Edna Cintron waving from the north tower impact zone... In a recent letter ( PDF
link ) to 9/11 victim's family representatives Bill Doyle
and Bob McIlvaine (video here ), NIST states, "We are unable to provide
a full explanation of the total collapse." Sub basement explosions? Les Robertson, three weeks after 9/11 - "As of 21 days after the attack, the fires were still burning and molten steel was still running. What concrete that wasn't pulverized into dust will continue to be removed for weeks to come. The structural steel is being removed and shipped by barge to be recycled." 911 Firefighter Jon Schroeder speaks out! Dr. Frank Greening on the NIST Report:"In truth, the NIST Report is seriously flawed in many respects. It is inconsistent and contradictory in the way it treats the tipping of the upper section of each tower. It assumes that global collapse ensues without modeling the collapse. Its fire simulations generate such a wide array of temperature profiles as to be essentially useless. Its assumptions about the loss of thermal insulation are mere speculation. It ignores the important effects of massive releases of corrosive gases in the fires. Its metallurgical analysis of the steel is perfunctory. It ignores evidence (micron sized spheres) for the presence of molten iron in the towers prior to collapse. It mentions sulfidation, which it does not explain, while ignoring chlorination. And finally, NIST still cannot explain the collapse of WTC 7 after 6 years of trying….. This is the JREFers Bible!?!?!?

A firetruck about to drive through molten Iron flowing from the WTC towers after at least one of the collapses.

NIST Lead Engineer Questioned About 9/11 ~ Denies Molten Metal - Funny video clips are a click away Two opposing views:View 1 The conclusions presented by the National Institute for Standards and Technology in regards to what initiated the collapse of World Trade Center Towers 1 and 2 are scientifically accurate. Those conclusions are confirmed by NIST's experimental data and computer simulations.NIST's study states that the events that led to the initiation of collapse of WTC Towers 1 and 2 were a combination of 3 interdependent factors:1. The airplanes hit the towers at high speeds and did considerable damage to multiple structural components. (http://www.nist.gov/testimony/2005/wjeffreyhousesciencewtc1 0-26-05.pdf).2. Thermal insulation was dislodged by the respective impacts, debris and vibrations from those impacts in #1, which exposed structural components to fires hotter than 600C and led to significant temperature rise in the structural components which thereby weakened them. (NCSTAR1-6 section 10.5)3. #1 and #2 combined resulted in strains to the core and exterior columns, and "the towers collapsed when the weakened core and exterior columns could no longer redistribute or support the building loads with their reduced load carrying capacity." (NCSTAR1-6 section 10.8.1 Finding 42)Without all three of these factors acting together, the towers likely would not have collapsed. (NCSTAR1-6 section 10.8.1 Finding 45)The experiments, models, and methodology that led to the findings considered more details and variables than any other study of what initiated the WTC collapse to date, and the experiments, models and methodology for examining those variables are scientifically sound. Those experiments included:---Simulations of a Boeing 767's impact into the towers were conducted with the velocity of the plane accurately estimated. (http://wtc.nist.gov/NISTNCSTAR1-2B_Chaps1-8.pdf)---SFRM fireproofing was tested at various thicknesses and was determined to be vulnerable to dislodging from G-Forces that were significantly less than what would occur from a crashing airplane or flying debris. (http://wtc.nist.gov/NISTNCSTAR1-6A.pdf, figure 7-10)---Elaborate simulations and physical experiments were conducted to determine the likely temperatures of the fires the structural elements of the building were exposed to, and what those structural elements could withstand. (NCSTAR1-5 and 1-6)According to NIST: "Some 200 technical experts—including about 85 career NIST experts and 125 leading experts from the private sector and academia—reviewed tens of thousands of ..s, interviewed more than 1,000 people, reviewed 7,000 segments of video footage and 7,000 photographs, analyzed 236 pieces of steel from the wreckage, performed laboratory tests and sophisticated computer simulations of the sequence of events that occurred from the moment the aircraft struck the towers until they began to collapse." (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm)NIST scientists and engineers are experts in analyzing a buildings failure and determining the most probable technical cause. Furthermore, NIST has solicited world-class technical expertise from both within and outside their agency, with experts being drawn from academia, practice and government and used on an as-needed basis. (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs.htm)NIST has also successfully conducted previous building collapse and fire investigations, and has more than 30 years experience conducting such investigations. "Scientists and engineers in NIST’s Building and Fire Research Laboratory (BFRL) often lead a failure investigation. BFRL has experts in concrete and steel construction, earthquake engineering, and fire performance in structural systems. Other NIST experts, such as materials scientists, manufacturing engineers, and electronic engineers, often provide their specialized knowledge to investigations." (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs.htm)There is no reason to doubt the scientific accuracy of NIST’s claims, since their credibility and expertise has been well established. If, however, one is intent upon demonstrating that NIST’s findings on what initiated the collapse of WTC 1 and 2 are inaccurate, they must show how #’s 1, 2 or 3 as listed above did not happen in accordance with NIST’s claims and give examples of specific inaccuracies in NIST’s experiments and methods. View 2 Edwouard, in his closing, states that there is no reason to doubt the scientific accuracy of NIST’s claims. I disagree. There are many reasons to doubt; evidenced by the many people who do doubt. If there were not reasons to doubt then we would not be here. Bright people from all walks of life and many professional and scientific disciplines have doubts. For myself these doubts are not founded on the proposal that NIST’s credibility and expertise have not been established. My doubts come from what I see as a rush to judgment followed by an investigation inherently designed to prove a predetermined outcome.As for Edwouard’s three points:1. The airplanes hit the towers at high speeds and did considerable damage to multiple structural components.I can accept that they did considerable damage, but has it been proven that they did enough damage to fit the findings? From my reading of the (executive summary ncstar 1-2 E7) three different computer models where used: less severe, base, and most severe.The less severe case was abandoned because it did not calculate damage to the opposite sides of the buildings, or indicate that the towers would have collapsed.Then there is the base case: From NIST “The overall agreement with the observed damage to the North wall was good for the base case and the more severe case, with the base case analysis providing the better match to the observed damage” and, “As would be expected, the base case analysis calculated less damage to the exterior wall than the more severe case near the wing tips” (ncstar 1-2 p. lxxxvi).The base case fit the observed damage better but did not result in the outcome that they were after, collapse, so out it went (ncstar 1, chapter 6.14.1).The less severe case was not considered because it didn’t calculate observed damage, but the base case fit it the best, and still NIST went on to bring in another model that was guaranteed to calculate more damage (ncstar 1-2 p. lxxxv)Why? Well NIST can’t explain how the towers came down by impact and fires unless they do. So how many times did they need to strengthen their model to get it right? Three. And I believe that they would have had to have kept going with stronger computer models until they got what they were looking for if the third had not done the trick. They admitted this at the end of chapter 6.14.1 of NCSTAR 1: “The results (of the more severe cases) were a simulation of structural deterioration of each tower from the time of aircraft impact to the time at which the buildings became unstable, ie, poised for collapse. Cases B and D (the more severe cases) accomplished this in a manner that was consistent with the principle observables and the governing physics.”The principle observables in this case are that the buildings collapsed. The more severe cases let that happen the others before did not.My point, and I hope that I do not get too redundant, is that NIST seems to have been improving their models until they got the desired effect. I would not call that scientifically accurate.On number 2, Edouard is jumping the gun a bit; first of all the fire proofing being knocked off is not an observed occurrence. It is an occurrence that would have had to have happened in order for everything else to work, and I believe it is one of the weakest links in the chain of evidence. In as much as:From NIST “One of the larger columns in the tower was immersed in a furnace at 1100C. Un-insulated it took just 13 minutes for the steel surface temps to reach 600C, in the range where loss of strength occurs . When insulated with 1 1/8 inch of SFRN the same column had not reached that temperature in ten hours. This established that the fires in WTC 1 and WTC2 would not be able to significantly weaken the insulated core or perimeter columns within the 102 minutes and 56 minutes, respectively, after impact and prior to collapse.” (ncstar 1 p. 132)NIST goes on the say that it’s much less important to know the thickness of the insulation than to know if it was present or removed. Interesting! Considering that by their own test they proved that it would be impossible for the towers to collapse if fire protection is not removed from the equation.Then they do an experiment to show how it could be removed; with a shot gun which they shoot at a piece of metal in a plywood box until some fireproofing comes off, and then they say, “See how it could happened.” From (ncstar 1 p. 119) “Experiments at NIST confirmed that an array of 0.3 inches in diameter pellets traveling at approximately 350mph stripped the insulation from steel bars like those used in WTC trusses.” That does not sound very scientific to me. Then from the same page “NIST developed a simple model to estimate the range of accelerations that might dislodge the SFRM from the structural steel components.”So, first NIST determined that the insulation had to come off, then they proved it with a simple experiment using a shot gun, and then they developed a simple computer model to back it up by saying that it might come off. I’m gathering that all of this fireproofing didn’t come off in the sophisticated computer models of the damage done by the impacts. Because it had already been removed by simple necessity.Number three:Without a presumption that an abundance of insulation did come off we are left with only the building damage, caused by the more severe case, which has been acknowledged to be insufficient to bring down the towers on its own. So lets look at it as if insulation had come off, and say that the temp of 600C is accurate (Which I do not believe, but I think we will have to get to that further along). In the test of a column from the tower cited above it took 13 minutes for the surface to reach 600C in a fully fired up 1100C furnace. Notice the word surface.Now, on page 129 of NCSTAR 1 it says, “At any given location the duration of temperatures near 1000C was about 15 to 10 minutes. The rest of the time the temperatures were near 500C or below.” I would like to bring your attention back to the term surface. And point out that the whole beam was in a furnace, and I would like you to consider that 500C is not hot enough to bring steel to a temperature of 600C or maintain it there. Is NIST saying that in a furnace at 1100C the column’s surface got to 600C in 13 minutes, but that in 15 to 10 minutes fires of 1000C heated the steel all the way through and completely to 600C? That just does not sound reasonable to me given that steel is a very good heat conductor, and It would be expected for some of that direct heat to be wicked away to less hot areas of the steel, making it take longer.So, how long would it take unprotected steel to reach 600C all the way through when being heated by 1000C fire? I don’t know because I can’t find any tests concerning that. But I did find in NCSTAR 1 chapter 8.3.2 that no steel determined to come from the impact areas that were tested showed that they had been heated to temperatures of 600C for as long as 15 minutes. In fact only three recovered samples of exterior panels reached temperatures in excess of 250C. What does this mean? It means that they had to rely on computer models that would generate the heat needed for the steel to perform the way intended.NIST relied on words such as ‘likely’ and ‘assumed’ quite a bit, such as this, “…the fires likely would have reached the south side of WTC 1 in the time needed to cause inward bowing and collapse initiation.” and this from NCSTAR 1, 6.9.3, “NIST assumed that the debris impact dislodged insulation…” This is some of the science that was used in the conclusion. But don’t get me wrong there was good hard science done in this investigation. It just was not of much use when it came time to make the conclusion.The best refutations of NIST’s conclusion is within its own data and by its own words.Oldskeptic.

NIST FAQs page where one may find these quotes beneath for which I've provided counterpoints and inquiries...

"NIST’s findings do not support the “pancake theory” of collapse, which is premised on a progressive failure of the floor systems in the WTC towers (the composite floor system—that connected the core columns and the perimeter columns—consisted of a grid of steel “trusses” integrated with a concrete slab; see diagram below). Instead, the NIST investigation showed conclusively that the failure of the inwardly bowed perimeter columns initiated collapse and that the occurrence of this inward bowing required the sagging floors to remain connected to the columns and pull the columns inwards. Thus, the floors did not fail progressively to cause a pancaking phenomenon."Why then is the "pancake theory" still embraced by PBS and the BBC and, more importantly, where is the same outrage for this admittedly debunked theory that people harbor for other, very likely hypotheses? "Based on this comprehensive investigation, NIST concluded that the WTC towers collapsed because: (1) the impact of the planes severed and damaged support columns, dislodged fireproofing insulation coating the steel floor trusses and steel columns, and widely dispersed jet fuel over multiple floors; and (2) the subsequent unusually large jet-fuel ignited multi-floor fires (which reached temperatures as high as 1,000 degrees Celsius) significantly weakened the floors and columns with dislodged fireproofing to the point where floors sagged and pulled inward on the perimeter columns. This led to the inward bowing of the perimeter columns and failure of the south face of WTC 1 and the east face of WTC 2, initiating the collapse of each of the towers." First of all, there was no energy to "dislodge" fireproofing. All of the plane impact energy (2500 MJ - Tomasz Wierzbicki , Contact info. ) was utilized to: (1) crush the aircraft and (2) sever the external columns and damage floors. NIST performed tests shooting shotgun rounds into slabs of steel covered with fireproofing while contending that this scenario properly recreated structural conditions endured by the fireproofing inside the towers upon impact (which it did not). However, the shotgun blasts themselves removed minimal fireproofing from the samples, suggesting that even if each square foot of the 6000 squared feet failure zone was shot head-on with a shotgun round (which they were not), the fireproofing would have remained intact. Furthermore, even un-fireproofed steel tested by NIST showed only the slightest weakening when exposed to greater fire temperatures than the open-air (as opposed to forced oxygen) hydrocarbon flames, like those on 9/11. The theoretical "failure zones" in the towers - the actual surface area where the "failures" needed to occur to initiate the perfectly symmetrical disintegration of the towers - was roughly 6000 square feet. The energy required to dislodge the fireproofing is estimated at 1 Mjule per squared meter (NCSTAR1-6a, appendix C). Thus no energy was available to dislodge fireproofing (several thousand shotgun blasts [or more aircraft impacts] would be required to produce the energy able to "dislodge" 6000 square feet of fireproofing off of steel)! Secondly, the floor models tested sagged only 4 inches after 2 hours of hotter-than-911-fires as opposed to the 42 inches to which NIST's computer generated models had to exaggerate said figure in order to "initiate" collapse. Collapse initiation was impossible. And, even if the faces "failed" how does the "failure" of one wall in each tower cause simultaneous, perfectly unified failure of the other three walls and the 47 column core while pulverizing concrete and at freefall collapse? "NIST estimated the elapsed times for the first exterior panels to strike the ground after the collapse initiated in each of the towers to be approximately 11 seconds for WTC 1 and approximately 9 seconds for WTC 2. These elapsed times were based on: (1) precise timing of the initiation of collapse from video evidence, and (2) ground motion (seismic) signals recorded at Palisades, N.Y., that also were precisely time-calibrated for wave transmission times from lower Manhattan (see NCSTAR1-5A). " Thats right, NIST openly accepts the facts of the freefall collapses and just claims it is normal. Essentially, NIST Contends that steel-framed building structures - namely the Twin towers - can be and were completely demolished, at freefall collapse speeds, without explosives, with only the "failure" of one wall face and 15% column loss in each tower (in grave contrast to the 25% column loss the design claims boasted as easily possible with no detriment to structural integrity and the fact that the columns supporting the live loads themselves were designed to withstand a 2000% increase before collapse would ever be suspected let alone realized).....but only on September 11, 2001 as this Madrid skyscraper fire reminded us. In fact, the Windsor tower fire in Madrid illustrates how impossible the fire-induced collapse of building 7 actually is. Here is what 7 should have looked like, maybe even the towers: Windsor Building core - Spain, 05': WTC Core SCALE:Remember, building 7 steel was said to be exposed to a "eutectic mixture," causing the melting point of steel to be lowered to 1000 C. Speaking of seismic data, some people claim those readings were caused by the buildings crushing themselves as they "collapsed." However, as this earthquake in Jan 01 proves, this data is false. Why, you ask? If this data was real it would have been greater than the earthquake's seismic readings which posed no threat any of the thousands of NYC buildings and skyscrapers .I'm just a regular guy. I've got some questions, but I'll support only substantiated answers.Look here.Our first responders need us. They came for us, we cannot forget them.Hey, if you want to give to charity but you're strapped for cash, try using this search engine: GoodSearch.com. They donate a penny every time you use it to the charity of your choice. Just type in a keyword such as the name of your local city, food, cancer, etc in the box below the search box. The search engine is powered by Yahoo and it's free to use. Please use it legitimately. Goodsearch.com What's REX 84? What's the Lavon Affair? Fire Engineering calls wtc investigation a half-baked farce! "Three Nights at Ground Zero" was secretly shot on an array of different formats and equipment by rescue workers, all the while, avoiding the NYPD, the FBI, and the U.S. army.The intro states there is (mis)information in this film. For example, the narrator mentions that martial law was enforced around Ground Zero. This is not true, there was no martial law. But, they heard a lot of rumors down there, and the filmmaker is only repeating the same stuff that they all heard. Watch "Three Nights at Ground Zero" Here.
These are just a few first responders. These guys went to the scene without hesitation, without question, to save people like you and I. They were at first touted as heroes - rightly so - but soon forgotten in exchange for TomKat and other useless diversions. These guys worked 16 hour days in hopes of rescuing people while we sat around watching, in nine days, the entire official "account" of what happened handed to us on CNN.
Unfortunately they have developed severe health problems due to being present at the dangerously toxic demolition site that was coined "Ground Zero" and you won't hear THIS on CNN. Pulminary Fibrosis for one. Breathing that air has changed most of their lives, for the worse, forever. The saddest part is Mayor Bloomberg has spent 40 million of a billion dollar 9/11 fund, for them, on DENYING CLAIMS. This scumbag wants to keep the lid on the truth and just wait till they all die cause then there will be no witnesses, fuck this fascist pig. Also, neither police who were witnesses present in the towers before and after collapse nor any first responder was asked to offer testimony to the 9/11 commision report. The only media outlets interested in hearing their accounts are located outside the U.S. Those accounts that have been heard directly contradict the 9/11 report. The police, firemen, EMT's, and all other rescue workers have been mistreated and this should bother you. You cant claim to support them if it doesnt, do some investigating....These are just four 9/11 First responders who were hung out to dry despite being heroes.