Why the World Trade Center Buildings Collapsed: A Fire Chief’s Assessment | Hacker News Reader

Why the World Trade Center Buildings Collapsed: A Fire Chief’s Assessment

vincentdunn.com

17 pointsda0231 comments

The real question is why the third building, WTC 7, went down. It wasn't hit by an airplane and the fires were trivial compared to other buildings. I'm not suggesting conspiracy or aliens, just that WTC 7 should not have fallen given the damage it suffered.

That and about a 100 other unexplained questions. Like how it's impossible for commercial aircraft to fly at that altitude with that speed. Like how it's impossible for any passenger to make a phone call during flight, yet there were quite a few making phone calls home when they were suppose to be flying. How the pentagon damage pictures make zero sense. How there not being any security footage for one of the most secure buildings in the world.

I'm sure you have some very credible sources for those claims?

Why would it be impossible for passengers to make calls during the flight? I've made calls from a 747, it's definitely possible?

You can not make cell phone calls during flight.

I've done it. It's possible. Why do you think it's not?

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/14/tech/mobile/phones-in-flig...

> The maximum distance at which a phone can still make calls and send texts varies depending on the type of tower and transmitter, but an airplane would have to be no more than 10,000 feet in the air for any cell phones on board to still have a signal,

If the plane offered cell connectivity itself it's another matter entirely. Those planes sure did not.

The planes were lower than 10,000 feet at the time of the phone calls

Were they? What is your source on that? People who checked the info found the opposite. https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/esp_sociopo...

Many airlines have repeaters on their planes, allowing people to place cell phone calls and send/receive text messages, usually at inflated prices.

So why do you think it's impossible?

Because those flights did not and US airlines in general don't at least not then.

Not in 2001 tho, I have no beef in this but people forget the times...

Yea but clearly these planes were not flying at 30,000 feet so regular cell tower calls would have worked

Source? Not only is there a height limit, there is a speed limit for call handoff between towers. It's pretty low at ~100mph. Way below airplane speed.

They seem to work fine on high speed rail.

Also with much older cellular technology, in 2001 the US mostly used 2G TDMA/CDMA networks with carriers like Verizon still relying on older AMPS systems on the 850mhz band.

I'm not entirely sure how that would've worked, even today having a phone call from low altitude is pretty hard jets are pretty decent Faraday cages and the speed is just as much of a problem as the altitude.

There is a difference between having the cellphone pining a tower or even managing to get a short data packet from time to time and having an uninterrupted phone call.

I don't think there 9/11 was a "conspiracy" I think there was just a lot of random information that amplified to conspiratorial levels.

> jets are pretty decent Faraday cages

No they aren't, you can make calls perfectly fine from inside a jet, 4g reception works too, you're even allowed to do this until takeoff now.

I know I'm supposed to turn my phone to flight mode but I often use my phone on planes so I know it works. I've been doing this for years. Jets are not faraday cages. The speed of the jet slows down your connection and you need to be over a city but it works just fine. I can browse the web, watch youtube vids, etc. I don't make calls on a plane cause that would just annoy everyone around me but I'm confident it will work.

There is also the flight certificate of one of the hijackers found in a Saudi embassy envelope (among other Saudi government connections withheld from the public): https://harpers.org/blog/2017/09/crime-and-punishment/

And Mueller's odd behaviour: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2017/09/10/robert-mueller...

Trivial? The whole building was engulfed in flames.

The real questing is how true flames skipped from WTC 1 & 2 to WTC 7. Probably easy to answer. (Must be highly flammable material and what essentially became thermite driving nearby building temperature high enough to start the fire.)

How many non-wood buidings collapse after a fire? None except tower 7 that I have heard of.

Open an oven, but not entirely, just a few inches, the air that is forced out from the oven through the narrow opening will burn your face instantly. Open it entirely, and whilst hot it's still far less heat.

My point being, that the streets could act like canals for the heat, concnetrating the heat. Just a guess, perhaps mathematically irrelevant.

Fire has many 'exceptions', and can be influenced my many different variables and situations.

Yes and buildings are made for way bigger tolerances that are feasible. You think a building wide fire was not considered and the effects of the area around it?

Was it? http://imgur.com/gallery/JQq18Lr

To add to the confusion the BBC reported WTC 7 had collapsed before it had actually collapsed. A fact an old work colleague's husband used as evidence (to support not paying his TV license) in court. He suggested that the BBC colluded with terrorists.

This is the only coverage I could find that isn't the Daily Mail. [https://www.sott.net/article/266268-UK-man-wins-court-case-a...]

And this is the BBCs explanation. [http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/02/part_of_the_co...]

> A fact an old work colleague's husband used as evidence (to support not paying his TV license) in court.

How did that work out?

Read the first link, it's about the court case.

pull it clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jPzAakHPpk

This photo always illustrated a lot for me about WTC 1 & 2 composition: http://www.rumormillnews.com/pix4/wtcTowers-night2.jpg

I summarized the information I have read on this topic in an answer on Skeptics.SO:

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/31144/1792

To quote a much more authoritative Europhysics article that subsequently came out (and which I since put at the head of my answer):

> ... The NIST reports, which attempted to support that unlikely conclusion [that a steel frame building collapsed from a fire], fail to persuade a growing number of architects, engineers, and scientists. Instead, the evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that all three buildings were destroyed by controlled demolition. ...

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