Reply #72: Sorry, I hadn't noticed that you addressed me until now since you

[Jazz2006]

did so in a post that was not responsive to mine.

First, Jazz, I do not know what else to add to it. I thought I had given enough so that anyone familiar with the theory could comment.

I have never adhered to the theory (nor known others to) that jet fuel spilling and burning down the elevator shafts was what actually caused the collapse, so this is news to me. While I do not doubt that jet fuel did, in fact, spill and burn down the elevator shafts in light of the evidence that it did so (see, for instance, the witness accounts in the book "102 Minutes"), I have never viewed this as indicative of anything other than unfortunate additional deaths but not as the cause of the collapse of the towers.

Your opening post seems to suggest that the jet fuel down the elevator shafts is propounded as more than that. That's why I asked you for more information.

As for the fireproofing capacity in the elevator shafts, I will defer to your purported experience in elevator shaft building insofar as it is applicable (most CTers here wouldn't, by the way, but I'm a reasonable sort). However, I don't think that it was a matter of fuel spilling down the shafts and catching fire an hour later and I haven't seen anything to suggest that that was the case.

From my reading of first hand accounts and my research into the issues, I take it that it wasn't a matter of jet fuel spilling down and catching fire an hour later but that the jet fuel in the elevator shafts was part of the initial sequence: i.e. a plane crashed into a building striking and penetrating parts of the core, including penetration into the hoistways; in the process, the aircraft fuel tanks were ruptured with much of that fuel burning in the large fireballs that we have all witnessed since then via video, but some of the fuel could not help but head downward through the open elevator shafts that had been penetrated (thanks to gravity), which would quickly be ignited by the large fireball above and travel downward as the fire caught up to the falling fuel. The burning fuel in the hoistways followed the downward path as it could hardly do otherwise.

Think of taking a gas can and spreading a stream of gas from point A to point B in a straight line on the ground and then light it at point A. The flame path will follow the flow of gas that you've set out. Now, think of doing the same thing vertically instead of horizontally. The flame will still follow the path but if there are other contingencies (such as suddenly finding the flame being in a contained evironment which cannot withstand the capacity of the fire), all kinds of things can happen, such as blowing open the doors of the elevators when they proved unable to contain the pressure of the fires.

Thus, it is not a matter of having a two hour fire capacity at all. We are talking about simultaneous events and burning jet fuel streaming down a shaft. And since you build elevator shafts and since you know the layout of the WTC elevator shafts, you are not suggesting that such events would or could be contained to a single elevator car, right?