sunder, who presented the report.  

"I'm here to summarize the findings from our study of the collapse of WTC 7. The collapse of WTC 7 has been a source of extensive speculation. No planes hit the building. There was damage to the building from the collapse of WTC 1, which was 370 feet to the South.

"WTC Building 7 was 610 feet tall and 47 stories. It would have been the tallest building in 33 states. Although it was not hit by an airplane, it completely collapsed into a pile of rubble in less than 7 seconds at 5:20 pm on 9/11--seven hours after the collapses of the Twin Towers.

"We did not find any evidence that explosives were used in the collapse of building 7. The collapse was also not due to the fuel oil fires--the substantial amounts of diesel fuels that were in the building.  Such fires from ruptured fuel lines or tanks could not have been sustained long enough and would not have produced the amount of heat to weaken critical columns. 

"What we found was uncontrolled building fires similar to what we've seen in other tall buildings.  The collapse of WTC 7 was primarily due to fires, but this is the first steel-framed building to do so."

Architects and Engineers Respond to the NIST Report:

Richard Gage, an architect who founded the group Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth [AE911Truth.org], and this is an edited excerpted transcript of what was said by that group.

Richard Gage: " If we accept the official NIST report, we have the first total progressive collapse due to office fires in history. In more than 100 steel-framed high rise office fires, most of them very hot, large, and long-lasting, not one has ever collapsed before in history. It behooves all of us to look at real alternatives that might have been the cause of these collapses.

"Let's start with temperature. 1340-degree temperature was recorded in thermal images of the surface of the WTC 7 rubble pile a week after 9/11 by NASAs AVIRIS equipment on the USGS overflights. Such temperatures cannot be achieved by oxygen starved, hydrocarbon-based fires such as what we have in WTC 7--such fires burn at only 600-800 degrees.

"Remember, there was no fire on the top of the pile after the collapse at ground zero, so the source of this incredible heat of 1340-degrees was below the surface of the rubble where it must have been far hotter--something like 3000-4000 degrees! Now where does this heat come from?

"Mark Loizeau, President of the company, Controlled Demolition who was hired for Building 7 clean-up said, 'molten steel was found at World Trade Center 7.'

"Leslie Robertson, the chief engineer in charge of design of the World Trade Center stated on October 5, 2001, '21 days after the attacks, the fires were still burning and molten steel was still running.'

"Fire Department personnel recorded on video reported seeing 'molten steel running down the channel rails like you were in a foundry. Like lava from a volcano.'

"Joe O'Toole, a Bronx firefighter saw a crane lifting a steel beam vertically deep within the pile, and he said. 'It was dripping with molten steel.'

"There are dozens of witnesses to this molten metal which NIST has not addressed. The knowledge that this evidence even exists was denied by the top engineer of NIST, Joe Gross at his appearance at the University of Texas in April of this year.

"Steel only begins to melt at 2700 degrees, which is more than twice the temperature of World Trade Towers One and Two as estimated by NIST, so what melted the steel?

"Appendix C of FEMA's [Building Performance Assessment Team] BPAT report documents 'steel samples showing rapid oxidation, sulfidation and inter-granular melting--a liquid eutectic mixture' including 'sulfur from an outside source caused intense corrosion of the steel' it says.  Huge holes in wide-flanged beams and a thinning of almost 1/2" thick beams to razor sharpness in the World's Trade Center 7 steel.  The New York Times calls this 'the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation.'  We're looking at molten steel, and inter-granular melting.

"NIST left all of this crucial forensic evidence out of the NIST report in both WTC 1 and 2--and now World Trade Center 7.   Why would they have divorced the most crucial forensic, science-based evidence from the FEMA report?  Because it didn't fit in with the official conspiracy theory.  Last year, physicist, Steven Jones, two other physicists and a geologist analyzed the slag at the ends of these beams analyzing the sample of the previously molten metal.  They found iron, aluminum, sulfer, manganise, and flourine, the chemical evidence of thermate, a high-tech incendiary cutting charge used by the military to cut through steel, 'like a hot knife through butter.'  What is the bi-product of thermite cutter charges?  Molten iron.  All of this evidence fits together for the hypothesis of controlled demolition.  This is what NIST is looking for--robust science. We're offering it. Why isn't NIST looking at it?

"There's no other possible source for all the molten iron that was found. One of thermate's key ingredients is sulfur which can form the liquid eutectic that FEMA found and which lowers the melting point of steel. Building 7's catastrophic failure shows ample evidence of controlled demolition and no characteristic of destruction by fire alone.

Look at our website AE911truth.org and look at our two hour video to see all these characteristics there. What are these characteristics? The destruction begins suddenly at the base of the building. First-responders reported hearing explosions occurring about a second before the collapse.

"One of these was Kevin McFadden who heard a countdown. Another was Kevin Berman, a New York Police Department officer who said, 'I think I know an explosion when I hear it.'

"There was a symmetrical, free-fall speed of collapse, through the path of greatest resistance, 40,000 tons of steel designed to resist this load--straight down, into its own footprint.  This was not mentioned in this latest NIST report.  40,000 tons of steel collapsing straight down into the path of greatest resistance defies the laws of physics and conservation of momentum.  This requires that all of the steel beams would have to fail within a fraction of a second--the perimeter columns as well as the core columns. We have also the expert testimony of one of the top European controlled-demolition experts, Danny Jowenko who said of World Trade Center 7, 'It's a controlled demolition. A team of experts did this. This is professional work--no doubt.'

"Fires alone cannot produce these effects. Fires produce large, gradual defamations and asymmetrical collapses because they follow the pattern of least resistance. It's an organic process. How much longer do we have to endure NIST's cover-up of how Building 7 was actually destroyed?

"Millions of Americans, including 435 architects and engineers in our group are demanding that NIST come forth with a transparent investigation of the evidence of the controlled demolition of this building. Following today's NIST report, we are still waiting for that."

The next expert to discuss the report was Kevin Ryan, a former Site Manager for a division of Underwriters Laboratories (UL) which certified the steel components used in the construction of the World Trade Center Complex. Mr. Ryan, a Chemist and laboratory manager, was fired by UL in 2004--one week after publicly questioning the report being drafted by NIST on their World Trade Center investigation.

Kevin Ryan: "This is a new story from NIST in which NIST is telling us there wasn't really any diesel fuel involved--which was really the opposite of the FEMA story in May of 2002. It's also the opposite of the Popular Mechanics story in which Dr. Sunder of NIST was directly quoted as saying that diesel fuel was what caused the fires.

"NIST has worked on this investigation for 5 years and basically they say that there's 20 minutes of a typical office fire that led to the near free-fall collapse of this 47-story building. I say 20 minutes because if you look at the meeting minutes of the NIST advisory committee which are available at NIST's website, they made it clear that the floor load of combustible material in any given part of the building would only allow 20 minutes of fire. That's a contradiction to the fact that the building met the building codes which required 3 hours of fire resistance for columns and 2 hours for floors."

 

Authors Website: www.thelibertyvoice.com/

Authors Bio:
Sherry Clark is the founder and publisher of The Liberty Voice. The Liberty Voice is a fiercely independent newspaper (imagine opednews in print!) that has distributed a half million papers freely throughout Central Ohio.