No Fires At Impact Zone (from No Bombs thread)

[RedSock]

In benburch's "Why there were NO BOMBS planted at the WTC" thread
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x72279

there was this exchange:

Twist_U_Up: "The heat wasn't hot enough. They have fireman that where on the floor of impact stating on the radio that there where just a few small fires and he could probably knock them out in no time."

karlrschneider: "Firemen on a floor that was hit? I never heard that and don't believe it."

--------------------------------

I thought the answer to this question deserves it own thread -- so as to not get lost.

TheMemoryHole.org has tapes and transcripts of firemen from 9/11. From this this page:
http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/firefighter-tape-excerpts.htm


9:25 a.m.
Ladder 15: "Go ahead, Irons."

Ladder 15 Irons: "Just got a report from the director of Morgan Stanley. Seventy-eight seems to have taken the brunt of this stuff, there's a lot of bodies, they say the stairway is clear all the way up, though."

...

9:43 a.m.
Battalion Seven Chief: "Battalion Seven to Ladder 15 Roof, what's your progress?"

Ladder 15 Roof: "Sixty-three, Battalion."

...

9:48 a.m.

Ladder 15: "What do you got up there, Chief?"

Battalion Seven Chief: "I'm still in boy stair 74th floor. No smoke or fire problems, walls are breached, so be careful."

Ladder 15: "Yeah Ten-Four, I saw that on 68. Alright, we're on 71 we're coming up behind you."

Battalion Seven Chief: "Ten-four. Six more to go."

Ladder 15: "Let me know when you see more fire."

Battalion Seven Chief: "I found a marshall on 75."

...

9:52 a.m.

Battalion Seven Chief: "Battalion Seven to Battalion Seven Alpha."

"Freddie, come on over. Freddie, come on over by us."

Battalion Seven Chief: "Battalion Seven ... Ladder 15, we've got two isolated pockets of fire. We should be able to knock it down with two lines. Radio that, 78th floor numerous 10-45 Code Ones."

Ladder 15: "What stair are you in, Orio?"

Battalion Seven Aide: "Seven Alpha to lobby command post."

Ladder Fifteen: "Fifteen to Battalion Seven."

Battalion Seven Chief: "... Ladder 15."

Ladder 15: "Chief, what stair you in?"

Battalion Seven Chief: "South stairway Adam, South Tower."

Ladder 15: "Floor 78?"

Battalion Seven Chief: "Ten-four, numerous civilians, we gonna need two engines up here."

Ladder 15: "Alright ten-four, we're on our way."

...

Battalion Seven Chief: "I'm going to need two of your firefighters Adam stairway to knock down two fires. We have a house line stretched we could use some water on it, knock it down, kay."

Ladder 15: "Alright ten-four, we're coming up the stairs. We're on 77 now in the B stair, I'll be right to you."

Ladder 15 Roof: "Fifteen Roof to 15. We're on 71. We're coming right up."

9:57 a.m.

"Division 3 ... lobby command, to the Fieldcom command post."

Battalion Seven Chief: "Operations Tower One to floor above Battalion Nine."

Battalion Nine Chief: "Battalion Nine to command post."

Battalion Seven Operations Tower One: "Battalion Seven Operations Tower One to Battalion Nine, need you on floor above 79. We have access stairs going up to 79, kay."

...

[hack89]

1. Ok - so how many floors did the impact zone encompass?

If I remember correctly, the 78th was the beginning of the impact zone - your account says nothing about the floors above which could have been infernos for all you know.

Secondly, each floor was nearly 40,000 square feet in area. Even if only half the floor was on fire, that would leave over 20,000 square feet without fires - so a single report of two isolated fires says nothing about the extent of the fires. If you read the full account, it is clear he was on the 78th floor for only a very short time so there was no way for him to do an extensive search.

http://www.mishalov.com/wtc_lostvoicesfiredept.html

The fact that the vast majority of the deaths were on the floors above the impact zone is telling - if there were no fires, what stopped them from simply walking down and escaping?

[Kevin Fenton]

2. Never any fires on 78

"If I remember correctly, the 78th was the beginning of the impact zone" -
Yes, it was the lowest floor that suffered major damage. However, it didn't get any fuel from the plane - the damage was caused by the outer section of the plane's wing (the inner section contained the fuel), which killed or injured lots of people waiting in the sky lobby. It took the survivors (one apparently with his arm hanging off) about 15 minutes to collect themselves and start descending the stairs. If there were fires on 78 at the start, they they should really have killed these people. The 14 survivors' accounts don't mention any fire there.

"your account says nothing about the floors above which could have been infernos for all you know."
"Infernos" is pushing it, but there were definitely more serious fires there, even though some of those were going down by the time the South Tower fell.

"Secondly, each floor was nearly 40,000 square feet in area."
208 x 208 is more than 40,000, not less, but nevermind.

"If you read the full account, it is clear he was on the 78th floor for only a very short time so there was no way for him to do an extensive search."
According to Dwyer and Flynn (in 102 minutes, p. 206), he got there at 9:52, seven minutes before the tower fell, so he had plenty of time for a good lookaround.

As for floor 79, Dwyer and Flynn say, "He sent one group of firefighters up to the 79th floor: the 78th and 79th floors were connected by an escalator, and the fire on 79 was visible from 78." (p. 209).
If you want a talking point, why not drop the "no time for a proper search" one and use this instead?

[rman]

3. wasn't the point to convince karlrschneider that firemen were on a floor

that was hit?

I think the point is well made, and it shows that debunkers base their claims mostly on lack of knowledge about the facts.

[hack89]

4. So what trapped the victims?

Why were the vast majority of deaths above the impact zone? What impeded their escape if it was not fires or major structural damage?

[petgoat]

5. What impeded their escape

Have you even bothered to read Brian Clark's account?

The stairways were clogged with drywall, it was smoky and dark and wet.


http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wtc/above.html


One supposes that they looked across the way to the other tower and saw that
the fires were all smoke and no heat, and decided that waiting for rescue
was the most prudent course of action.

[Andre II]

7. No inferno

Brian Clark says:
You could see through the wall and the cracks and see flames just, just licking up, not a roaring inferno, just quiet flames licking up and smoke sort of eking through the wall.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2001/worldtradecentertrans.shtml


My general question is:
As far as I know the official explanations for the collapse all take a fire inferno inside the building for granted. In how far do the witnesses accounts not contradict all explanations given from official sides?

[Andre II]

8. :Kick:

:Kick:

[Kevin Fenton]

9. It depends

The two official "official" accounts, NIST and FEMA/ASCE, both think that the fires played a big role into the collapse, although some other supporters of the "natural" collapse, for example Frank Greening, whose papers you can find on 911myths, takes a more realistic view of the fires, although he then doubles the most probable scope of impact damage (to over 25% of the structure!) and pretends the building doesn't have a hat truss and was therefore unable to redistribute loads to non-severed columns. Therefore, the building falls down in his model. He makes other mistakes like more than doubling the towers' weight, increasing the building's load-carrying capacity (which actually works against him) and, bizarrely, rotating the South Tower's core 90 degress. Generally, my impression is that the supporters of "natural" collapse always juggle the figures to get the damn things to fall over, i.e. if they think there is less fire damage, then they say there is more impact damage and if they think there is less impact damage, then they up the fire damage.

The buildings, rather embarassingly, didn't collapse in NIST's base case scenario, so they had to play about with the input variables to get it to do so. For example, they added over 200 tons of fictional combustibles to the two towers' fire floors (in addition, in the severe case scenario they fiddled with the input variables for the impact damage as well, making the planes go faster and increasing the planes' failure strain - so the fuel tanks would not rupture so badly when they hit the perimeter and would thus be heavier when they hit the core and more likely to sever the columns - especially as NIST decreased the columns' failure strain by 10-20%).

In addition to NIST's severe case figures being demonstrably false anyway, none of the recovered steel samples from the fire floors matched NIST's predictions (all the columns were fixed together - they could have conducted the heat away from the fire floors up and down the building - NIST seems to curtail this ability, thus making them hotter). When NIST found a steel sample that didn't match its model, it just inserted a local alteration into the model, instead of making a global adjustment - if the steel samples are representative, then there's no way the building fell over naturally, but there aren't that many samples, so it can be argued they are not representative.

They determined the extent of the fires by looking at photos and videos of the building - the fires can be seen near the windows, although, because of the angle, the darkness and the fire, you can't see much more than a couple of metres into the building. I don't doubt that there were some pretty nasty office fires going on there, although the jet fuel was gone in a few minutes.

If you ask me, the impact damage accounted for 10.5% (North) and 13.5% (South) of the building's gravity load-bearing capacity, the fires for maybe about 20% of what was left. That still leaves at least 70% of a building whose safety factor was at least three, so I really don't see why the collapse should start at all.

NIST doesn't claim there was any significant fire damage to 78 anyway. Brian Clark (and the others who got out from above the South Tower impact zone) used stairway A in the South Tower, which was outside the core on the fire floors (but inside the core almost everywhere else), right in the NW corner of the tower. NIST doesn't claim there were major fires here, but on the east side of the South Tower.

If you're really interested in witness accounts from the WTC, then you could have a look at 102 Minutes by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn, which has over a hundred.

[Andre II]

10. Thanks

:toast:

[Andre II]

6. Very good points! n/t