Slide #61 - Nick Visconti

Never In History

In this slide, Gage proves that firefighters suspected that 7 World Trade was going to fall.

His argument is that this is unusual knowledge for the firefighters to have, as is apparent from his sidebar comment:

Never in history has a protected steel frame building collapsed due to fire, But all of a sudden they announce the imminent collapse of this 47 story sky scraper.

Daniel Nigro, the fire chief who made the decision to move people out of Building 7's way, has explained this:

1. Although prior to that day high-rise structures had never collapsed, The collapse of WTC 1 & 2 showed that certain high-rise structures subjected to damage from impact and from fire will collapse.
2. The collapse of WTC 1 damaged portions of the lower floors of WTC 7.
3. WTC 7, we knew, was built on a small number of large columns providing an open Atrium on the lower levels.
4. numerous fires on many floors of WTC 7 burned without sufficient water supply to attack them.

Gage's sinister implication, therefore, amounts to nothing. This "Fore-Knowledge" is only the prudent assessment of a fire chief concerned about the safety of his remaining people.

Nick Visconti's Interview

Nick Visconti was a FDNY Deputy Chief on 9/11, and he was headed for Queens for his normal job when he heard the reports of a plane hitting the WTC. He then went and became heavily involved in the distribution of labor on that day.

Visconti is a primary source for extensive damage to 7 World Trade:

I remember standing there looking over at building 7 and realizing that a big chunk of the lower floors had been taken out on the Vesey Street side. I looked up at the building and I saw smoke in it, but I really didn't see any fire at that time.

This was after the North Tower collapsed, and Visconti then describes the series of events that led to the discovery of Chief Ganci's body.

After this, Visconti began organizing people to find survivors in the rubble. He describes 7 World Trade again:

Now, World Trade Center 7 was burning and I was thinking to myself, how come they're not trying to put this fire out? I didn't realize how much they had because my view was obstructed. All I could see was the upper floor. At some point, Frank Fellini said, now we've got hundreds of guys out there, hundreds and hundreds, and that's on the West Street side alone. He said to me, Nick, you've got to get those people out of there. I thought to myself, out of where? Frank, what do you want, Chief? He answered, 7 World Trade Center, imminent collapse, we've got to get those people out of there.

Visconti struggles to evacuate first responders who are intent on finding survivors in the rubble.

Finally, after getting the people out, we encounter Gage's quote of Visconti:

I walked out and I got to Vesey and West, where I reported to Frank. He said, we're moving the command post over this way, that building's coming down. At this point, the fire was going virtually on every floor, heavy fire and smoke that really wasn't bothering us when we were searching because it was being pushed southeast and we were a little bit west of that. I remember standing just where West and Vesey start to rise toward the entrance we were using in the World Financial Center. There were a couple of guys standing with me and a couple of guys right at the intersection, and we were trying to back them up - and here goes 7. It started to come down and now people were starting to run.

The emphasized line there is what Gage managed to avoid putting onto his slide. Having just tried to show that there were only a couple of small fires in WTC 7, Gage can't have this clear statement of just how bad the fires in WTC 7 got toward the end. You can see why such a detail wouldn't make the cut.

Visconti's account isn't the support Gage needs. It's evidence of how damaged the building was, and how badly it was on fire. It is evidence of the things Nigro was looking at when he decided the building was in imminent danger of collapsing.

But Gage will keep pretending otherwise.

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