Slide #29 - "No Characteristics of Destruction by Fire" Orientation

This slide is an outline slide.

Gage's List of Characteristics of Destruction By Fire

As reproduced on the front page of AE911Truth:

1. Slow onset with large visible deformations

2. Asymmetrical collapse which follows the path of least resistance (laws of conservation of momentum would cause a falling, to the side most damaged by the fires)

3. Evidence of fire temperatures capable of softening steel

4. High-rise buildings with much larger, hotter, and longer lasting fires have never "collapsed".

Let's take each of these one by one.

Slow Onset With Large Visible Deformations

WTC 7 was a classic progressive collapse. The entire sequence took around 18 seconds. Before the building began its collapse, it had been burning for about seven hours.

Deputy Chief Peter Hayden:

By now, this is going on into the afternoon, and we were concerned about additional collapse, not only of the Marriott, because there was a good portion of the Marriott still standing, but 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.

So at 2:00 pm, a plainly visible deformation was growing enough to let Deputy Chief Hayden and other fire officials know that the building was in grave danger of collapsing.

As I showed before, a transit is a special telescope. By keeping a specific spot in the lens of the transit, fire officials could measure that slow, visible deformation over time in a way the human eye alone could not catch.

And then Captain Chris Boyle had more, at least an hour and a half before collapse:

Then we received an order from Fellini, we're going to make a move on 7. That was the first time really my stomach tightened up because the building didn't look good. I was figuring probably the standpipe systems were shot. There was no hydrant pressure. I wasn't really keen on the idea. Then this other officer I'm standing next to said, that building doesn't look straight. So I'm standing there. I'm looking at the building. It didn't look right, but, well, we'll go in, we'll see.

So we gathered up rollups and most of us had masks at that time. We headed toward 7. And just around we were about a hundred yards away and Butch Brandeis came running up. He said forget it, nobody's going into 7, there's creaking, there are noises coming out of there, so we just stopped.

The creaking is a sign of further deformation inside the building. The building was actually leaning further and further over, and the stress on the internal structure must have been intense.

The best explanation for this increasing deformation over time is the growing fire inside the building. As the temperatures rose, the building's structure would have experienced what engineers call viscoplastic buckling or creep. The higher the temperatures, the further the building would lean.

Youtube: "You see the thing leaning like this? It's definitely coming down."

WTC 7 did have a slow onset of collapse (almost 7 hours) with large, visible deformations. Gage's assertion to the contrary is false.

Asymmetrical Collapse Which Follows The Path Of Least Resistance

Slide #22's debunking shows that the building did fall asymmetrically.

But what about Gage's assertion that the building will follow the path of least resistance? It did.

We aren't used to thinking about masses as large and as complex as a 47-story office building. We're much more accustomed to smaller structures in our lives. So when we look at a huge skyscraper towering in the sky, it's normal for us to think it could tip over as easily as a similarly shaped yet smaller structure.

To tip a structure over, you have to move the center of gravity outside the footprint of the structure. The more mass the structure has, the more energy required to do this. The structure also needs a pivot point. To tip the building over, you literally have to use the building as a lever against itself. And finally, the structure of the building has to be able to withstand this movement.

That is the fatal flaw in this equation. The structure of 7 World Trade could not endure under the energy required to tip the structure over. To tip requires a pivot, and the structure at the pivot point could not support the dynamic load of the building in motion. The building in its final stage of collapse literally crushed itself up floor by floor. And this was the path of least resistence. The energy requirements to tip the building over was greater than that required the building to simply tear itself apart.

This is similar to what happened in the towers. In their "Simple Analysis," Zdenek Bazant and Yong Zhou explained mathematically why the upper sections were able to plow through the lower structure of the towers like a knife through butter. They found that the dynamic load of the upper sections would have been an order of magnitude greater than the structural resistance after merely falling a single story.

Needless to say, the mass of Building 7 was comparable to that of the upper sections of both towers. Once the potential energy of the building's mass began to convert to kinetic under gravitational acceleration, the building's own structure would have been a paltry resistance. The energy required to tip the building over was there, ironically enough. But the structure couldn't withstand the dynamic load striking any potential pivot point. Without a structure able to support the dynamic load at the pivot point, Building 7 could only crush itself up under its own weight in motion.

Gage's point explains further that the "laws of conservation of momentum would cause a falling, to the side most damaged by the fires." The fires were visibly strongest in the east, and that was under the east mechanical penthouse, the first external evidence most videos show that the building was falling. So the building did start falling toward the side most damaged by the fires.

Furthermore, the working hypothesis of NIST has the final part of the collapse beginning as the diaphragm structure in the fifth through seventh floors shifting to the east, toward the side damaged most by the fires.

Finally, the damage suffered by the unusual structure of Building 7 played a strong role in determining how the building fell. As the structure crushed itself up, its final orientation was slumped to the south, toward the damage that caused it to be leaning over its southwest corner. That also played its part.

So the building did fall asymmetrically following the path of least resistance.

Evidence Of Fire Temperatures Capable Of Softening Steel

They aren't as high as Gage imagines.

Steel begins to lose its strength at 300° C. At that temperature range, it is at 80% of its cold strength, and at 600° C, the steel is down to 15% of cold strength.

As far as I know, there exists no physical evidence to state conclusively what temperatures the structural steel of WTC 7 may have been exposed to. NIST has not released its final report yet, but a recent status report has summarized the work done to date. Some relevant items:

Completed FDS analyses of fires on floors 7 through 13
* Based on observed fires in photos and videos and known floor layouts and contents

Completed thermal analyses to transfer FDS results to structural analyses for two of three possible cases for both structural models
* Three possible fires are based on FDS results (gas temperatures) and +/-10% adjustments to the gas temperatures (Cases A, B, C)

...Completed analysis of 5th floor fire scenarios

The report is now due on August 2008. Their remaining tasks:

This information will become available to us. As of today, I cannot point to temperatures hot enough to induce failure thermally. But I can point to the working hypothesis that remain unchanged despite all the modeling work thus far done by NIST.

And Gage cannot rule out these temperatures. He will try to. Indeed, that is one purpose of the following slides. They will simply try to minimize the fires as much as possible, something he can only do by carefully selecting what evidence he presents.

Other Buildings With Hotter, Longer Fires Haven't Collapsed

The other purpose of the following slides is to dazzle you with pictures of other high-rises. Without exception, we will find that he is comparing apples to oranges. The pictures he shows will be taken at night to heighten the contrast between 7 World Trade and them. Their structures will differ sharply from 7 World Trade, as will their composition. Their sizes will be much smaller, and the fires within them actually fought against (unlike 7).

And without exception, none of the buildings Gage shows will have initial structural damage as 7 World Trade did. They all had the benefit of their structures being able to act the way they were designed to act.

Summary So Far

At this point, two of Gage's "destruction by fire" characteristics are already present in Building 7. As we progress, I'll demonstrate that the third characteristic is quite plausible and that the fourth is irrelevant.

This should show both Gage's ineptness at constructing these lists, his inability to handle evidence properly, and his guile at selecting the evidence he does present. Already his point is denied, seeing that two characteristics are actually true. But there is more to see. The case can and will be stronger yet.

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