WTC 7 on fireWTC Building 7

the first time a skyscraper was hit by large chunks of a taller skyscraper falling onto it

The North Tower collapse gouged a 20 story high hole in Building 7. The firefighters watched WTC 7 buckle hours before it collapsed. 9/11 complicity is NOT dependent on the demolition theories.

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One of the most bizarre aspects of the 9/11 story is the fate of World Trade Center Building 7. It was a 47 story building that would be enormous by the architectural standards of most cities but it was dwarfed by the nearby Twin Towers.

WTC 7 holeThe video footage looks like Building 7 was brought down in a controlled demolition, but this claim ignores what happened before the collapse.

While it is true that a plane did not hit WTC 7, it is also true that large parts of the collapsing towers gouged a large hole in the side of the building and set it on fire.

WTC 7 was the first time a collapsing skyscraper fell onto a smaller skyscraper.

The best evidence of 9/11 complicity is the suppressed warnings and overlapping wargames, not the claim of controlled demolition. The media and other debunkers have delighted in highlighting the demolition claims while ignoring the suppressed warnings. The so-called "physical evidence" approach was a carefully constructed trap.

 


from Paul Thompson "The Terror Timeline" (pp. 441, 466)

After 9:59 am: WTC Building 7 appears damaged

WTC Building 7 appears to have suffered significant damage at some point after the WTC towers had collapsed, according to firefighters at the scene. Firefighter Butch Brandies tells other firefighters that nobody is to go into Building 7 because of creaking and noises coming out of there. According to Deputy Chief Peter Hayden, there is a bulge in the southwest corner of the building between floors 10 and 13. Battalion Chief John Norman later recalls, "At the edge of the south face you could see that it was very heavily damaged." Deputy Chief Nick Visconti also later recalls recounts, "A big chunk of the lower floors had been taken out on the Vesey Street side." Captain Chris Boyle recalls, "On the south side of 7 there had to be a hole 20 stories tall in the building, with fire on several floors."

4:30 pm: WTC Building 7 Area is Evacuated

The area around WTC Building 7 is evacuated at this time. New York fire department chief officers, who have surveyed the building, have determined it is in danger of collapsing. Several senior firefighters have described this decision-making process. According to fire chief Daniel Nigro, "The biggest decision we had to make was to clear the area and create a collapse zone around the severely damaged building [WTC Building 7]. A number of fire offices and companies assessed the damage to the building. The appraisals indicated that the building's integrity was in serious doubt."

 


The BBC film (at youtube) has some footage showing the fires in 7 were not small.

Conspiracy Files: 9/11 - The Third Tower

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeYPm8XzC3g&feature=gv

no mention of suppressed warnings and overlapping wargames, but lots of focus on Loose Change, Richard Gage and Steven Jones, countered by New York firefighters who were there and various official experts.

 


 

from the NIST report issued August 2008 about wtc7

"The collapse time of the upper 18 stories of the north face of WTC 7 (the floors clearly visible in the video evidence) was 40 percent greater than the computed free fall time. This is consistent with physical principles."
p. 44

wtc.nist.gov/pubs/June2004WTC7StructuralFire&CollapseAnalysisPrint.pdf

 

www.jnani.org/mrking/writings/911/king911.htm

Good Science and 9-11 Demolition Theories
Mike King

why should we accept from [Steven] Jones that "no major persistent fires were visible" even if this has become the mantra of the counter-orthodoxy? Wouldn’t the eye-witness testimony of experienced New York firefighters count for more?

Captain Chris Boyle (Engine 94) with 18 years of service with the FDNY gave this interview:

Firehouse: Did that chief give an assignment to go to building 7?

Boyle: He gave out an assignment. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but he told the chief that we were heading down to the site.
… We went one block north over to Greenwich and then headed south. There was an engine company there, right at the corner. It was right underneath building 7 and it was still burning at the time. They had a hose in operation, but you could tell there was no pressure. It was barely making it across the street. Building 6 was fully involved and it was hitting the sidewalk across the street. I told the guys to wait up.
A little north of Vesey I said, we’ll go down, let’s see what’s going on. A couple of the other officers and I were going to see what was going on. We were told to go to Greenwich and Vesey and see what’s going on. So we go there and on the north and east side of 7 it didn’t look like there was any damage at all, but then you looked on the south side of 7 there had to be a hole 20 stories tall in the building, with fire on several floors. Debris was falling down on the building and it didn’t look good.
But they had a hoseline operating. Like I said, it was hitting the sidewalk across the street, but eventually they pulled back too. Then we received an order from Fellini, we’re going to make a move on 7. That was the first time really my stomach tightened up because the building didn’t look good. I was figuring probably the standpipe systems were shot. There was no hydrant pressure. I wasn’t really keen on the idea. Then this other officer I’m standing next to said, that building doesn’t look straight. So I'm standing there. I’m looking at the building. It didn’t look right, but, well, we'll go in, we’ll see.
So we gathered up rollups and most of us had masks at that time. We headed toward 7. And just around we were about a hundred yards away and Butch Brandies came running up. He said forget it, nobody's going into 7, there’s creaking, there are noises coming out of there, so we just stopped. And probably about 10 minutes after that, Visconti, he was on West Street, and I guess he had another report of further damage either in some basements and things like that, so Visconti said nobody goes into 7, so that was the final thing and that was abandoned.

Firehouse: When you looked at the south side, how close were you to the base of that side?

Boyle: I was standing right next to the building, probably right next to it.

Firehouse: When you had fire on the 20 floors, was it in one window or many?

Boyle: There was a huge gaping hole and it was scattered throughout there. It was a huge hole. I would say it was probably about a third of it, right in the middle of it. And so after Visconti came down and said nobody goes in 7, we said all right, we’ll head back to the command post. We lost touch with him. I never saw him again that day.

www.firehouse.com/terrorist/911/magazine/gz/boyle.html [dead link]

Here is an extract from the testimony of Deputy Chief Peter Hayden, who had 33 years service in Division 1 to his credit:

Firehouse: Other people tell me that there were a lot of firefighters in the street who were visible, and they put out traffic cones to mark them off?

Hayden: Yeah. There was enough there and we were marking off. There were a lot of damaged apparatus there that were covered. We tried to get searches in those areas. By now, this is going on into the afternoon, and we were concerned about additional collapse, not only of the Marriott, because there was a good portion of the Marriott still standing, but also we were pretty sure that 7 World Trade Center would collapse. Early on, we saw a bulge in the southwest corner between floors 10 and 13, and we had put a transit on that and we were pretty sure she was going to collapse. You actually could see there was a visible bulge, it ran up about three floors. It came down about 5 o'clock in the afternoon, but by about 2 o’clock in the afternoon we realized this thing was going to collapse.

Firehouse: Was there heavy fire in there right away?

Hayden: No, not right away, and that’s probably why it stood for so long because it took a while for that fire to develop. It was a heavy body of fire in there and then we didn’t make any attempt to fight it. That was just one of those wars we were just going to lose. We were concerned about the collapse of a 47-story building there. We were worried about additional collapse there of what was remaining standing of the towers and the Marriott, so we started pulling the people back after a couple of hours of surface removal and searches along the surface of the debris. We started to pull guys back because we were concerned for their safety.

www.firehouse.com/terrorist/911/magazine/gz/hayden.html [dead link]

I believe that the testimony of experienced fireman ought to give most sober-minded people very serious doubt about the CD hypothesis, in particular the account of the sagging of the building prior to collapse, the assertion by Hayden that it was a heavy fire, and the testimony regarding lack of water pressure to fight the blaze.

Boyle’s report suggested that the debris caused a huge gash of twenty storeys in that face, which would allow for the flow of air to the fires simply unprecedented in fires in similar buildings.

All the evidence suggests that WTC 7 was unique in the history of fire-fighting because (a) structural damage was extensive, (b) vast openings in the south face allowing unimpeded airflow, (c) water mains had been severed by the collapse of the Towers, and hence almost no water was available to the Fire Service, and (d) the Fire Service had anyway made the eminently reasonable policy decision that their priority was to save lives not buildings, so it burned for 7 hours virtually unattended. Also, the bulging of the building prior to collapse is also prime evidence against the CD theory, because controlled demolition never produces such bulges.

In this section Jones also wants to argue that the fine rubble produced in the WTC 7 collapse is evidence of explosives:

Jones: By contrast, concrete floors in the Twin Towers and WTC 7 were pulverized to dust -- as is common in controlled demolitions using explosives.

But we have already pointed out that concrete floors, if they are pulverised to dust in controlled demolition, are pulverised due to gravity, not explosives. This is a core mistake repeated by Jones and other CD theorists.

 


Dan Nigro, Chief of Department FDNY (retired)

http://911guide.googlepages.com/danielnigro

Regarding WTC 7: The long-awaited US Government NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) report on the collapse of WTC 7 is due to be published at the end of this year (although it has been delayed already a few times [ adding fuel to the conspiracy theorists fires!]). That report should explain the cause and mechanics of the collapse in great detail. Early on the afternoon of September 11th 2001, following the collapse of WTC 1 & 2, I feared a collapse of WTC 7 (as did many on my staff).

The reasons are as follows:

1 - Although prior to that day high-rise structures had never collapsed, The collapse of WTC 1 & 2 showed that certain high-rise structures subjected to damage from impact and from fire will collapse.

2. The collapse of WTC 1 damaged portions of the lower floors of WTC 7.

3. WTC 7, we knew, was built on a small number of large columns providing an open Atrium on the lower levels.

4. numerous fires on many floors of WTC 7 burned without sufficient water supply to attack them.

For these reasons I made the decision (without consulting the owner, the mayor or anyone else - as ranking fire officer, that decision was my responsibility) to clear a collapse zone surrounding the building and to stop all activity within that zone. Approximately three hours after that order was given, WTC 7 collapsed.

Conspiracy theories abound and I believe firmly that all of them are without merit.

Regards, Dan Nigro
Chief of Department FDNY (retired)

 

Debunking Building 7 Demolition theories

Most of the debunking articles assume that disproving the demolition theories equals "the government is telling the truth." There's a middle ground between "demolition" and "no complicity," but this is rarely mentioned by the "9/11 truth movement" or the debunkers of the most extreme claims. The debunkers expose some of the silly stuff but rarely hint that US allies provided specific warnings about the attacks during the summer of 2001.

http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/2006/06/wtc-7.html

www.911myths.com/html/wtc7___silverstein.html

www.911myths.com/html/wtc7_damage.html

 

www.debunking911.com/pull.htm

What we do have for sure.

1) Fireman saying there was "a hole 20 stories tall in the building, with fire on several floors." "I would say it was probably about a third of it".
2) A laymen officer the fireman was standing next to said, "that building doesn’t look straight." He then says "It didn’t look right".
3) They put a transit on it and afterward were "pretty sure she was going to collapse."
4) They "saw a bulge in the southwest corner between floors 10 and 13".
5) Photographic evidence of a fire directly under the penthouse which collapsed first.
6) The penthouse fell first, followed by the rest of the building shortly after.
7) The collapse happened from the bottom.
8) Photographic evidence of large smoke plumes against the back of B7. Plumes of smoke so large you can't see the entire rear of the 47 story office building.
9) Silverstein is not a demolition expert and was talking to a fire fighter and not a demolition expert. Why would he use the word "Pull" to describe the demolition to a fire fighter?
10) Silverstein denies "Pull" means "Controlled demolition". He said it means "Pull" the teams out of the building.
11) Silverstein did not make the decision to "Pull". (Whatever that means) "they made that decision to pull and then we watched the building collapse"
12) Another fire fighter used "Pull" to describe the decision made to get him out of the building.

What we don't have...

1) Clear view of the large hole
2) Number of columns and location of columns taken out by the tower impact
3) Clear view of all the fires seen on the south side
4) Any sign of an actual explosive.

 

http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/2007/07/construction-worker-reports-wtc-7-was.html

Construction Worker Reports WTC-7 Was "47-Story Fire"

I've got a hunch this guy isn't going to be interviewed in LCFC. Charlie Vitchers, a construction worker who made his way down to the pile on 9-11, discusses his recollection of Building 7 in a 2006 book entitled Nine Months at Ground Zero (Page 15):

"So I said, okay, and started heading east where I ran into more MPs. By about 5 o'clock, I was about a quarter mile away from the Trade Center. I had a clear view down Washington Street of Building Seven, which was on the north edge of the site. All forty-seven stories were on fire. It was wild. The MPs said the building was going to collapse. I said, "Nah, I don't know." And then, all of a sudden, I watched the building shake like an earthquake had hit it, and the building came down."

Oh, the MPs knew the building was coming down? Who gave them the script?