3.5.0 The World Trade Center

No steel-framed skyscraper has collapsed due to local damage before or since 9/11, and yet it occurred three times on that day. Fires which have burned hotter, longer and more extensively have not brought any of them close to complete collapse. The Twin Towers were unique structures in their time (but have been much copied since) and were designed to withstand multiple plane impacts. Building 7 was not even hit by a plane, and yet it too completely collapsed.

The onus should be on the official investigators to provide a full account of how the collapses took place, but this has not happened. The NIST Report goes into enormous detail into the plane impacts and the spread of the fires and uses this to explain a local collapse theory: “Column-Failure Theory.” The earlier FEMA Report claims “Truss-Failure Theory”. Neither of these theories are believable. But more significantly, neither report explains how a local failure can cause a global collapse. Both imply a “Pancake Theory” of floors crashing into each other.
By not investigating past the point of local failure, the best evidence of a controlled demolition is conveniently ignored. In particular, the following observations consistent with a controlled demolition have not been adequately explained:

• Sudden and rapid onset of collapse
• Verticality (fell straight down)
• Speed of collapse (close to free-fall speed)
• Total collapse (no core columns were left standing)
• Sliced steel (manageable size pieces)
• Pulverization (most concrete and other materials reduced to dust)
• Dust clouds (mushroomed and blasted outwards)
• Horizontal Ejections (“Squibs”)
• Symmetrical collapse
• Sounds of explosions and flashes
• Molten metal seen falling from the building
• Smouldering (previously molten) metal found in the rubble

All of these features strongly suggest that explosives were planted inside the building. The existence of the molten metal, along with other observations, have led to the hypothesis that steel-cutting thermite might have been involved in combination with explosives.

The top of the South Tower appears to have started falling to the side and then straightened up as it went into the dust cloud – this breaks the Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum. The speed of the collapse breaks the Law of Conservation of Linear Momentum. And the pulverization of concrete and shredding of steel breaks the Law of Conservation of Energy.

Building 7 is particularly hard to explain as a damage and fire-induced collapse, since it was not hit by a plane and showed the same signs of controlled demolition as the Two Towers, but even more clearly. It also seems to be a more conventional controlled demolition (the Two Towers were unconventional because they were designed to collapse from the impact points downwards) – it collapsed from the bottom in just 6.5secs (5.9secs is free-fall time) and instead of being blasted outwards like the Towers, appears to have imploded, with most of the rubble ending up inside the footprint.

Sub Pages: World Trade Center Design, Official Collapse Theories, Pictures of Collapses,

Next Page: Flight 93