SMALL BUILDINGS THAT COLLAPSED AS A RESULT OF FIRES

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     Here's a comprehensive scientific review of how some small steel structures like Tehran's Plasco building-- which are not steel skyscrapers-- have collapsed from office fires.  No misleading sound bytes here, so Harry, Walt, and LZ will finally have to put on their thinking caps.

    These small structures-- like Tehran's Plasco building-- are not even remotely similar to the explosive demolitions that quickly destroyed the massive steel columns (and pulverized the concrete) of the WTC towers on 9/11.

Other Collapses in Perspective: An Examination of Steel Structures
Collapsing due to Fire and their Relation to the WTC

www.scientificmethod911.org/docs/Other_Collapses_Apr27_2013.pdf

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Fires Have Never Caused Skyscrapers to Collapse
Other Skyscraper Fires in History
911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/compare/fires.html



The One Meridian Plaza fire

Excepting the three 9-11 collapses, no fire, however severe, has ever caused a steel-framed high-rise building to collapse. Following are examples of high-rise fires that were far more severe than those in WTC 1 and 2, and Building 7. In these precedents, the fires consumed multiple floors, produced extensive window breakage, exhibited large areas of emergent flames, and went on for several hours. The fires in the WTC towers did none of these things.


One Meridian Plaza is a 38-floor skyscraper in Philadelphia that suffered a severe fire on February 23, 1991. The fire started on the 22nd floor and raged for 18 hours, gutting eight floors and causing an estimated $100 million in direct property loss. 1 2 3 It was later described by Philadelphia officials as "the most significant fire in this century".

The fire caused window breakage, cracking of granite, and failures of spandrel panel connections. 4 Despite the severity and duration of the fire, as evidenced by the damage the building sustained, no part of the building collapsed.




The First Interstate Bank Fire

The First Interstate Bank Building is a 62-story skyscraper in Los Angeles that suffered the worst high-rise fire in the city's history. From the late evening of May 4, 1988 through the early morning of the next day, 64 fire companies battled the blaze, which lasted for 3 1/2 hours. The fire caused extensive window breakage, which complicated firefighting efforts. Large flames jutted out of the building during the blaze. Firefighting efforts resulted in massive water damage to floors below the fire, and the fire gutted offices from the 12th to the 16th floor, and caused extensive smoke damage to floors above. The fire caused an estimated $200 million in direct property loss. 5

A report by Iklim Ltd. describes the structural damage from the fire:
In spite of the total burnout of four and a half floors, there was no damage to the main structural members and only minor damage to one secondary beam and a small number of floor pans. 6




1 New York Plaza is a 50-story office tower less than a mile from the World Trade Center site. It suffered a severe fire and explosion on August 5, 1970. The fire started around 6 PM, and burned for more than 6 hours. 7
LINK
Caracas Tower Fire

The tallest skyscraper in Caracas, Venezuela experienced a severe fire on October 17, 2004. The blaze began before midnight on the 34th floor, spread to more than 26 floors, and burned for more than 17 hours. Heat from the fires prevented firefighters from reaching the upper floors, and smoke injured 40 firefighters.

Lax enforcement of fire codes in Venezuela was blamed for the malfunctioning of water pumps and a lack of fire extinguishers inside of the building. Because the building was empty when the fire broke out, no civilians were killed or injured. 8



The Windsor Building fire

A more recent case of a severe high-rise fire is the one that destroyed the Windsor Building in Madrid, Spain on February 12, 2005. The Windsor fire was more severe than any of the fires described above, and the incident has been widely publicized, with comparisons to the fires in the three World Trade Center skyscrapers on 9/11/01. However, the Windsor Building, unlike all the buildings mentioned above, was framed in steel-reinforced concrete rather than steel. Hence it is described on a separate page, which notes differences between the response of these different types of structures to fires. 9





The Hotel Mandarin Oriental blazes

The most recent example of a spectacular skyscraper fire was the burning of the Hotel Mandarin Oriental starting on February 9, 2009. The nearly completed 520-foot-tall skyscraper in Beijing caught fire around 8:00 pm, was engulfed within 20 minutes, and burned for at least 3 hours until midnight. Despite the fact that the fire extended across all of the floors for a period of time and burned out of control for hours, no large portion of the structure collapsed.

It is tempting to draw parallels between this spectacle and the destruction of WTC 1, 2, and 7 because of the stark opposites: on 9/11/01, three skyscrapers were transformed into piles of rubble primarily as a consequence, supposedly, of fires -- fires spanning small fractions of each building; and on 2/09/09, a skyscraper remained intact after burning like a torch for hours. However such parallels may be limited by major structural differences between the buildings in the two cases -- one being that the Hotel Mandarin Oriental, designed by the famous Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, had a full-height interior atrium, and thus had the hollowness that the 9-11 Commission deceptively attempted to attribute to the Twin Towers. 10

Perhaps the relevance of the Mandarin fire to the events of 9/11/2001 is more symbolic than forensic. The Mandarin fire is examined more fully here.





References

1. ONE MERIDIAN PLAZA, Philadelphia Fire Films, 1991, [cached]
2. High-rise Office Building Fire One Meridian Plaza, [cached]
3. One Meridien Plaza, [cached]
4. High-rise Office Building Fire One Meridian Plaza Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, [cached]
5. First Interstate Bank Fire, lafire.com, [cached]
6. Interstate Bank Building Fire Los Angeles, California (May 4, 1988), [cached]
7. U.S. Report on Trade Center Echoes Lessons of Past Disasters, New York Times, 4/2/02 [cached]
8. Towering Inferno In Caracas, CBSNEWS.com, 10/18/04 [cached]
9. U.S. Report on Trade Center ..., New York Times, 4/2/02
10. Fire claims building at CCTV Beijing headquarters, reuters.com,

[Deleted]

       It will be interesting to get the details about the destruction of the small Plasco building in the weeks ahead.  It may fit into the category of other small steel structures that have collapsed after protracted fires. 

       It appears to be a light weight structure, with very thin girders-- built in the 1960s by an Iranian Jewish businessman who was later executed (in 1979) for allegedly engaging in espionage against Iran on behalf of Israel.
  

      Comparing these flimsy Plasco girders to the massive steel girders of the WTC (which were melted by extreme temperatures in less than one hour!) is like comparing large apples to crab apples.

       I would also point out that there is extensive scientific evidence confirming that the WTC towers (including WTC 7) were demolished by high temperature explosives on 9/11.  Tons of concrete at the WTC was literally pulverized into pyroclastic flows by the 9/11 explosives.  The recorded temperatures at Ground Zero were far in excess of anything like burning jet fuel.
 

      

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 Fifteen Years Later, Physics Journal Concludes All Three WTC Towers Collapsed on 9/11 Due to Controlled Demolition

   www.globalresearch.ca/fifteen-years-later-physics-journal-concludes-all-three-wtc-towers-collapsed-on-911-due-to-controlled-demolition/5545488




September 13, 2016


Over the past 15 years many highly respected academics and experts have come forward to challenge the official narrative on the collapse of the WTC towers forwarded by the U.S. government. The official government position holds that the collapse of all three towers was due to intense heat inside of the buildings.

But a new forensic investigation into the collapse of the three World Trade Center towers on 9/11, published in Europhysics News – a highly respected European physics magazine – claims that “the evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that all three buildings were destroyed by controlled demolition.”

While many in the mainstream have attempted to label anyone questioning the official narrative as “tin foil hat” conspiracy theorist, many highly respected experts have come forward to lampoon the idea that the buildings collapsed due to the intense heat and fires following two terrorist-directed plane crashes.

“Given the far-reaching implications, it is morally imperative that this hypothesis be the subject of a truly scientific and impartial investigation by responsible authorities,” the four physicists conclude in the damning report.

The new study is the work of Steven Jones, former full professor of physics at Brigham Young University, Robert Korol, a professor emeritus of civil engineering at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, Anthony Szamboti, a mechanical design engineer with over 25 years of structural design experience in the aerospace and communications industries and Ted Walter, the director of strategy and development for Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, a nonprofit organization that today represents more than 2,500 architects and engineers.

The comprehensive study in Europhysics Magazine directly challenges the official narrative and lends to a growing body of evidence that seriously questions the veracity of the government narrative.

In 2002, the National Institute of Standards and Technology remarked that the case was exceptionally bizarre. There were no other known cases of total structural collapses in high-rise buildings caused by fires and so it is deeply unusual that it should have happened three times in the space of one day, noted NIST.

Official investigations have never been able to thoroughly and coherently explain how this might have happened and various teams tasked with examining the collapse have raised difficult questions about the veracity of the government’s story.

Perhaps most damning of all, the experts claimed that after a thorough forensic analysis of video footage of the building’s collapse, it revealed signs of a controlled implosion. Additionally, Jones has co-authored a number of papers documenting evidence of unreacted nano-thermitic material in the WTC dust.

The authors of the study note that the buildings fell with such speed and symmetry that they there was no other feasible explanation for the sudden collapse at free fall speeds – directly refuting studies that attempted to debunk the idea that the building fell without resistance. These respected experts’ new forensic analysis only adds to the growing movement of people calling for a new and impartial investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center.

Revealing the scope and breadth of public disbelief in the official government narrative surrounding the events of 9/11, even presidential candidate Jill Stein has recently called for a new investigation.

[Deleted]

I'm re-posting these review articles for Velveeta Daleko.

He must have missed them the first time around.