Slide #19 - No Large Fires, Slide 2

Where There's Smoke...

In this slide, let's sit back and enjoy the sheer spectacle here for a minute.

Richard Gage just got through telling us on the previous slide that there were only small fires on floors 7, 11, and 12. We've proved him wrong, but still he turns around on this slide and produces these pictures.

Look at how he titles the slide:

Some Photos Show Lots of smoke on South side (sic)

Richard Gage: Show us a picture of the South Side, post-North-Tower-collapse, that doesn't have lots of smoke.

I'm sorry, folks. This kind of foolishness just cracks me up. He won't do it because any shot of 7 World Trade where the smoke may have cleared for an instant reveals the most wicked gash on the south of the building.

Seriously, what else do I have to do here? Just look at the slide. Does that look like small fires on 7, 12, and 13? Or does that look like this?

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.

Again, that's from Appendix L, Interim Report on WTC 7, pages L22-26 (pdf 25-30) of NIST's Progress Report, June 2004.

Falling Toward Damage

Gage asks a question here, something that has nothing at all to do with the size of fires in the building.

But why didn't the building fall toward its severely injured side?

Sorry, folks. I'm a goner again. Didn't he just finish telling us this was just "random damage"? I'm beginning to wonder if Gage is what my granny from Alabama would have called "teched in the head."

Oh, and Richard? 7 World Trade did fall towards its damaged side.

No one questions that the building mostly went down (or rather that it crushed up as it fell). But this framegrab, taken from the northeast, shows a distinct lean toward the severely damaged side as it does so.

Each Point Ruled Out...

Richard Gage has tried to show that there were no large fires in 7 World Trade. He has been shown utterly wrong.

His larger point is that the buildings showed no characteristic features of destruction by fire. This also is incorrect. As has been and will further be shown, 7 World Trade did demonstrate large, creeping fires and slow deformations over time.

FDNY Deputy Chief Peter Hayden

...also we were pretty sure that 7 World Trade Center would collapse. Early on, we saw a bulge in the southwest corner between floors 10 and 13, and we had put a transit on that and we were pretty sure she was going to collapse. You actually could see there was a visible bulge, it ran up about three floors. It came down about 5 o'clock in the afternoon, but by about 2 o'clock in the afternoon we realized this thing was going to collapse.

Thus Gage ends his introduction to his specific case that WTC 7 demonstrated all the features of controlled controlled demoltion. He has not ruled out fire, and he will not when he approaches the subject again.

So let us go with him, point by point, showing how truly weak his evidence and arguments are. Each point ruled out will be another coffin nail for his argument. Each point ruled out denies his second premise.

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