Sudden Building Collapse: An Evaluation of a New Risk in Operational Fire-fighting

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The following report was written in accordance with professional and legal responsibilities defined under UK legislation, most specifically "The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999".

"Let’s first define why this is so important. In terms of political history, this is probably the most important building collapse ever to have occurred; not just from an architectural perspective, not only because it raises very significant questions about the safety of high-rise occupiers and their rescuers should a similar building be involved in fire but because of what it represents in terms of what happened geopolitically and militarily as a result of its collapse. For Firefighters, this building's officially reported cause of collapse, if valid, should raise serious concerns about the safety of current offensive Firefighting techniques within these structures."

Summary of the report's findings:

The building was modern, in good condition, steel-framed with reinforced concrete floors, with high-specification class-A fire protection (2-3 hours’ fire-protection-rated and easily able to tolerate normal fires). Extensive damage was caused to the south face from falling debris, but the NIST report states that this was not a contributing factor in causing the building’s collapse. Engineers have demonstrated that if this damage were to be considered a major factor the building would have fallen asymmetrically, toppling in the direction of that damage. There is suspicion about what ignited the fires and when they started. NIST reports falling debris as a “likely” cause from the north tower collapsing at 10:28am, however, there were witness reports of “thick smoke” and an explosion from within Building 7 at about 9:30am which contradicts this claim. The fires were normal in size, the sort of fires to be expected in any normal office type environment. There was nothing extraordinary about their fuel source or location that might explain a prevention of effective fire-fighting operations. The building’s fire alarm was linked to the automatic sprinkler system. The fire alarm had been deactivated due to being set in test mode for 8 hours that day, starting at 6:47am, it failed to reactivate at 2:47pm. The sprinklers did not activate. The official report claims that the sprinklers did not activate due to a broken water main. There is strong evidence to support good mains water supplies, which could have been supplemented and boosted by a manually operated sprinkler system pump in the building. The sprinkler system could also have been charged by FDNY from external siamese fittings outside the building. This did not happen. Firefighting operations were prematurely curtailed in Building 7. Firefighters were withdrawn from the building early in the day based upon the orders of an unknown city official who predicted the unprecedented fire-induced collapse of this building 5 hours in advance. The official reasons provided for the Firefighters’ withdrawal included an alleged lack of water and resources. Water was available in ample volume via the city water mains, and from 3 fire boats located nearby on the river Hudson, each capable of providing up to 18,000 gallons of water per minute. Fire-fighting resources in lower Manhattan were at an all-time high. There were more fire-fighting resources, including, in the face of terrible and unprecedented FDNY loss of life, an army of very willing and eager Firefighters wanting to work. The official study and technical theory of the collapse of the building are, according to thousands of architects and engineers, unscientific and false. These same engineers and architects are endorsed by scientists who confirm that the NIST explanation is not only false but impossible. NIST refuses to release its data for peer-review and has routinely refused to answer difficult questions from experts about inconsistencies and errors in its theory of collapse. When the building collapsed there were many witnesses reporting the sounds of loud, fast and repeated explosions. Military grade nano thermite residues were discovered in the dust of the remains of the buildings. This fact has been confirmed via an independent and international rigorous scientific peer review process. When the building did collapse it fell at a scientifically verified rate of acceleration indistinguishable from free fall. This is of great significance and importance. For a large building (100 metres side to side) to collapse with a level roof line, the building’s entire structural integrity must have been removed simultaneously and almost instantaneously. In NIST’s August 2008 Draft Report the building’s free fall was denied. The lead investigator at NIST had openly dismissed free fall having occurred, correctly stating that this fact would require zero structural integrity in the building. Due to the intervention of a high-school physics teacher, in the November 2008 Final Report NIST was forced to admit that free fall occurred, but they understated its significance in the report and totally avoided elaborating upon the aforementioned implications of what it identified. There is only one explanation for the nearly instantaneous and simultaneous removal of the building’s entire structural integrity which caused its free falling collapse - controlled demolition. The collapse of this building exemplified seven features of a textbook description of a controlled implosion: 1. The collapse started from the bottom. 2. The onset of the collapse was sudden. 3. The collapse was total. 4. The building came straight down. 5. Its acceleration approximated that of a free-falling object. 6. Most of its concrete was pulverized into tiny dust particles. 7. The building ended up as a relatively small pile of debris. Professional controlled demolition experts agree that Building 7 must have been collapsed by controlled demolition, with the added affirmation that this sort of collapse is not possible due to fire alone. Based on the fact that a steel-framed building has never before in history collapsed due to fire, the accurate and certain foreknowledge of the collapse 5 hours before it occurred, based only on alleged noises coming from within the building, is extremely questionable, to say the least. The only feasible explanation for this level of certain foreknowledge, which was shared with many emergency workers in the area without explanation, is that this information was founded upon action based foreknowledge. Complete building collapse due to fires is unprecedented, those who accurately predicted the collapse 5 hours in advance must have known actions had been taken to cause the collapse to occur when it did. Researching NIST’s credibility has revealed a very broken scientific reputation. It is an agency of the US Department of Commerce. During the years it was writing its World Trade Centre reports, it was, therefore, an agency of the Bush-Cheney administration. In 2004, the Union of Concerned Scientists published a document charging this administration with “distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends.” By the end of the Bush administration, this document had been signed by over 15,000 scientists, including 52 Nobel Laureates and 63 recipients of the National Medal of Science. Conclusion Since these events 15 years ago, Firefighters' fundamental operational procedures have not been changed for fighting high-rise fires. In the UK, local government 'Stay put' policies, which advise residents in high-rise buildings and flats to remain in their property when there is a fire, have not been modified. The building design regulations have not changed and equivalent buildings have not been retrofitted with modifications to prevent a recurrence of Building 7's collapse. However, if NIST's official report of what happened to Building 7 is maintained by our authorities as a valid explanation of events, in accordance with the Health and Safety at Work Act and other related legislation, all of the above factors need to be questioned and critically reassessed as a matter of great importance by fire services, local housing authorities, and building standards regulators. Generally, as a rule, we tend to rely upon science rather than unfounded belief to understand our world. Science is defined as the search for truth. When a scientific truth is found, fundamentally this is always based upon a preponderance of positive probabilities. We hold these findings as true until we find a good reason to believe otherwise. A true and honest scientist will always accept questioning of his hypothesis and continue to test its validity. From my observations of NIST’s analysis of this collapse, observations shared by many highly qualified professionals in their respective fields, an honest scientific approach has not been pursued. The deliberate and immediate removal and destruction of nearly all the evidence at the scene of the crime, the failure to even mention the collapse of Building 7 in the 9/11 Commission Report, combined with the catalogue of errors and omissions in the NIST report, all aggregate to destroy any credibility the report might hope to convey. The claims made by NIST that the sprinkler operation and fire-fighting efforts failed, due to poor water supplies and limited resources, were false and only serve to further diminish their credibility. This building’s fires could have been contained and extinguished well in advance of the alleged structural failures. The experts' evidence of the building's uninhibited gravitational free fall acceleration, its symmetrical collapse perfectly into its own footprint, witness testimonials of explosions, evidence of explosive residues, and 'certain foreknowledge' of the building’s collapse, all points compellingly towards an alternative hypothesis - a deliberate case of controlled demolition. A hypothesis which, if the scientific principle of Occam’s razor had been applied, should have been the first to have been tested. This analysis has been completed without being influenced or prejudiced by the details of the politics in the background of this incident. The data and the evidence alone dictated what the study discovered. Unfortunately it’s an unavoidable fact that this case is connected with politics, however Newtonian Physics and the laws of nature are infinitely more reliable and revealing than politics. In agreement with thousands of expert architects, engineers, and scientists, the findings of this analysis identify that the risks to Firefighters at this incident were not due to faulty architecture, sub-standard engineering, untested fire-fighting procedures or a miraculous fire-induced building demolition. The sudden and complete collapse of a steel-framed high-rise building due to normal fires presents as little risk to operational Firefighters today as it did in the days before this event. The observed, measured, admitted and verified symmetrical 2.5 seconds of freefall of this building is impossible without the application of very high forces necessary to uniformly and instantaneously eliminate the integrity of all the structure's core columns, throughout at least eight stories (105 feet). It is impossible for this to have been caused by 'normal office fires', something which public sector fire-authorities around the World have a duty in helping the communities they serve to see is an obvious crime and criminal deception being used for political purposes to this day.