The 9/11 WTC fires - Where's the Inferno?

Not everyone is convinced by the official story of the towers collapse...

The laboratory director from a South Bend firm has been fired for attempting to cast doubt on the federal investigation into what caused the World Trade Center's twin towers to collapse on Sept. 11, 2001. Kevin R. Ryan was terminated Tuesday from his job at Environmental Health Laboratories Inc., a subsidiary of Underwriters Laboratories Inc., the consumer-product safety testing giant.

Ryan wrote that the institute's preliminary reports suggest the WTC's supports were probably exposed to fires no hotter than 500 degrees -- only half the 1,100-degree temperature needed to forge steel, Ryan said. That's also much cooler, he wrote, than the 3,000 degrees needed to melt bare steel with no fire-proofing.

"This story just does not add up," Ryan wrote in his e-mail to Frank Gayle, deputy chief of the institute's metallurgy division, who is playing a prominent role in the agency investigation. "If steel from those buildings did soften or melt, I'm sure we can all agree that this was certainly not due to jet fuel fires of any kind, let alone the briefly burning fires in those towers." [Salt Bend Tribune]

World Trade Center 1

Eyewitness testimony and video evidence document no inferno at the aircraft impact level

World Trade Center 2

Survivor testimony and firefighters transmissions document no inferno at the aircraft impact level

"It was noticeable that with the South Tower, the one that fell first, the ensuing ash was white and grey, whereas with the second tower that fell, the North Tower, it was black. Now, if that was because it burned longer or what I don't know, but it was a noticeable difference." [Nova Online]

This observation along with the above indicates two things:

There was little fire in WTC 2 prior to its collapse.
The black ash from WTC 1 indicates the presence of large amounts of soot. Soot is a byproduct of inefficient combustion, therefore the fires in WTC 1 did not burn at extreme temperatures.

Under solicitation number SB1341-03-Q-0281, a firm fixed-price purchase order has been awarded to Underwriters Laboratory Inc. for the testing of the steel joist-supported floor system of the Word Trade Center towers under the fire conditions prescribed in ASTM E119. The results of the testing will provide the fire endurance ratings of typical floor construction to evaluate three primary factors, 1) test scale, 2) fireproofing thickness, and 3) thermal restraint.

Under this solicitation, three ASTM E119 tests of the WTC floor construction will be performed as follows:
1) 17 ft (5.2 m) span assembly, thermally restrained
2) 35 ft (10.7 m) span assembly, thermally restrained
3) 35 ft (10.7 m) span assembly, thermally unrestrained. [wtc.nist.gov]

Findings --- The floor system DID NOT FAIL to support loads in any test.

9/11 Comparison Fires

October 2004

Venezuela

Fire duration:
17 hours

February 2005

Spain

Fire duration:
20+ hours

Both of the above buildings were of inferior build quality to the WTC, yet they burned hotter & far longer than the twin towers & WTC 7 AND REMAINED STANDING.

WTCs 1 & 2

WTC 2 fire duration:
56 minutes

WTC 1 fire duration:
85 minutes

WTC 1, 1975
Fire duration 3 hrs
No collapse

WTC 7

No aircraft impact

Fire duration:
6 hours

The "truss theory" relies on the assumption that 800ºC+ infernos started a catastrophic chain of events which led to the collapse of the twin towers. There were fires in both buildings following the aircraft impacts, but no infernos - "most perimeter panels (157 of 160) saw no temperatures above 250ºC."

Engineers say heavy insulation protected the steel frames of the buildings [...]. They say that automatic sprinklers and firefighters probably could have extinguished the fires had they been fed by typical office contents desks, carpets and paper. [Birmingham Business Journal]

The fires were indeed fed by typical office contents, so the buildings should have remained standing.

They didn't.

Why?

Brigham Young University Professor of Physics Steven Jones has suggested that thermite [details], or some other powerful, high temperature, high explosive capable of slicing the powerful steel columns that comprised the WTC towers central core, provided the energy missing in the official account.

In a September 1, 2006, New York Times article, "U.S. moves to debunk ‘alternative theories’ on Sept. 11 attacks", Jim Dwyer reports that the National Institute of Standards and Technology, an agency of the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, disputes Professor Jones’ suggestion. NIST believes that such "enormous quantities of thermite would have to be applied to the structural columns to damage them" that engineered demolition is not feasible.

Gentle reader, note what NIST is saying. If no reasonable quantity of the explosive thermite, which is used for engineered demolition, could damage the powerful buildings, the measly energy from an airliner, a bit of jet fuel, and gravity could not have collapsed the buildings. [Peoples Voice]