Video Evidence of an Explosion at the Base of WTC 1

"Shortly before the first tower came down, I remember feeling the ground shaking. I heard a terrible noise, and then debris just started flying everywhere. ... By the time the debris settled from the first collapse, we started to walk back east, toward West Street, and a few minutes later ... we basically had the same thing: The ground shook again, and we heard another terrible noise and the next thing we knew the second tower was coming down." [EMS Lieutenant Bradley Mann]

Seismographs at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, 21 miles north of the WTC, recorded strange seismic activity on September 11 that has still not been explained.

The Palisades seismic record shows that Ч as the collapses began Ч a huge seismic "spike" marked the moment the greatest energy went into the ground. The strongest jolts were all registered at the beginning of the collapses, well before the falling debris struck the earth. These unexplained "spikes" in the seismic data lend credence to the theory that massive explosions at the base of the towers caused the collapses. [AFP]

Click for full sized seismic record

This 2.6 MB wmv video (stills below) shows the collapse of WTC 1 and it corroborates the above "seismic spikes". The camera was not hand held, it was directly connected to the ground via a tripod, and this allowed the camera to visually capture a ground shake which occurred ~13 seconds before the building collapsed. The video also shows an object fall from the right hand side of the building moments before the camera begins to shake. The close timing of these two events indicates they are linked.

Note that 6 seconds into the video the camera shakes for almost a second, too long to be a kick or a jostle.

Moments before the shake a large piece of debris is knocked from the right side of the building (see image on right).

Click for full size frame

Careful study of the smoke before...

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and after...

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... clearly shows new blooms of smoke exiting the opening on the front facing side of the building as well as to the right.

This video shows two perspectives of the collapse. The inset video shows the camera shake at roughly six seconds. Five seconds later the main video shows smoke appearing at the building's base.

WMV video download (363kB)

Genelle Guzman McMillan was on the 13th floor of WTC 1 when it collapsed:

McMillan heard a rumble. "A big explosion," she now calls it. "The wall I was facing just opened up, and it threw me on the other side," she says. McMillan looked for Gonzalez. "I was still holding Rosa's hand," McMillan says. "But she pulled away." McMillan remembers Gonzalez trying to climb the stairs. "I got up," McMillan says. "And I tried to go behind her. That's when the rubble just kept coming down." [Bergen Record]