Slide #42-44 - Doubt and Evidence Destruction

This slide, this slide, and this slide are actually the same slide, revealed part by part during Gage's presentation. At his website, Gage shows this effect by reproducing it twice or three times with new information revealed on subsequent slides. However, I'm going to treat this slide and others like it on a single page.

What Destruction of Evidence?

Gage gives no citation for destruction of evidence on his presentation. He should produce this if he's got it.

Bill Manning

He is likely referring to the recycling of the steel from the last slide, however. Bill Manning, the editor-in-chief of Fire Engineering, used his January 2002 editorial to blast the speed at which steel was being removed from the site. It's passionate and pointed, and I recommend you read the entire thing. But I'd like to point out the kind of thing Manning was suspecting:

However, respected members of the fire protection engineering community are beginning to raise red flags, and a resonating theory has emerged: The structural damage from the planes and the explosive ignition of jet fuel in themselves were not enough to bring down the towers. Rather, theory has it, the subsequent contents fires attacking the questionably fireproofed lightweight trusses and load-bearing columns directly caused the collapses in an alarmingly short time. Of course, in light of there being no real evidence thus far produced, this could remain just unexplored theory.

Manning suspected a problem with the fireproofing in the towers. And as it turned out, there was a problem with the fireproofing that day: the impacts had stripped it away from the structural steel. Yet the trusses didn't fail, as the Weidlinger study and the NIST study would determine. It was the heat-weakened and sagging floor trusses pulling the perimeter columns into the building that finally set the towers onto their path of destruction.

Be sure to read Manning's February 2002 editorial as well. You can see the kinds of questions that Manning wants answers for, and none of them concern convert bombs in the buildings.

We, the undersigned, call on FEMA to immediately impanel a "World Trade Center Disaster Review Panel" to coordinate a complete review of all aspects of the World Trade Center incident.

The panel should be charged with creating a comprehensive report that examines a variety of topics including determining exactly how and why the towers collapsed, critiquing the building evacuation procedures and the means of egress, assessing the buildings' fire protection features (steel "fireproofing," fire protection systems, etc.), and reviewing the valiant firefighting procedures employed. In addition, the Panel should be charged with preparing a detailed set of recommendations, including the critical changes necessary to our building codes.

This push for a deeper study by Manning and many others resulted in the NIST study. Some of those "many others" were FEMA and ASCE themselves!

As Gene Corley testified before Congress in March 2002, he expressed the need for a more in-depth report, even as the FEMA report did when released in May 2002. Corley went on to alleviate some of the access questions.

There has been some concern expressed by others that the work of the team has been hampered because debris was removed from the site and has subsequently been processed for recycling. This is not the case. The team has had full access to the scrap yards and to the site and has been able to obtain numerous samples. At this point there is no indication that having access to each piece of steel from the World Trade Center would make a significant difference to understanding the performance of the structures.

This only makes sense. The vast majority of steel on the site would have little evidentiary value for people looking to discover why the buildings collapsed. It's the steel in the impact zone and collapse initiation area that would be most profitable.

By the way, the American Recycler article shows how the landfill operation was progressing. While unconnected structural steel was being cut up, the other parts of the debris were being painstakingly examined for human remains. The rush was about removing the debris from Manhattan, not about destroying evidence.

Gage's Reading Comprehension

Gage inserts an interesting bracket into his quote of the FEMA report here. Let's do a transcription:

• "The specifics of the fires in WTC 7 and how they caused the building to collapse remain unknown at this time..."
• "...the best hypothesis [fire - then complete collapse] has only a low probability of occurrence. Further research, investigation, and analyses are needed to resolve this issue.

The bracket explaining FEMA's best hypothesis is dead wrong. The important word in this quote is the subject of the first quote, "specifics". That the fires caused the damaged structure to collapse is not in question. Exactly how the fires did this is what is hard for FEMA (with their limited resources) to explain.

FEMA developed several hypotheses for the specifics. It is the best of those that still remained at a low probability for occurrence. Gage's helpful bracket is only helpful for establishing a bias for his case.

Gage's substitution displays the same lack of understanding that a creationist shows when attacking evolution. Evolution is a fact AND a theory. Evolution is observable and accepted as fact in the scientific community, but there exist several ways of understanding the specifics of how evolution happens. Scientists tests these specifics all the time, but the overall fact of evolution is not in doubt at all. There is no evidence that speaks against it.

Richard Gage, like a creationist, stands on the outside of a debate he does not understand and wonders why his hypothesis isn't as good as the others he sees people debating. This insertion of a bracket is his way of sneaking into the side door of the discussion.

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