Slide #28 - Craig Bartner's Account

Craig Bartmer

In this slide, we hear two short parts of an interview with Craig Bartmer, a former member of the New York Police Department. He worked the Pile for about a month, until he collapsed from lung damage. He also was near WTC 7 when it fell, and the entire experience left him suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. To his credit, he doesn't try to hide this, and none of this invalidates his account.

We also see two clips of 7 World Trade falling. One plays twice, and then the second. It's the first I'm most interested in. If you've been going slide-by-slide with me, you've seen the entire first film before.

Craig is very sympathetic and sincere, so I want to make it clear that my only disagreement with him is with his interpretation of what he experienced, not the facts that he reports. Those fit in with what we know about WTC 7's collapse quite well.

What Bartmer's Account Establishes

Gage gives two quotes from this Dylan Avery interview of Craig Bartmer. They are transcribed below.

"...and the whole time you're hearing "thoom. thoom. thoom. thoom. thoom." So. I think I know an explosion when I hear it. You know?

...I was really close to building seven when it fell down, and uh, runnin' away from that sucked. That's one of the things I live with all the time. And uh, I don't know but that didn't sound like just a building falling down to me while I was running away from it. Um, there's a lot of eyewitness testimony down there hearing explosions. I didn't see any reason for that building to fall down the way it did. And a lot of guys should be saying the same thing."

There aren't many facts in this part of the interview. Gage has chosen mostly Craig's impressions and interpretations to quote here. The only relevant fact Gage has quoted is that Craig hears explosions as the building falls.

Explosions do not mean explosives. I dare say that Craig has never been close to any other 47-story building that fell down. He wasn't present when the towers fell by his own account.

What Happened Before Bartmer Got To The Site?

Craig got to the site late in the afternoon. It was a little bit after 5 pm, according to him. 7 World Trade would fall in under 20 minutes.

So before Craig got there, the following events had occurred:

• Both towers had already fallen, and WTC 1 had severely damaged 7
• Fires had been burning unchecked for six and a half hours
• The FDNY had put a transit on the deforming building and determined it would fall (around 2:00 pm)
• Daniel Nigro, the FDNY Chief of Operations, had evacuated a collapse zone around the building

It's good that Bartmer qualifies his stated impressions. He didn't see any reason for that building to fall the way it did. Others did and had already taken steps to prevent further loss of life that day.

What Others Are Saying

Mark Roberts has put together a great list of what other officials on the scene said about the condition of 7 World Trade:

Let's remember how serious those fires were:

FDNY Chief of Operations Daniel Nigro: "It had very heavy fire on many floors."
FDNY Assistant Chief Harry Myers: "When the building came down it was completely involved in fire, all forty-seven stories."
FDNY Deputy Chief Nick Visconti: "the fire was going virtually on every floor."
FDNY Lieutenant Robert LaRocca: "We walked over by number Seven World Trade Center as it was burning and saw this 40-plus story building with fire on nearly all floors."
FDNY Lieutenant James McGlynn: "Just when you thought it was over, you're walking by this building and you're hearing this building creak and fully involved in flames. It's like, is it coming down next? Sure enough, about a half an hour later it came down."

Daniel Nigro also had this to say about 7 World Trade:

The biggest decision we had to make was to clear the area and create a collapse zone around the severely damaged building. A number of fire officers and companies assessed the damage to the building. The appraisals indicated that the building's integrity was in serious doubt.

Bartmer's account is one viewpoint on that day. Gage could have provided many different viewpoints to more accurately ascertain what happened that day, but Bartmer here and Daryl on the previous slide are the only two accounts he shall present.

This is called cherrypicking evidence. Gage is only presenting certain witnesses that seem to support what he wants you to think. But a broader look at what people said about that building would undercut Bartmer's interpretations. That's something Gage just can't have you see.

No Audio of 7 World Trade's Collapse Has Explosions

The only video ever offered by conspiracy theory advocates of explosions connected to 7 World Trade is this one:

Metacafe Video - "Seven is Exploding"

You will notice that 7 World Trade is barely seen in the shot. We are told that this happened shortly before the building collapsed. OK. When? If it wasn't directly connected to the actual collapse, how is this a part of a detonation sequence to take down 7 World Trade?

There is no actual footage of the collapse of this building that has anything resembling sounds coming from explosives. If there is, someone should produce it.

What Richard Gage Leaves Out

Furthermore, one of the collapse videos used here is cut down to avoid showing evidence that might harm Gage's point.

We've seen it before. It's the footage shot from the Northeast as the building collapses.

YouTube Video of 7 World Trade's Collapse from Northeast

In the original footage of Bartmer's interview, Avery uses this footage. He trims it down to eliminate the shaky camerawork as the videographer grabs the camera to record the collapse. The slumping building is still clearly seen in Avery's released interview.

This is too much for Gage, however. In the PowerPoint presentation, he cuts the shot even further so that we only see the dust cloud being pushed out from the collapse.

Both pieces of footage are being used to highlight Gage's "shock and awe" argument. Bartmer's account of fleeing the falling building is used to great effect with the footage of the spreading dust cloud.

But why cut away the footage of the slumping building? It's not a question of time. This footage is repeated twice, and then a longer shot from the north is used, showing the spread of the dust cloud and the building is seen falling into the dust cloud as well. From this angle, the southern slump isn't apparent. From the northeast, it is.

Gage once again has cut away important information that would falsify his account.

The Dust Clouds

Gage doesn't get into the dust clouds much, but it's one of his features of controlled demolition. This is the only slide in which you'll see the dust clouds associated with the collapse of 7 World Trade.

First of all, the expelling of dust from a collapsing building is not exclusive to controlled demolition at all. Gage's inclusion of it here is another example of how imprecise this list actually is.

But more importantly, look at the dust cloud in that movie clip. It seems to me that rushing air is lifting dust already laid down from the collapses of the Twin Towers. That dust was inches thick over the southern half of Manhattan.

Since there's no way to distinguish between dust actually coming from 7 World Trade and dust already on the ground from the Towers, I don't see how Gage can fruitfully argue anything from this information.

This video is simply being used in Gage's own "shock and awe" campaign. The eerie sight of the ponderous dust clouds is one of the many indelible images of the day. Gage is using the sobering sight to distract you from the weakness of his argument.

Gage's Second Point Denied

Gage has produced no evidence of any eyewitness who saw anything resembling the detonation of explosives in Building 7.

Gage has produced two people who heard explosions from the building, but has produced no reason for us to isolate explosives as the sole cause of these sounds.

Therefore, this second item on the characteristic features list is denied. Sounds of explosions are not the proof Gage needs them to be, not when there are so many other sources of explosions from a collapsing building on fire.

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The section The Dust Clouds was added February 7th, 2008.