Reply #82: Hi there, please bear with me [View All]

[MadHound]

I'm not posting from my normal computer, hence I can't provide links, etc to back some stuff up, but if you do the search yourself you can probably find them.

I worked as a fireman for a long while. What struck me about the WTC strike and subsequent "explanation" is that anybody with any kind of rudimentary knowledge of how fire works would cry bullshit.

First off let us examine the scene before the towers collapse. In the north tower(where the first plane inserted itself almost squarely into the side of the building) we are shown endless minutes of vast quantities of smoke roiling out of the building. While to the untrained this might mean that there is a lot of fire up there, in all actuality quite the opposite is happening, the fire is being smothered. A little thought experiment for you, remember when you douse a campfire how smoke billows up once you start to apply water? The same basic principle was at work in the north tower. The water sprinklers came on(there are eyewitness reports of this), most modern buildings for the past fifty years have used fire retardent materials, plastics and paper don't burn that hot(paper ignition is at 415 degrees and the hottest you can get paper with forced air ventalation is aprox 800 degrees, everyday plastics and nylons rarely get over 900 degrees). And jet fuel, which is essentially kerosene burns at a constant 800 degrees, which is nowhere close to the melting point of structural steel, or for that matter nowhere near the temp that would be required to weaken steel, which occurs at aprox 1100 degrees(depending on the exact makeup of the steel).

There have been explanations that the fire was force fed O2, thus pumping up the temprature. Not so, for two reasons. There are no reports from either office workers or firemen in the building of being either short of breath or encountering any great winds while in the building. If the fire was sucking in enough air to force the temp upwards even 100 degrees people would have noticed and reported it(I've been in forest fires that were sucking up the air, and the winds reach upwards of 60mph when this happens).

But still, the evidence is there for all to see. Those pictures of the North Tower putting out tons of smoke, with little or no flames shooting out. This is a fire that is reletively speaking, barely burning, that is being smothered by the sprinkler system and the materials that it encounters. This is also verified by the audio tapes of the fire fighters inside the building. They are saying at the time, on the scene that they need only three lines to put out this fire, THREE HOSES! This is a fire that can be fought and controlled, not some out of control monster that is weakening steel and will soon collapse the building. And yet it did come down, but judging from my experience it wasn't fire that did it.

Let's turn our attention to the south tower. This is the one where the plane hit the corner. What did we all see there, a very large fireball go spraying out all over. Using standard building measurements, one story equaling fifteen feet, the fireball was aprox. ninety feet in diameter along it's vertical axis and aprox 150 feet along it's horizontal axis. More than likely at least half the fuel it was carrying was burned up in that fireball. Half of the fuel that was needed to supposedly weaken the steel in building. Interesting is it not, that the building with half of the ignition agent already burned away is the one that collapsed from "weakened steel" first.

And yet, similar scenes were issuing out of the south tower as those that came out of the north tower. Smoke, lots and lots of roiling smoke. Remember the thought experiment above? Yes, this too was a fire that was being suppressed. The sprinklers were spraying away, the fire retardent material were slowing down the fire, and once again firefighters and witnesses in the building did not report any massive winds that would stoke the blaze. And yet this is the building that collapsed first. From weakened steel. Pretty much straight down. Sorry, but I have to call it BS.

Consider this simple bit of physics, you can try it out yourself if you wish. Take a candle and one of those butane BBQ lighters. Point the lighter perpindicular to the candle about 1/3 of the way down from the top. Turn on the lighter so the flame reaches the candle, but doesn't light it up. The wax softens, weakens, and the candle collapse over to one side, towards the flame. The candle falls in the direction of which it is being weakened. Not straight down, not to the side opposite the hear source, but towards the side that is weakened first. Steel(and anything else) obeys this simple law of physics. The origin of the fire in the south tower was corner in which the plane hit. Yet the video of the south tower collapsing shows the tower initially tilting AWAY from the ignition source about ten degrees before going straight down along with the rest of the building. Unusual to say the least.

And yet we are still being told that a paper and kerosene fire weakened the structural steel, in the absence of forced air, causing these towers to collapse straight down. One last experiment for you.
Find yourself a kerosene heater, light it up and hold a piece of 1/16th inch steel in the flames for a long while(thirty to forty five minutes is good). Take it out of the flames and look at it. Bang on it with a hammer. See how weak it is. And then tell me how kerosene, paper and plastic are supposed to fuel a fire to the point where structural steel weakens and bends.