Fire Induced Collapses
This slide was added to the May 2008 slide show.
A Slide Full of Misconceptions
Gage has decided to take a moment to focus in on fire-induced collapses in this slide. I am glad he has done so because this gives me the opportunity to correct several mistakes he and his organization make about fire-induced collapses all at the same time.
Fire Induced Collapses are Asymmetrical
What reason does Gage give for making this assertion? Has he spent a lifetime watching fire-induced collapses? Since, as he says, no steel-framed high-rise has ever collapsed, how would he make any fruitful comparison between one and the collapses of the WTC buildings? He can't.
Why does he think that these types of collapses would be asymmetrical? Making a potential argument for him, I'd imagine he thinks this because of the nature of ordinary office fires.
When a fire starts in a building, it generally does move as Gage describes. The towers' design took this ordinary movement of a small office fire into account. As the fire heats a certain section of the structure, its load shifts to other parts of the structure. As the fire moves, the structure accommodates this through this shifting load.
Any collapse from this type of fire would then come in the small area where the fire was burning. Makes sense, doesn't it?
But the fires in the Towers and in WTC 7 were far from small.
That's a picture of the North Tower right before it collapsed. Take a moment and realize how large that fire was. The tower is the size of a city block. That's several floors of an entire city block in flames.
As Gage maintains is not happening, the building is actually deforming. You can see it bending in the corners. This picture is from NIST, and they have plotted out exactly where the building's side should be in this picture (the white grid), and then shown where the building actually is. The displacement is as much as six feet in some places.
The fires are this large in the towers because of how they started. Normal office fires start in a single location -- a trash can, an electrical appliance shorting out, and things like that. But the fires in the North and South towers were started over large portions of the building by an airplane ramming into each one and splashing huge volumes of jet fuel over all the combustibles on several floors.
The jet fuel itself burned out quickly, but the fires it started continued to rage in the buildings.
The fires in 7 World Trade were started when the debris from a collapsing North Tower fell into the building. This also causes several fires all over the building, and because these fires were not able to be fought, they built up into an inferno described by scores of witnesses as fully involving the building.
YouTube video showing large extensive fires in 7 WTCNo building on Earth has ever been designed to withstand these kinds of fires. Even though no other steel-framed high-rises have not fallen due to fire besides these three buildings, the possibility remains that they can and will.
"Steel-framed High Rise"
The "steel-framed high-rise" statement is a CT statement long in the making. It's the result of several "goalpost moving" exercises when one after another of the conditions of the conspiracy theorists were shown to have actually occurred. They pretty much have it well out of reach now. No steel-framed high-rise building have indeed ever collapsed due to fire.
In fact, if Gage could produce a single example of a fire in a steel-framed high-rise causing a building to actually fall over, then his argument might bear some weight. He can't, because this has never occurred either.
Why is it that a steel-framed high-rise has never collapsed OR fallen over due to fire? I'll direct you to an older page I did for an earlier version of Gage's slide show.
Gage likes to compare the WTC buildings to four other prominent high-rise fires. One is pictured on this slide: the Parque Central East Tower in Caracas, Venezuela. However, the circumstances of these fires are drastically different. The key difference is a dedicated fire fighting effort that kept each fire under control. At the Parque Central, the fire fighting effort had to be abandoned, and yet the structure of the building was vastly different from the three WTC buildings (it had no central core and was reinforced by concrete macrofloors), and so the building held. The First Interstate Bank fire in L.A. involved a building very much like the WTC buildings, but a massive fire fighting effort choked the life out of the fire in 3.5 hours, restricting it to five floors.
Indeed, the key factor in no steel-framed building falling due to fire is that they are built in large cities. An elaborate safety net has been constructed for these large structures, from rigorous building codes to trained fire fighting companies. On 9/11, this safety net was overwhelmed, and three buildings slipped through to their destruction.
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2008: | Slide 18 | < | Slide 19 | > | Slide 20 |
| March 2008: | Slide 16 | < | Not Present | > | Slide 17 |
| January 2008: | Slide 17 | < | Not Present | > | Slide 18 |
| September 2007: | Slide 11 | < | Not Present | > | Slide 12 |