posted 07-30-2002 02:20 AM            

Here's the aerial photo, showing the entire site, with the building numbers included in their respective positions:

WTC 7, along with the other buildings surrounding it, was virtually untouched, however, it was the only one vigorously on fire.

WTC 7 also had a different design than the towers, yet it collapsed in a similiar manner.

So here we have a forged steel concrete reinforced building with a few broken windows collapsing, once again, because of a fire (this time, not fed by jet fuel), which would be another first in history.

4, 5, and 6 WTC were much closer to the towers and they received heavy damage, but they never collapsed like 7 did. They had to be torn down. And also notice the huge gash in the tall building due south (and in close proximity) of WTC #2. That building didn't collapse either.

Think about it. The three tallest buildings in the WTC, worth about 7.5 billion dollars, gone in one day, even though one of them never got hit by anything?

C'mon. People have to stop lying to themselves, and ask the 7.5 billion dollar question:

posted 07-30-2002 12:58 PM            

And my girlfriend just sent me the link to the pentagon surveillance video that shows the Boeing crashing into the Pentagon.

posted 07-30-2002 05:16 PM            

And the "Illusion" thread, by amber: LINK

That will clear up stuff about the Pentagon photos.

posted 08-06-2002 02:09 AM            

Will someone please tell me why #7 collapsed if it didn't receive any major structural damage (along with the surrounding buildings)? The damn thing started on fire......that's all!

There has never been any steel/concrete structure that has ever collapsed due to a fire in known structural engineering history. Remember, there was no jet fuel inside that building. (There was a few small diesel tanks above the ground floor for the emergency generators, but that's probably about 5% of the fuel that a large airliner can hold; I doubt that those even started on fire anyway.)

The fire suppression system couldn't have been damaged because the building wasn't hit by anything! Can't blame it on a broken main, because just like the towers, #7's sprinklers are fed by giant water tanks near the top of the building.

Listen, I'm not concerned with how the twin towers fell right now, nor am I concerned with Flight 77.

All I want to know right now is how the hell WTC 7 collapsed. There has been no formal invesigation about how it collapsed. All that happened was a few pieces of steel were examined by a few private engineers, and nothing conclusive was found.

posted 08-06-2002 04:12 PM            

So even if a piece of hot steel just happened to find it's way inside building #7 and ignited something, why did it collapse because of a class Bravo fire since no 757's full of jet fuel were present in that building?

posted 08-07-2002 01:18 AM            

The one major structural problem mentioned quite a few times besides the large amoount of diesel fuel that was stored there, there was also a "bridge-like transfer truss structure" that "allowed the building to be constructed above an already existing power substation." Truss construction of any type, metal or wood, is extremely dangerous in a fire situation.

Most new houses and commercial buildings are truss construction and have been known to rapidly collapse without warning when subjected to extreme temperatures.

I do think that it is quite possible, since there was a lot of controversy about the mayor having the 13 million dollar Emergency Command Center installed in 7 WTC, that it was purposely taken out. Also, fire crews, having limited resources, decided to abandon their efforts to extinguish the blaze which may have also been a contributing factor of the collapse.

March 2, 2002

Burning Diesel Is Cited in Fall of 3rd Tower

By JAMES GLANZ and ERIC LIPTON

Massive structural beams that functioned as a sort of bridge to hold up the 47-story skyscraper known as 7 World Trade Center were compromised in a disastrous blaze fed by diesel fuel, leading to the building's collapse on Sept. 11, investigators have concluded in a preliminary report.

The tower was set on fire by debris from the twin towers and burned for about seven hours before collapsing in the late afternoon under previously unexplained circumstances. The analysis of its collapse is one of the first detailed findings by a team of engineers organized by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the American Society of Civil Engineers to understand the fate of all the buildings around the site.

As much as 42,000 gallons of diesel fuel was stored near ground level in the tower and ran in pipes up to smaller tanks and emergency generators for Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's command center, the Secret Service's office and other tenants.

Investigators have determined that the burning fuel apparently undermined what is known as a transfer truss. The trusses, a series of steel beams that allowed the skyscraper to be built atop multistory electricity transformers, were critical to the structural integrity of the building and ran near the smaller diesel tanks.

A failure of the same type of structural bridge contributed to the collapse of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City when it was bombed in 1995. Federal guidelines for public buildings, created in 1996, warned of the dangers of such trusses in terrorist attacks.

"It's certainly right in the vicinity where the columns go into this transfer system," said a person knowledgeable about the investigators' draft report on the World Trade Center. "The rest of the building is built on top of the bridge."

While 7 World Trade Center, which stood across Vesey Street just to the north of the twin towers, was not formally a federal building, it did house crucial government offices that included the city's nerve center for emergency response.

The investigators said that their conclusions, combined with other findings about the failure and collapse of 5 World Trade Center, could prompt serious changes in the codes used in building construction.

The findings are in a draft report that has already been circulated among government agencies, and are based on videos made on Sept. 11, witnesses' reports, interviews with firefighters, evidence from the debris pile and structural analysis. Team members, who described many of the findings, cautioned that the conclusions on the collapse of 7 World Trade Center could still be modified as reviews proceed.

But Irwin Cantor, one of the building's original structural engineers, who is now a consulting engineer and member of the City Planning Commission, said the diesel-related failure of transfer trusses was a reasonable explanation for the collapse.

He said he believed that diesel tanks were not envisioned in the original design of the building."It ended up with tenants who had diesels," Mr. Cantor said. "I know none of that was planned at the beginning."

According to floor plans submitted to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the land on which 7 World Trade sat, the building complied with city fire codes, said Frank Lombardi, the authority's chief engineer.

Those codes permit no more than one fuel tank with a capacity of 275 gallons or less on above-ground floors, he said.

Jerome M. Hauer, who was the director of Mayor Giuliani's Office of Emergency Management at the time the command center was opened at 7 World Trade, said several teams of engineers reviewed plans to open the office there. But no one ever mentioned any hazard associated with placing fuel tanks above ground, near a transfer truss, he said.

"There were a host of people who looked at this," said Mr. Hauer, who is now a managing director of the crisis and consequence group at Kroll Worldwide, a security consulting company based in New York. "We relied on their judgment."

Fire officials did at one point question the storage of large amounts of fuel well above the ground level, saying that one large tank for the mayor's command center, if ever compromised, might fuel a fire that would threaten the building.

The Sept. 11 draft report also has photographs and a description of debris collected from a previously undisclosed, multistory collapse within 5 World Trade Center, a nine-story office building that also burned on Sept. 11 but largely remained standing.

The team has found that one specific type of bolted connection, called a column tree connection, that joined floor-support beams, failed in the heat of the fires, causing the four- story collapse in the part of 5 World Trade at the corner of Vesey and Church Streets.

Although no one died as a result of the collapses in 5 and 7 World Trade Centers, since both stood long enough to be evacuated, the team's findings are likely to lead to recommended changes in the way public and government buildings are constructed, much the way similar studies did after the Northridge earthquake near Los Angeles in 1994 and the Oklahoma City bombing.

The team is still deliberating on how tightly it can pin down the precise train of events that led to the collapse of the twin towers themselves. But until now, the collapse of 7 World Trade has stood as one of the outstanding mysteries of the Sept. 11 attack, since before then, no modern, steel-reinforced high-rise in the United States had ever collapsed in a fire.

High-rise buildings are designed to be able to survive a fire, even if the fire has to burn itself out.

The strategy is to ensure that the steel support structures are strong enough or protected well enough from fire that they do not give way in the time it takes for everything inside an office building, like furniture, to burn.

In major high-rise fires elsewhere in the country, such as the 1 Meridian Plaza fire in Philadelphia in 1991 and the First Interstate Bank fire in Los Angeles in 1988, this approach has worked. The 1 Meridian fire burned for 19 hours, leaping from floor to floor and burning out as combustible materials were used up. But the fires at 7 World Trade Center raged mainly on lower floors and never burned out, and in the chaos of Sept. 11, the Fire Department eventually decided to stop fighting the blazes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/02/nyregion/02TOWE.html
________________________________________________________________

Web posted Sunday, March 3, 2002

Report: Fuel fire collapsed 7 WTC building

The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) -- Investigators believe a fire fed by diesel fuel stored in 7 World Trade Center may have led to the building's collapse, according to a published report.

The fire, which was ignited by falling debris from the burning twin towers, raged for about seven hours before the 47-story building collapsed on Sept. 11.

According to a preliminary report, the fire may have caused a group of steel beams that supported the skyscraper -- called "transfer trusses" -- to fail, The New York Times reported Saturday.The findings were detailed in a preliminary report by a team of engineers organized by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the American Society of Civil Engineers.

The report was based on video footage, debris, structural analysis and interviews with firefighters and witnesses. Researchers cautioned that the conclusions could be modified as the investigation continues.

The office tower, which stood across Vesey Street just north of the World Trade Center, housed former Mayor Giuliani's emergency command center and other government agencies, including offices for the Secret Service. The bridge-like transfer truss structure allowed the building to be constructed above an already existing power substation.

The diesel fuel that investigators believe may have fed the fire was stored in large tanks near ground level and in smaller tanks and emergency generators for the command center, the Secret Service and other tenants, The Times said.

Irwin Cantor, one of the building's original structural engineers, said the report's findings provided a reasonable explanation for the collapse. He said he did not think the diesel fuel tanks were included in the building's original design.

"It ended up with tenants who had diesels," Cantor told The Times. "I know none of that was planned at the beginning."But Frank Lombardi, the chief engineer for the Port Authority, which owns the property that the tower was built on, told The Times that according to floor plans, the building complied with city fire codes.

Jerome Hauer, who was the director of Giuliani's office of Emergency Management when the emergency command center opened, said several engineers had reviewed the plans. "There were lots of people that looked at this," Hauer told The Times. "We relied on their judgment."

The failure of a structural feature similar to the transfer trusses at 7 World Trade Center contributed to the collapse of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, The Times said.

Federal guidelines for public buildings created after the Oklahoma City bombing warned of the dangers of similar trusses in terrorist attacks, the newspaper said.
http://www.hollandsentinel.com/stories/030302/new_030302042.shtml

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November 29, 2001

Engineers Suspect Diesel Fuel in Collapse of 7 World Trade Center

By JAMES GLANZ

Almost lost in the chaos of the collapse of the World Trade Center is a mystery that under normal circumstances would probably have captured the attention of the city and the world. That mystery is the collapse of a nearby 47-story, two-million-square-foot building seven hours after flaming debris from the towers rained down on it, igniting what became an out-of-control fire.

Engineers and other experts, who quickly came to understand how hurtling airplanes and burning jet fuel had helped bring down the main towers, were for weeks still stunned by what had happened to 7 World Trade Center.

That building had housed, among other things, the mayor's emergency command bunker. It tumbled to its knees shortly after 5:20 on the ugly evening of Sept. 11.

The building had suffered mightily from the fire that raged in it, and it had been wounded by the flying beams falling off the towers. But experts said no building like it, a modern, steel-reinforced high-rise, had ever collapsed because of an uncontrolled fire, and engineers have been trying to figure out exactly what happened and whether they should be worried about other buildings like it around the country.

As engineers and scientists struggle to explain the collapse of 7 World Trade Center, they have begun considering whether a type of fuel that was inside the building all along created intensely hot fires like those in the towers: diesel fuel, thousands of gallons of it, intended to run electricity generators in a power failure.

One tank holding 6,000 gallons of fuel was in the building to provide power to the command bunker on the 23rd floor.

Another set of four tanks holding as much as 36,000 gallons were just below ground on the building's southwest side for generators that served some of the other tenants.

Engineers and other experts have already uncovered evidence at the collapse site suggesting that some type of fuel played a significant role in the building's demise, but they expect to spend months piecing together the picture of what remains a disturbing puzzle.

"Even though Building 7 didn't get much attention in the media immediately, within the structural engineering community, it's considered to be much more important to understand," said William F. Baker, a partner in charge of structural engineering at the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. "They say, `We know what happened at 1 and 2, but why did 7 come down?' "

Engineers said that here and across the country, diesel-powered generators are used in buildings like hospitals and trading houses, where avoiding power outages is crucial. Partly for that reason, Jonathan Barnett said, a definitive answer to the question of what happened in 7 World Trade Center is perhaps the most important question facing investigators.

"It's just like when you investigate a plane crash," said Dr. Barnett, a professor of fire protection engineering at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. "If we find a weakness in the building or a deficiency in the building that causes that collapse, we then want to find that weakness in other buildings and fix it."

In many ways, 7 World Trade Center, built and owned by Silverstein Properties, was structurally similar to its towering cousins across Vesey Street to the south. The weight of the building was supported by a relatively tight cluster of steel columns around the center of each floor and a palisade of columns around the outside, in the building's facade.

Sprayed on the steel, almost like imitation snow in holiday decorations, was a layer of fireproofing material, generally less than an inch thick. Although the fireproofing was intended to withstand ordinary fires for at least two hours, experts said buildings the size of 7 World Trade Center that are treated with such coatings have never collapsed in a fire of any duration.

Most of three other buildings in the complex, 4, 5 and 6 World Trade, stood despite suffering damage of all kinds, including fire.

Still, experts concede, in a hellish day, 7 World Trade might have sustained structural injuries never envisioned in fire codes.That day began with flaming pieces of steel and aluminum and, horribly, human bodies raining around the building.

With the collapse of both towers by 10:30 a.m., larger pieces of the twin towers had smashed parts of 7 World Trade and set whole clusters of floors ablaze. An hour later, the Fire Department was forced to abandon its last efforts to save the building as it burned like a giant torch. It fell in the late afternoon, hampering rescue efforts and hurling its beams into the ground like red-hot spears.

Within the building, the diesel tanks were surrounded by fireproofed enclosures. But some experts said that like the jet fuel in the twin towers, the diesel fuel could have played a role in the collapse of 7 World Trade.

"If the enclosures were damaged, then yes, this would be enough fuel to explain why the building collapsed," Dr. Barnett said.

Dr. Barnett and Mr. Baker are part of an assessment team organized by the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to examine the performance of several buildings during the attacks.

If further studies of the debris confirm the findings of extremely high temperature, Dr. Barnett said, "the smoking gun would be the fuel."

Others experts agreed that the diesel fuel could have speeded the collapse, but said the building might have met the same fate simply because of how long it burned.

"The fuel absolutely could be a factor," said Silvian Marcus, executive vice president for the Cantor Seinuk Group and a structural engineer involved in the original design of the building, which was completed in 1987. But he added, "The tanks may have accelerated the collapse, but did not cause the collapse."

Because of those doubts, engineers hold open the possibility that the collapse had other explanations, like damage caused by falling debris or another source of heat.

The fuel tanks were not the only highly flammable materials in the building. But while some engineers have speculated that a high-pressure gas main ruptured and caught fire, there was none in the area, said David Davidowitz, vice president of gas engineering at Consolidated Edison.

The building was served only by a four-inch, low-pressure line for the building's cafeteria, Mr. Davidowitz said.

The mayor's command bunker, built in 1998, included electrical generators on the seventh floor, where there was a small fuel tank, said Jerome M. Hauer, director of the mayor's Office of Emergency Management from 1996 to 2000. That tank was fed by a tank containing thousands of gallons of diesel fuel on a lower floor, he said.

Francis E. McCarton, a spokesman for the emergency management office, confirmed that assessment. "We did have a diesel tank in the facility," he said. "Yes, it was used for our generating system." The manager of the building when it collapsed, Walter Weems, said the larger tank sat on a steel-and-concrete pedestal on the second floor and held 6,000 gallons of diesel fuel.

He said an even larger cache, four tanks containing a total of 36,000 gallons of diesel fuel, sat just below ground level in the loading dock near the southwest corner of the building.

"I'm sure that with enough heat it would have burned," Mr. Hauer said of the diesel. "The question is whether the collapse caused the tank to rupture, or whether the material hitting the building caused the tank to rupture and enhance the fire."

Falling debris also caused major structural damage to the building, which soon began burning on multiple floors, said Francis X. Gribbon, a spokesman for the Fire Department.

By 11:30 a.m., the fire commander in charge of that area, Assistant Chief Frank Fellini, ordered firefighters away from it for safety reasons.

A combination of an uncontrolled fire and the structural damage might have been able to bring the building down, some engineers said. But that would not explain steel members in the debris pile that appear to have been partly evaporated in extraordinarily high temperatures, Dr. Barnett said.

"Any structure anywhere in the world, if you put it in these conditions, it will not stand," Mr. Marcus said. "The buildings are not designed to be a torch."
http://www.wirednewyork.com/wtc/7wtc/default.htm

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Diesel Fire Led To WTC Collapse

NEW YORK, New York (AP) -- Investigators believe a fire fed by diesel fuel stored in 7 World Trade Center may have led to the building's collapse, according to a published report. The fire, which was ignited by falling debris from the burning twin towers, raged for about seven hours before the 47-story building collapsed on Sept. 11.

According to a preliminary report, the fire may have caused a group of steel beams that supported the skyscraper - called ``transfer trusses'' - to fail, The New York Times reported Saturday.

The findings were detailed in a preliminary report by a team of engineers organized by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the American Society of Civil Engineers.

The report was based on video footage, debris, structural analysis and interviews with firefighters and witnesses. Researchers cautioned that the conclusions could be modified as the investigation continues. The office tower, which stood across Vesey Street just north of the World Trade Center, housed former Mayor Giuliani's emergency command center and other government agencies, including offices for the Secret Service. The bridge-like transfer truss structure allowed the building to be constructed above an already existing power substation.

The diesel fuel that investigators believe may have fed the fire was stored in large tanks near ground level and in smaller tanks and emergency generators for the command center, the Secret Service and other tenants, The Times said.

Irwin Cantor, one of the building's original structural engineers, said the report's findings provided a reasonable explanation for the collapse. He said he did not think the diesel fuel tanks were included in the building's original design. ``It ended up with tenants who had diesels,'' Cantor told The Times. ``I know none of that was planned at the beginning.''

But Frank Lombardi, the chief engineer for the Port Authority, which owns the property that the tower was built on, told The Times that according to floor plans, the building complied with city fire codes.

Jerome Hauer, who was the director of Giuliani's office of Emergency Management when the emergency command center opened, said several engineers had reviewed the plans. ``There were lots of people that looked at this,'' Hauer told The Times. ``We relied on their judgment.'' The failure of a structural feature similar to the transfer trusses at 7 World Trade Center contributed to the collapse of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, The Times said.

Federal guidelines for public buildings created after the Oklahoma City bombing warned of the dangers of similar trusses in terrorist attacks, the newspaper said.

http://www.firehouse.com/news/2002/3/4_APwtcdiesel.html

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Here's one article that mentioned the possibility of a conspiracy involved with the 7 WTC collapse.

posted 08-07-2002 04:10 AM            

Thanks for the articles. You highlighted the parts that needed to be brought to light. Seems like we have some conflicting information in the media, alongside some B.S.:

quote:

---

"One tank holding 6,000 gallons of fuel was in the building to provide power to the command bunker on the 23rd floor.."

---

But.....

quote:

---

"According to floor plans submitted to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the land on which 7 World Trade sat, the building complied with city fire codes, said Frank Lombardi, the authority's chief engineer.

Those codes permit no more than one fuel tank with a capacity of 275 gallons or less on above-ground floors, he said."

---

Who's lying? Here's another thing:

quote:

---

"Irwin Cantor, one of the building's original structural engineers, said the report's findings provided a reasonable explanation for the collapse. He said he did not think the diesel fuel tanks were included in the building's original design."

---

What's he trying to say? Diesel tanks weren't part of the building's original design?

Ok. If the building collapsed because of a diesel fuel fire, then that must mean that the tanks weren't part of the REVISED DESIGN either. Someone fucked up and should be held accountable for negligence (which hasn't happened).

Here's more:

quote:

---

"But the fires at 7 World Trade Center raged mainly on lower floors and never burned out, and in the chaos of Sept. 11, the Fire Department eventually decided to stop fighting the blazes."

---

Oh just mainly at the ground levels huh? I guess my fire raging photo featured at the top of this page means the 30th story is the ground level. I still haven't seen a photograph or a video that shows #7 on fire at the ground level of the building. What horseshit.

Any firefighter knows that if a 7+ hour ground level fire was fed by diesel fuel, the whole goddamn building would have been a giant torch, and I don't see any photos to back that up.

Now, about the truss construction:

quote:

---

Truss construction of any type, metal or wood, is extremely dangerous in a fire situation.

Most new houses and commercial buildings are truss construction and have been known to rapidly collapse without warning when subjected to extreme temperatures.

---

He said that if built properly, the total collapse of any steel building floor support trusses would be impossible in a any fire situation unless some external source physically damaged them, diesel fuel or not. And I have not seen any photographs of ANY physical damage to #7 prior to it's collapse.

He also told me that truss type construction is very sturdy and actually helps the building maintain it's strutural integrity during a fire.

Engineers factor in a very important thing when designing a tall skyscraper. It's called load transfer. I have never heard this term mentioned by any media outlets, or by any of these so called analysts. They all think that if one support or truss fails, the whole fucking building is doomed. That's not the case.

After reading many books about how buildings collapse, I have come to the conclusion that there has never been a steel and concrete "truss-type" building that has ever collapsed due to a diesel fuel-fed fire in known history (and there have been many of those types of fires).

I can't remember the exact time and location, but there was a fire in a very tall hotel out in California a few years ago that has this type of construction (along with many diesel fuel tanks to support the building's generators).

That building burned for TWO WEEKS and completely gutted itself. The firefighters didn't even bother with it and it burned itself out. It didn't even partially collapse.

In fact, the building was so structurally sound that it took SEVEN WEEKS and 12 millions dollars to tear it down. (They didn't implode it due to the close proximity of another very expensive hotel.)

This "truss" type construction fire faults talk I'm hearing from the media is horse puckey. They are trying to distract you, because most people don't have a clue how building are constructed, regardless of what they might see on TLC or TDC.

I don't care how many analysts come on TV and say "well, the buildings collapsed because of their unique truss construction". Don't believe a word they say. They are hired by the same media corporations that tell you that Flight 800 wasn't a terrorist attack. Remember that.

Another thing. If truss type construction was so dangerous in a fire situation, why is it used in 90% of all modern buildings over 40 stories tall? Why isn't there a major investigation to see if other types of buildings are going to suffer a similar fate in the event of a major fire?

(Because they know it will never happen again, that's why. And if you wonder what I mean by that, use your sense of logic)

By the way Dan, this massive post is not directed towards you, but rather everyone who believes the "official" story of 9/11.

Once again, thanks for the resources.

posted 08-08-2002 01:52 AM            

Here are a few articles concerning Mayor Giuliani's controversial plan to build the Emergency Command Center. The first two originally appeared in the New York Times back in 1998.

Giuliani's $15.1 Million 'Emergency Control Center'

By KIT R. ROANE

NEW YORK -- Having tamed squeegee men and cabbies, murderers andmuggers, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is now bracing for a whole other order of urban treachery and cataclysm by building a $15.1 million emergency control center for his administration -- bullet-proofed,hardened to withstand bombs and hurricanes, and equipped with food and beds for at least 30 members of his inner circle.

The ambitious project, which will sprawl over 46,000 feet in one of the smaller buildings of the World Trade Center complex, will belarge enough to accommodate at least 50 different city, state and federal agencies, and will allow them to coordinate responses to amyriad of disasters, from the smallest sewer explosion to the largest nerve gas attack.

Among its amenities will be back-up generators in case of power failures, a storage tank with enough water to last at least a week,and whiz-bang technology that will include a secure "red" phone for the mayor and video-conferencing, so he can see and talk to the president of the United States, if necessary.

Saying that the facility is "not a bunker" meant as a safety haven for the mayor, Jerome Hauer, head of the city's Office of Emergency Management, noted that New York City's emergency response system had become a model for other cities and said that the planned center was a natural next step in keeping that lead.

"This is something the city has needed for a long time, astate-of-the-art center with a sophisticated communications system,that is survivable so the city can continue to function," he said. "If there is a citywide blackout, a hurricane, a blizzard, this is the facility that will allow us to keep working, to make sure that people are not in jeopardy."

But the news of the center's construction troubled many in city government, especially City Council members, who were not notified of the project. Some noted that the existing command center on the eighth floor of police headquarters has functioned admirably during a variety of storms, blackouts and terrorist attacks.

Councilwoman Kathryn Freed, whose district will house the new center, also questioned whether the investment was fiscally prudent at a time when the mayor has threatened to cut funding for senior citizens centers, city hospitals and services for the poor.

"At a time when the mayor is screaming and yelling about pork incity government and trying to cut city services that keep libraries and day care centers open, it seems bizarre to me that the city would be putting nearly $16 million into a rented space that the city doesn't even own," Ms. Freed said.

"Making a $16 million improvement to another guy's building?" she said. "I sure hope this is a 99-year lease."

http://graham.main.nc.us/~alanb/Clips/nyt/nycris.html#06131998

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June 14, 1998T

Mayor Defends Plan to Build Crisis Center

By KIT R. ROANE

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani defended his plan to build a $15 million emergency control center in the World Trade Center complex yesterday, as emergency experts questioned its viability, City Council members complained that they had not been consulted and radio hosts turned it into a punch line.

The Mayor said the project was not intended merely to be a bunker,where select city officials would be safe, as some critics have suggested. Rather, he said, it would be a secure control center where emergency operations could be directed in case of a disaster.

"This is really an attempt," he said, "to put the city for the next 20 years in a position where it can deal with the kinds of emergencies that might be unique to America's biggest city, its most densely populated city, and the best-known city in the world. And I would think that even City Council members would refrain from playing politics with this."

But Council members could not resist.

Calling the Mayor's actions increasingly bizarre, the City Council Speaker, Peter F. Vallone,said, "If he wants to build a bunker for the only people he trusts, all he needs is a phone booth."

Other Council members continued to accuse the Mayor of concealing his plans for the center and questioned the need for it at a timewhen he has threatened to cut some city services for the elderly, youth and the poor.

The Mayor pointed out, however, that the center was plainly listedon page 995 of the capital budget adopted on June 5. He said the line items read: "Mayor's Office of Emergency Management. Design,$1.5 million. Construction, $15.1 million."

"This is in the capital budget for this year," Giuliani said. "I know that there are some Council members that don't read the budget, but that's their problem. This money has already been obligated in terms of contract."

The Mayor refused to provide details about the center, saying suchinformation could help those who "want to take advantage of victimizing the city."

Administration officials, however, said it would occupy 46,000 feet on the 23d floor of 7 World Trade Center, bringing together more than 100 representatives from city, state and Federal agencies, as well as public utilities, in times of emergency.

Currently, operations during all large-scale city emergencies are directed from an eighth-floor room of police headquarters that is lined with maps, television monitors and banks of phones for city agencies. The Mayor said yesterday that there "were things lacking"at the center.

While emergency management experts applauded the Mayor's attempt to upgrade the city's disaster preparedness, they questioned the wisdom of placing the command center on an upper floor of a building not owned by the city, particularly one in traffic-congested lower Manhattan.

The center will be in a building jointly owned by Silverstein Properties and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, costing $1.4 million a year in rent for the 20-year life ofthe lease.

"When you are talking about emergency management, I don't think you want to be in an office building in the middle of Wall Street, where you have to worry about your lease and the tenants above and below you," said Edward Shaughnessy, a professor of sociology and law at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and an expert in emergency management.

"While it may provide you with the opportunity to survey the city,"he said, putting the center on the 23d floor not only makes it hard to reach should the power in the rest of the building be cut, but also "leaves you open to a missile attack."

Professor Shaughnessy praised the work of Jerome M. Hauer, directorof the city's Office of Emergency Management, but he added, "I just think the place they are choosing has the potential for too many problems and they might need to re-examine it."

Hauer has said the site would be able to withstand hurricane forcewinds. Administration officials also said it could survive some bombs, would be impenetrable to gunfire and have a closed aircirculation system to prevent the influx of gas. Its telecommunications equipment, they said, could operate even after anuclear blast.

Accommodations for at least 30 would include beds and showers, while the Mayor would have a private area to hold meetings and a pull-out couch to nap on. Generators and a water tank on separate floors would insure that those inside could continue working for as much as a week if the city went black.

But whatever its assets, the center was the butt of jokes on radiotalk shows and evening newscasts. One weatherman joked while announcing a coming rainstorm, "Tomorrow, you'll wish you were in the Mayor's bunker."

Earlier in the day on WABC-AM, the lawyer and talk-show host Ron Kuby took a call from Hauer. As he questioned Hauer about who would be allowed into the center, sound effects of King Kong and bomb blasts echoed over the air.

Kuby also sponsored a naming game,allowing callers to offer their favorite moniker for the site. Among the best, he said, was "Rudy's Nuclear Winter Palace."

Some Council members argued that if the center was such a good idea,the Mayor might have been expected to publicize it.

Sheldon Leffler, chairman of the Council's Public Safety Committee,said he still had reservations.

"Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and this project should besubject to some public scrutiny so we can make the best decision,"he said. "What the Mayor did was essentially try to slip this thing hrough the budget in a subterfuge."

http://graham.main.nc.us/~alanb/Clips/nyt/nycris.html#06141998

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Giuliani has secreted himself and a few trusted aides in a $15 billion fortified bunker deep beneath Central Park, defended by a corps of specially trained killer moles, which can spot and, with their frighteningly large incisors, quickly disembowel any enemies of the city attempting to infiltrate the deliberately darkened access tunnel.

Fact: The mayor has sensibly proposed building an emergency control center for merely $15 million in the World Trade Center.

Should any danger--be it a raid by crazed fundamentalist bioterrorists, a stock-market crash or a strike of rollerblading dog walkers--threaten New York, the mayor would inch through traffic, clamber up 22 flights of steps (can't trust elevators in a crisis--they might be booby-trapped!), pausing only to sign autographs for tourists, and soon be in command of all municipal defense forces as well as a secure phone line to the President of the U.S. (By the way, the only reason this project was kept secret is because, as the mayor has noted, "you would get people killed if you discussed it widely.")

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10/08/01; Vol. 16 No. 14

Giuliani Improvises After Command Center Gets Hit

By William Welsh

New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani got a lot of ribbing when, in 1998, he ordered the construction of a $15 million emergency command center from which he could direct recovery efforts from possible terrorist attacks on the city.

The press dubbed it “the bunker,” and Giuliani’s political enemies poked fun at his desire to guard the city against bombings or chemical or biological attack.

Giuliani appears prescient today, but what he couldn’t foresee was that the location he picked for the bunker — 7 World Trade Center — would become ground zero for the Sept. 11 attack on the complex.

The 47-story building in which the command center was located is now part of the rubble that includes the World Trade Center towers.

On the morning of Sept. 11, the mayor rushed to his command center shortly after the attack, but was forced to flee one location after another when the towers and adjacent buildings began collapsing, according to the New York Times.

Despite the scope of the catastrophe, city employees were able to establish a fully functioning, alternative emergency management command center within three days of the catastrophe. The leadership Giuliani has shown in the crisis, coupled with the flexibility of city workers, shows it is possible to overcome almost any disaster, said Charles Gerhards, Pennsylvania’s chief information officer.

Gerhards said “Your planning can’t be perfect, but then that is where leadership and judgment come in,” he said, referring to the resilience of Giuliani and New York City employees who rebuilt the mayor’s command center.

“You have the plan, but then you have to modify it,” he said. “Government officials need to be prepared for many different scenarios.”

posted 09-16-2002 01:00 AM            

Looks eerily like this professional building demolition, doesn't it?

posted 09-16-2002 01:53 PM            

As for the other nearby buildings . . . There were dozens of alerts for many days for people to clear the area b/c several of those bldgs were unstable and thought to be in danger of collapsing at any moment. Some are still not stable and are still being repaired/renovated.

You have to get all the facts before jumping to conclusions. Just like that preposterous "theory" about the Pentagon. That idiot guy in France w/ his goofy ideas has been shown, over and over, to be wrong. There are ample photos all over the 'net proving that the Boeing *did* crash into the Pentagon. Again, try a more comprehensive search.

It doesn't take a lot of burning jet fuel to start a fire sufficiently hot to melt steel. It's kinda like trying to figure out why a spark from a match goes one way and not another . . . there are countless variables to consider.

This is no mystery.

posted 09-16-2002 06:00 PM            

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These pictures are *not* comprehensive, nor do they tell the whole story. There are countless things that could have caused #7 to collapse. And #7's collapse *has* been discussed extensively in the media. Try a better search.

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What is the whole story Ari? Do you have something better? Do you know something that I don't? If not, you are speculating as much as I am. Also, I never said the media is not discussing this, I only implied I hadn't heard about it for quite awhile.

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As for the other nearby buildings . . . There were dozens of alerts for many days for people to clear the area b/c several of those bldgs were unstable and thought to be in danger of collapsing at any moment. Some are still not stable and are still being repaired/renovated.

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I never disputed that fact. Try reading my posts again before you start coming to conclusions about what I am implying. My point is that many other buildings received well more severe damage than WTC#7, and none of them collapsed, even though they are much closer to the twin towers.

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You have to get all the facts before jumping to conclusions. Just like that preposterous "theory" about the Pentagon. That idiot guy in France w/ his goofy ideas has been shown, over and over, to be wrong. There are ample photos all over the 'net proving that the Boeing *did* crash into the Pentagon. Again, try a more comprehensive search.

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Since I can't get 100% of the facts, I'm not jumping to any conclusions. This thread is mere speculation from looking at the available facts and evidence. You can't really compare my thread to the French idiot since I have more evidence than he does, but I might point out the fact that the author never says that a plane didn't hit the Pentagon. Read the article again.

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It doesn't take a lot of burning jet fuel to start a fire sufficiently hot to melt steel. It's kinda like trying to figure out why a spark from a match goes one way and not another . . . there are countless variables to consider.

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Sure....then why do ironworkers screw around with oxy-acetylene torches and arc-welders? If you were to use jet fuel (or WTC7's diesel fuel) for melting forged steel, you would need a forced oxygen induction system to attain temperatures that high. Hydrocarbon rich/ O2 poor fires actually burn at a lower temerature than Class A fires in the same environment. Go read a physics book to confirm this.

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This is no mystery.

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posted 10-05-2002 01:15 PM            

In the mass media propaganda barrage of 9/11/2002, researcher Mike Rivero discovered film footage of the collapse of WTC building 7. The images are at this link:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/wtc7.html

Take a close look at the manner in which it collapses straight down. For this building to collapse in this fashion, ALL of the load bearing supports on the ground floor would have had to fail at EXACTLY THE SAME TIME. Think this happens by chance? The claim that the collapse was the result of a fire requires the fire be equally distributed throughout the entire floor of the building, providing equal heat for an equal amount of time, so that all the load bearings members would fail at the exact same moment.

Here is a report on the WTC tower collapses from Christopher Bollyn of American Free Press. The article appears to be well documented, although I have not seen any independent confirmation or mainstream media reports. Caveat lecteur.
www.americanfreepress.net/09_03_02/NEW_SEISMIC_/new_seismic_.html

New Seismic Data Refutes Official WTC Explanation

Two unexplained "spikes" in the seismic record from Sept. 11 indicate huge bursts of energy shook the ground beneath the World Trade Center's twin towers immediately prior to the collapse.

American Free Press has learned of pools of "molten steel" found at the base of the collapsed twin towers weeks after the collapse. Although the energy source for these incredibly hot areas has yet to be explained, New York seismometers recorded huge bursts of energy, which caused unexplained seismic "spikes" at the beginning of each collapse.

These spikes suggest that massive underground explosions may have literally knocked the towers off their foundations, causing them to collapse.

In the basements of the collapsed towers, where the 47 central support columns connected with the bedrock, hot spots of "literally molten steel" were discovered more than a month after the collapse. Such persistent and intense residual heat, 70 feet below the surface, in an oxygen starved environment, could explain how these crucial structural supports failed.

In the "everything you know may be wrong" department, this anonymous article questions whether the floor trusses in the WTC towers were as lightly built as claimed in various official sources. I am critical of the article on the grounds that there is insufficient data available in the public domain to compute either the transmission of wind loads in the towers, or the amount of steel in the towers. The photos presented are poorly focused and do not appear conclusive to me. This could be an interesting lead, but more likely it is an example of intentional disinformation.

Does anyone have drawings or other photos or documentation to counter this argument?
http://nerdcities.com/guardian/WTC/wtc-demolition.htm

CONCLUSION

Impacts of the magnitude of those that occurred on September 11 were considered by the designers of the twin towers and the towers were designed to survive them.
The possibility of a jet-fuel fires the size of those that occurred on September 11 were considered by the designers of the twin towers and the towers were designed to survive them.
In order to explain why the towers collapsed, where other steel framed buildings would have survived, the WTC conspirators invented the "truss theory".
The "truss theory" is seriously flawed. It cannot explain how the perimeter wall transmits wind loading to the central core.
The "truss theory", if accepted, leads to a 33 percent underestimate of the amount of steel in the towers. That is, the "truss theory" does not account for the whereabouts of 32,000 tons of steel (of 96,000 tons) used in the construction of each of the towers.
The "truss theory" is a lie that has been spun to convince a gullible public, that what appeared to be the controlled demolitions of three of the World Trade Center buildings, were actually natural consequents of the aircraft strikes and not controlled demolitions at all.
There are photos showing large steel girders positioned where the "official" line states that only (double) trusses should be.
In all, one has to conclude that the "truss theory" is false and that those who push it are part of a large conspiracy to deceive the American people.
ARCHITECTS MUST PROVIDE WORLD TRADE
CENTER BLUEPRINTS AND PLANS.

Design architecture for the World Trade Center was provided by Minoru Yamasaki & Associates. Emery Roth & Sons served as the architect of record. Since these people have nothing to hide, they should provide the architectural plans of the World Trade Center, for all to see. This will enable any misunderstandings regarding the facts of the collapse to be established and corrected. In fact, Minoru Yamasaki & Associates, Roth & Sons, or their descendent companies, should put the entire set of architectural plans on the internet.