Slide #18 - No Large Fires, Slide 1

How Wrong Can One Person Be?

On this slide, Gage continues the trend of severely mishandling and misstating evidence he began on the previous slide.

Here's the text he uses:

WTC-7 was never hit by a plane, yet it collapsed 7 hours after the twin towers with evidence of only a few small fires on the 7th & 12th & 13th floors and some random damage.

I'd like to bring one of my favorite debunking books ever into the spotlight here. Lawrence David Kusche's The Bermuda Triangle Mystery: Solved! did a really great job of telling the myth about famous disappearances off the coast of South Florida, and then demonstrating how almost every single detail of the myth wasn't accurate.

That is exactly what's going on here. You just heard the standard WTC 7 myth from Richard Gage, preached as the gospel truth. Now let's look at the actual evidence.

Never Hit By A Plane

On this point, Gage is absolutely correct. No plane hit 7 World Trade. But a lot of debris from WTC 1 did hit the building.

My YouTube video about this CT argument

Watch the video there to see a detailed debunking of this. But the short version is this - a good sized chunk of debris slammed through the building, severely damaging the structure.

Another reason Gage emphasized no plane is to say that there was no jet fuel in 7 the way there was in 1 and 2. Again, he's hiding facts that don't fit his narrative. There were plenty of large diesel fuel tanks in 7 World Trade to power emergency generators.

These tanks were built to start pumping in case of a loss of power, and they could have fed fires inside the building for hours.

Only A Few Small Fires

Conspiracy theorists like Gage love to show this particular picture of fires at WTC 7. It makes the actual fires seem paltry.

Gage won't show you pictures like these of the lower floors:

Or these:

He certainly doesn't want you to look at film clips like this:

YouTube video showing large extensive fires in 7 WTC

If you saw pictures and videos like that, you might think that this "small fire" business was for the birds.

In fact, the NIST study has documented fires on several more floors than just 7, 12, and 13. From Appendix L, Interim Report on WTC 7, pages L22-26 (pdf 25-30) of NIST's Progress Report, June 2004:

From 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.:

• No diesel smells reported from the exterior, stairwells, or lobby areas
• No signs of fire or smoke were reported below the 6th Floor from the exterior, stairwells or lobby areas
• In the east stairwell, smoke was observed around Floors 19 or 20, and a signs of a fully involved fire on the south side of Floor 23 were heard/seen/smelled from Floor 22.
• Interviews place a fire on Floor 7 at the west wall, toward the south side, at approximately

12:15 p.m.

• From West and Vesey Streets near the Verizon Building, fires were observed in floors estimated to be numbered in the 20s and 30s.

Looking from the southwest corner at the south face:

• Fire was seen in the southwest corner near Floor 10 or 11
• Fire was seen on Floors 6, 7, 8, 21, and 30
• Heavy black smoke came out of a large, multi-story gash in the south face

Looking from the southeast corner of the south face:

• Fire seen on Floor 14 (reported floor number) on south face; the face above the fire was covered with smoke
• Fire on Floor 14 moved towards the east face

Looking at the east face:

• Fire on Floor 14 (reported floor) moved along east face toward the north side

Photographs and videos were used with these interview accounts to document fire progression in the building. The fires seen in photographs and videos are summarized:

Before 2:00 p.m.

• Figures L-22a shows fires that had burned out by early afternoon on Floors 19, 21, 22, 29, and 30 along the west face near the southwest corner.

2:00 to 2:30 p.m.

• Figure L-24a shows fires on east face Floors 11 and 12 at the southeast corner. Several photos during this time show fires progressing north.

3:00 to 5:00 p.m.

• Around 3 p.m., fires were observed on Floors 7 and 12 along the north face. The fire on Floor 12 appeared to bypass the northeast corner and was first observed at a point approximately one third of the width from the northeast corner, and then spread both east and west across the north face.
• Some time later, fires were observed on Floors 8 and 13, with the fire on Floor 8 moving from west to east and the fire on Floor 13 moving from east to west. Figure L-24b shows fires on Floors 7 and 12.
• At this time, the fire on Floor 7 appeared to have stopped progressing near the middle of the north face.
• The fire on Floor 8 continued to move east on the north face, eventually reaching the northeast corner and moving to the east face.
• Around 4:45 p.m., a photograph showed fires Floors 7, 8, 9, and 11 near the middle of the north face; Floor 12 was burned out by this time.

A few small fires, indeed. Once again, Gage is caught redhanded in a lie, and this one cuts at the heart of his presentation.

"No Large Fires"

This slide and the next are meant to let you check "No Large Fires" off the handout Gage passes out in his presentations. He even reproduces a little graphic to helpfully show you where to check.

But any fair examination of the evidence will not let you check this item off the list. Gage has put on his "Decider" cap and decided not to show you all the evidence. There clearly were large fires in 7 World Trade.

Random Damage

It's too bad Gage doesn't show any pictures of what he calls "random damage." Because I don't think a huge 30-floor gash down the front of the building qualifies as random:

A gash which ended in a huge gaping hole down below:

And which extended to the critical perimeter columns in the corner of the building:

As bad as this looks, this damage meant that the building was almost certainly doomed. In the general design of tube-in-tube buildings, almost all forces that act on the building laterally (like wind) are handled by the perimeter columns. In the towers themselves, all lateral loads were handled by the perimeters. The core columns were only dealing with gravity loads, i.e. supporting both the weight of the building and its contents.

This gash severely limited the ability of 7 World Trade to resist lateral loads. A great model to understand this damage is a knife wound to your abdomen. The outer meshing of the building is meant to hold the building contents inside the building while also dealing with forces like wind. This gash impeded 7 World Trade's ability to do this.

And in the course of the progressive collapse that started around 5:20 pm EDT, this damage would prove catastrophic.

Gage's Ratio of Right and Wrong

Here's what Gage got right on this slide:

• No plane hit 7 WTC

Here's what Gage got wrong:

• Hid the debris that hit 7 WTC by saying "no plane hit"
• Hid the fuel already present in the building by saying "no plane hit"
• Hid the true nature of the fires by showing a single picture
• Lied about how many floors the fires were on
• Lied about the extent of the damage to WTC 7

What a horrible ratio of right v. wrong! The only thing he got right is something he was using to hide other facts about 7 WTC.

Once again, Richard Gage is demonstrating his ample lack of trustworthiness. Even the things he gets right he uses to decieve.

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