Originally posted here in April of 2011
INTRO/CONTENTS
JUMP TO:
Steve Spak | Edward Current 1 | Diesel Fuel In WTC-7
Falling Debris Damaged WTC-7 | Demolition? | Fires Raged for Hours
Does Office Furniture Melt Steel | Q&A | Challenged with Building Number Seven
Debunking 9/11 Book Quote (Fuel) | Debunking 9/11 Book Quote (Bedfellows)
Edward Current 2 (UFOs and Explosions) | Pull It – BIG
- DEBUNKING 9/11 CONSPIRACIES is a resource kept up by METABUNK. It is dated and many links are bad and almost no media appears on it any longer, but still good reading.
- POPULAR MECHANICS has and excellent article dealing with some issues as well.
- I corralled some links out to some “COUNTER” 9/11 CONSPIRACY VIDEOS.
- I also have a decent C-O-N-spiracy PAGE to start at for multiple conspiracy matters. (These posts are old, so media and/or links may be dead once you reach a post of mine.)
JUDGE NAPOLITANO AND GERALDO RIVERA (WTC-7)
(HOTAIR hat-tip) The Judge and Geraldo Rivera Truthers!? Building Seven’s collapse was explained then as it is now and below.
I was not surprised to find out the Judge is a truther… people cannot be convinced that mankind is finite and saturated with failure and stupidity to explain away our missteps. The would rather believe in a very complex set of steps to leading to irrationality than that. “There HAS to be something more… a grand conspiracy to fool the intellectual prowess we all possess.
This is a many years update and additional media and pictures added (2023-09-05) to keep this post alive and well. The debate on Tower 7 still rages, and I must say, it is fun to show how awkward the counter position is.
STEVE SPAK
Before starting this “funfest,” I will say that one of the best refutations of the truther movement was a video done by fireman and photographer, Steve Spak. I used his mini-documentary for a while, until it was removed from his video account.
I tracked him down and we talked over the phone (many years ago now). I asked him why he would pull such a great resource off the internet. He responded that these nutters would come by his work and interrupt his daily life… so he just didn’t want to deal with all the nonsense.
I did track down — finally — an interview with Steve where much of this pertinent information comes out. So this is the first time Steve (God Bless Him) is back on my site in what? Seven years (April 10, 2011) Enjoy:
STEVE SPAK was partly in charge of the firefighting efforts around WTC-7, and was one of the main persons involved in the decision to let it burn. I had heard a previous interview years before this one, but Steve pulled it from the internet. His reason? 9/11 Truther crazies would show up at his station and interfear with every day work firefighters do around their station. They would yell at him, call him a liar, etc. He said he had had enough of these nuts and went silent. I believe this interview is after he retired.
I am starting to get some truther (e.g., 9/11 conspiracy theorists) traffic so I will post a Tower Seven resource blog for those who wish to come here and see for themselves (or to send a friend).
EDWARD CURRENT 1
The last word on the collapse of the original 7 World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Running down the mainstream engineering explanation, debunking common Truther myths, and answering frequently asked questions. Comments may be intentionally demolished…make your own video if you want to spread misinformation about this engineering disaster, or about anything else.
The “truther” would have us believe that the building (WTC 7) received no structural damage. This is just not the case.
FUEL IN WTC-7
Nor do you hear them mention that there was diesel fuel throughout the building:
Tower 7 housed the city’s emergency command center, so there were a number of fuel tanks located throughout the building—including two 6000-gal. tanks in the basement that fed some generators in the building by pressurized lines. “Our working hypothesis is that this pressurized line was supplying fuel [to the fire] for a long period of time,” according to Sunder. Steel melts at about 2,750 degrees Fahrenheit—but it loses strength at temperatures as low as 400 F. When temperatures break 1000 degrees F, steel loses nearly 50 percent of its strength. It is unknown what temperatures were reached inside WTC7, but fires in the building raged for seven hours before the collapse.
See NCSTAR Report WTC7 pp. 60-63 (104-107) 3.4.2 Diesel Fuel
DAMAGE FROM FALLING DEBRIS
Below are some examples or the damage caused by the collapse of Tower 1 and 2 — that show some of the damage caused by falling debris. What the truthers don’t mention either is that the falling debris from the Twin Towers damaged many of the high-pressure water lines the fire department needed to fight the fires in WTC 7. (As already pointed out above by Steve Spak and Edward Current):
When it was completed in 1973, the World Trade Centre was the tallest building in the world, thanks to many of its revolutionary construction methods. But none of these methods was enough to survive the attacks on September 11th where jet fuel fires led to a weakening of the steel that held the structure together, and ultimately caused both buildings to collapse.
Now I want to show the debris ring and an example (Bankers Trust) of the destruction from the original two towers collapsing:
There are also video examples of some of this debris actually hitting WTC 7:
Another lie about WTC 7 is that it took under 7-seconds to collapse… showing a similarity to a controlled demolition.
DEMOLITION? FREE FALL?
As an example of how persistent this idea of “demolition” is of WTC-7, here is a chap on X noting this idea as if it is sound. Think of the power tools (noise and lugging them in and out), the noise, the dust (have you fixed your own drywall at any point?) — all unnoticed:
Frankie, below, I think is speaking about the Twin Towers, while I am speaking about Building Seven. The demolition teams required for the Twin Towers would defiantly number 2 teams of 75 people [or more] and take many months of prep with all the associated “mess” noted below — compounded for a larger building and time needed.
My oldest son commented on the above in a series of texts:
The most top notch team in the world !
A clandestine multi point dark demolition mission synchronized with a plane hijacking….while having no correlation to the terrorist who also invested months in training themselves…. [in other words: There’s no evidence of anyone in the demo team coordinating the strike]
Literally be the wildest operation [in our countries history] ever
And no witnesses
You would have to use the Men In Black mind swipers
Like magically hiding all the Det cord
And explosives…. are very closely watched via the ATF for demolition people
A building like that takes quality materials
Honestly…. Macro evolution is looking more likely
FREE-FALLING
The times that the truthers originally gave to WTC-7 free-falling [in Loose Change and other sources] did not hold up, as this next video clearly shows:
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) conducted an extensive three-year scientific and technical investigation of the Sept. 11, 2001, collapse of the 47-story World Trade Center building 7 (WTC 7) in New York City. This video describes the results of this study, which concluded that fires on multiple floors in WTC 7–which were uncontrolled but otherwise similar to fires experienced in other tall buildings–caused an extraordinary event. Heating of floor beams and girders caused a critical support column to fail, initiating a fire-induced progressive collapse that brought the building down.
9/11 Debunked: Larry Silverstein’s “Pull It” Explained
I love the truth of a matter; it is the truth that shall set you free, not opinion. Be set free truther’s, be set free.
FIRES BURNED FOR HOURS!
I want to post some pictures and a video here that will curb some of the wild thoughts that the fire in the WTC-7 was small and contained. Often times this is the photo or scene shown on many of the conspiratorial “documentaries” or sites:
Then the Truther will say something like… “Wow! Such a rager of a fire.” HOWEVER, the fire burned for hours, and here are some accompanying pics that should be shared as well:
VIDEO OF FIRE – RPT’s RUMBLE:
Me hunting the WWW…
All Footage of WTC-7 from Steve Spak’s DVD:
“WTC 9-11-01 Day of Disaster”
MORE FOUND AT THE MAIL ONLINE:
It is easy to show the fact that there was a massive fire in WTC-7.
But people cannot be convinced easy… especially if they have thought this to be true for years.
MELTING STEEL?
Now I want to switch gears and repost an old blog on “MELTING STEEL,” another fallacy of the 9/11 truthers:
FUEL & STEEL
According to the 9/11 Truthers, gasoline doesn’t burn hot enough to melt steel. Remember that the type of heat experienced in the Twin Towers weakened the steel by more than 50%. This aside, what you see below is steel melted by gasoline. Apparently this can happen only in steel beams used in the construction of bridges, but not in buildings. (Watch your volume levels – static)
A newer edition to this “heat vs. bridges” is this one from BRETBART:
A section of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, collapsed when a tanker truck went up in flames on Sunday, and officials warned drivers to stay clear of the area.
The truck was hauling a petroleum product when the blaze ignited, according to the Associated Press (AP).
Q & A
These are responses, positive and negative to this post. I am sharing a few over the years as they are me responding to some supposed challenges.
very interesting indeed
Dayton introduced me to this blog of yours, and I gotta say, nice work.
Thanks Luke.
For many years I followed the New World Order stuff, reading many, many books on the subject, even going so far as to visit the local John Birch Society meeting once-in-awhile, and after many years I came to realize that if you critically looked into the evidences for this giant conspiracy to fool mankind knowingly, it is shown to be wanting.
Currently the conspiracy to fool mankind is backed by liberals, however, when Clinton was President, it was backed by conservatives. For a theory or model to explain every possible outcome and have completely different backers depending on who’s in office simply means that it is not a true theory or model because it is so elastic. And this is a conclusion that I came to a while back and had solidified by Michael Medved during his monthly Conspiracy Show (around the full moon). elastic.
Let me point something out though. The difference between the lib/con views of the giant conspiracy to fool mankind is that no leading political figure in the Republican Party accepted these crazy conspiracy myths as real. Today however, you have a huge chunk of the Democratic base accepting many of these wild stories and blame America first mentality, as well as many Democrat senators and representatives mentioning these crazy ideas.
Its funny, I can show someone proof that “X” didn’t happen, but “B” in fact did. They will simply respond that that too was a cover up meant to fool the general public, e.g., me. There is no debating such a person. In fact, this was the original reason for my creating a MySpace, was to challenge a few of my oldest sons friends on this exact matter.
As for us Christians . . . I use to think that this giant conspiracy would fool mankind into following the Anti-Christ. Now I think the delusion of this theory will drive many people to accept almost anything . . . even a messianic type figure. In other words, it’s the conspiracy theory ITSELF that breaks down the critical thinking and road to truth that makes accepting incredible claims without evidence, logic, history, and the like, more common place. Which is why having a healthy eschatology as a Christian is very important.
Sorry for the rant, again, glad you enjoyed.
PapaG
BUILDING .. NUMBER .. SEVEN
This was in response to a discussion about the Twin Towers:
POPULAR MECHANICS BOOK (DEBUNKING 9/11 MYTHS) | FUEL
Thank you Mark for your interaction here, it is welcomed.
Actually, building seven was hit by a massive amount of debris from Tower 1 or 2 (I will look into which tower when I get the National Geographic DVD, since that has the best shots of falling debris I have seen yet). What you may not know is that building 7 housed the city’s emergency command post. The building was designed to remain operational if power were to be lost. How was this building designed to keep running if power were to go out? This is the part we don’t hear too much about:
- …There were a number of fuel tanks throughout the building that may have supplied fuel to the fires for up to seven hours. In addition to smaller “day tanks” on each floor, two 6,000-gallon tanks in the basement fed most of the generators in the building….. Two generators, located on the fifth floor, were connected to the fuel tanks in the basement via a pressurized line. Says Sunder: “Our working hypothesis is that this pressurized line was supplying fuel [to the fire] for a long period of time”…. (p. 56)
- ….WTC 7 was built to straddle a Con Edison electrical substation. That required an unusual design in which a number of columns were engineered to carry exceptionally large loads, roughly 2,000 square feet of floor area for each floor. “What our preliminary analysis has shown is that if you take out just one column on one of the lower floors,” Sunder notes, “it could cause a vertical progression of collapse so that the entire section comes down.” (p. 55)
(Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand Up to the Facts)
Also note that trusses on the fifth and seventh floors were designed (similarly to WTC 1 and 2) to transfer loads from one set of columns to another.
(The following is added for clarity even though already ): I want the skeptic to look here at the damage caused by debris [let alone the fires] from the falling Twin Tower to building 7:
Oooops, I guess the building was damaged after all!
Do you work for the government? lol… first off just because people have conflicting theories and haven’t figured out everything doesn’t mean there wrong. Ok I am pretty convinced that 9-11 was an inside job from the videos I have seen and you call people who believe in this wacko… not a very good thing if you want people from the other side to listen to you. I haven’t read everything you said yet… I get headaches when I read. Do you have any google videos or something that I could watch that supports your side?
POPULAR MECHANICS BOOK (DEBUNKING 9/11 MYTHS) | BEDFELLOWS
The best bet is to buy The Learning Channel’s video “World Trade Center: Anatomy of the Collapse”, this is a great resource. Dude, you are talking to a guy that is going to recommend books all-day long… so you may want to find someone else to talk to. Some of the largest demolition companies were approached by the authors of the book I recommend, and they said that it would take two-teams of 75-people (each team) months to plant and strip all the supports columns on three floors. This went unnoticed?
Also, the “Loose Change” people have strange bedfellows… something the conspiracists always try to make connections to in regards to Bush and the oil companies…. I would say for them to look at the log in their eye first:
[….]
I am including some edited comments I made from another post to make clear some thinking here:
Grant,
First off let me welcome you to this site. While I will disagree with you you must keep in mind your opinion is welcome here.
Secondly, did you even read my post? There was a destructive agent involved, and it wasn’t Bush! Could it be… “SATAN?!” No, it was probably the 15,000 gallons of fuel in WTC-7. There are two important things to remember: there hasn’t been a building (1) like the Twin Towers Complex built that had (2) this amount of damage done to them. Keep in mind that the other buildings often used as “caught on fire and didn’t collapse” as proof that the Twin Towers or WTC-7 shouldn’t have were never hit by large debris [and in the case of the TT, planes] and then caught on fire with their particular architecture, 15,000-gallons of fuel in the building, and no water to fight it.
Another important thing to remember is that in those other buildings always mentioned, there was sufficient water to fight the fires and put them out or stop them from spreading. Most of the sites you probably visit do not show the photos and video I will show.
I will first – in the “UPDATE” section [photos shown above] – show the photo most see on conspiracy sites, and then show some video and shots that tell the whole story. But first, let’s review how this is different, than say a plane hitting the Empire State Building:
1) About 15,000 gallons of fuel, some of it high pressured “spouts of flames;”
2) Little to no water pressure to supply the firefighters hoses to fight the fire (damaged from the massive amount of debris from Tower 2);
3) Yes steel used in WTC-7… but no, not same design. The support structure of this building was wildly different than any other building’s design. So the factors of debris, architectural design, and fuel all were a deadly combination to any and all of these buildings.
A LATER UPDATE
FAKE VIDEO USED AS PROOF
UFOs and WTC-7
It’s funny because someone just posted this video that Eddie Current made. Here is the video posted on Twitter, with my response:
This video was put together by a well-known Truther on his way out of the movement to make a point. And his point is still being made: https://t.co/LxoKLTVjZW
.— Papa No Good Very Bad “Ultra-MAGA” Bal Giorgio (@papagiorgio200) July 21, 2023
I guess the guy missed the UFO added as well! LOL:
Many 9/11 “Truthers” weren’t fooled by my ridiculous fake video of 7 World Trade Center being taken down by controlled demolition. But those who were, well….. gullible people are gullible.
A well-known leader in the truther movement, has left the movement — but not before creating a fake video that the 9-11 truthers fell for, hook-line-and-sinker. Here are two videos by him.
HERE IS HIS FIRST VIDEO ABOUT LEAVING THE MOVEMENT:
A semi-comedic — but dead serious — account of my embarrassing brush with the delusional “Truth” movement.
Here is a waaay more in-depth “Pull-It” response.
Pull It
I can’t believe I am revisiting this. At any rate, someone challenged me with the Pull-It “conspiracy,” proving [somehw] that the building was brought down by charges/detonation devices. I was asked to watch this:
This is from one of the best sites on this matter, Debunking 9/11’s post on Pull-It:
Silverstein’s Quote:
- “I remember getting a call from the Fire Department commander, telling me they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, you know, ‘We’ve had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is just pull it.’ And they made that decision to pull and then we watched the building collapse.“
-Fact which is undisputed by either side, he was talking to the fire commander
-Fact which is undisputed by either side, both are not in the demolition business
Silverstein’s spokesperson, Mr. McQuillan, later clarified:
“In the afternoon of September 11, Mr. Silverstein spoke to the Fire Department Commander on site at Seven World Trade Center. The Commander told Mr. Silverstein that there were several firefighters in the building working to contain the fires. Mr. Silverstein expressed his view that the most important thing was to protect the safety of those firefighters, including, if necessary, to have them withdraw from the building.“
He could be lying, right? But here is the corroborating evidence…
“They told us to get out of there because they were worried about 7 World Trade Center, which is right behind it, coming down. We were up on the upper floors of the Verizon building looking at it. You could just see the whole bottom corner of the building was gone. We could look right out over to where the Trade Centers were because we were that high up. Looking over the smaller buildings. I just remember it was tremendous, tremendous fires going on. Finally they pulled us out. They said all right, get out of that building because that 7, they were really worried about. They pulled us out of there and then they regrouped everybody on Vesey Street, between the water and West Street. They put everybody back in there. Finally it did come down. From there – this is much later on in the day, because every day we were so worried about that building we didn’t really want to get people close. They were trying to limit the amount of people that were in there. Finally it did come down.” – Richard Banaciski
Here is more evidence they pulled the teams out waiting for a normal collapse from fire…
- “The most important operational decision to be made that afternoon was the collapse (Of the WTC towers) had damaged 7 World Trade Center, which is about a 50 story building, at Vesey between West Broadway and Washington Street. It had very heavy fire on many floors and I ordered the evacuation of an area sufficient around to protect our members, so we had to give up some rescue operations that were going on at the time and back the people away far enough so that if 7 World Trade did collapse, we [wouldn’t] lose any more people. We continued to operate on what we could from that distance and approximately an hour and a half after that order was [given], at 5:30 in the afternoon, World Trade Center collapsed completely” – Daniel Nigro, Chief of Department
- “Early on, there was concern that 7 World Trade Center might have been both impacted by the collapsing tower and had several fires in it and there was a concern that it might collapse. So we instructed that a collapse area — (Q. A collapse zone?) — Yeah — be set up and maintained so that when the expected collapse of 7 happened, we wouldn’t have people working in it. There was considerable discussion with Con Ed regarding the substation in that building and the feeders and the oil coolants and so on. And their concern was of the type of fire we might have when it collapsed.” – Chief Cruthers
- “Then we found out, I guess around 3:00 [o’clock], that they thought 7 was going to collapse. So, of course, [we’ve] got guys all in this pile over here and the main concern was get everybody out, and I guess it took us over an hour and a half, two hours to get everybody out of there. (Q. Initially when you were there, you had said you heard a few Maydays?) Oh, yes. We had Maydays like crazy…. The heat must have been tremendous. There was so much [expletive] fire there. This whole pile was burning like crazy. Just the heat and the smoke from all the other buildings on fire, you [couldn’t] see anything. So it took us a while and we ended up backing everybody out, and [that’s] when 7 collapsed…. Basically, we fell back for 7 to collapse, and then we waited a while and it got a lot more organized, I would guess.” – Lieutenant William Ryan
“Firehouse: Did that chief give an assignment to go to building 7?
Boyle: He gave out an assignment. I didn’t know exactly what it was,but he told the chief that we were heading down to the site.
Firehouse: How many companies?
Boyle: There were four engines and at least three trucks. So we’re heading east on Vesey, we couldn’t see much past Broadway. We couldn’t see Church Street. We couldn’t see what was down there. It was really smoky and dusty.”
“A little north of Vesey I said, we’ll go down, let’s see what’s going on. A couple of the other officers and I were going to see what was going on. We were told to go to Greenwich and Vesey and see what’s going on.So we go there and on the north and east side of 7 it didn’t look like there was any damage at all, but then you looked on the south side of 7 there had to be a hole 20 stories tall in the building, with fire on several floors. Debris was falling down on the building and it didn’t look good.
But they had a hoseline operating. Like I said, it was hitting the sidewalk across the street, but eventually they pulled back too. Then we received an order from Fellini, we’re going to make a move on 7. That was the first time really my stomach tightened up because the building didn’t look good. I was figuring probably the standpipe systems were shot. There was no hydrant pressure. I wasn’t really keen on the idea. Then this other officer I’m standing next to said, that building doesn’t look straight. So I’m standing there. I’m looking at the building. It didn’t look right, but, well, we’ll go in, we’ll see.
So we gathered up rollups and most of us had masks at that time. We headed toward 7. And just around we were about a hundred yards away and Butch Brandies came running up. He said forget it, nobody’s going into 7, there’s creaking, there are noises coming out of there, so we just stopped. And probably about 10 minutes after that, Visconti, he was on West Street, and I guess he had another report of further damage either in some basements and things like that, so Visconti said nobody goes into 7, so that was the final thing and that was abandoned.
Firehouse: When you looked at the south side, how close were you to the base of that side?
Boyle: I was standing right next to the building, probably right next to it.
Firehouse: When you had fire on the 20 floors, was it in one window or many?
Boyle: There was a huge gaping hole and it was scattered throughout there. It was a huge hole. I would say it was probably about a third of it, right in the middle of it. And so after Visconti came down and said nobody goes in 7, we said all right, we’ll head back to the command post. We lost touch with him. I never saw him again that day.
This proves there was a big hole on the south side of the building. From the photographic evidence and these quotes which aren’t meant to be technical, I suspect there was a large hole in the center of the building which may have gone up 10 stories connected to a large rip on the left side of the building which continued up another 10 or more stories. Together they would make “a hole 20 stories tall“.
Hayden: Yeah. There was enough there and we were marking off. There were a lot of damaged apparatus there that were covered. We tried to get searches in those areas. By now, this is going on into the afternoon, and we were concerned about additional collapse, not only of the Marriott, because there was a good portion of the Marriott still standing,but also we were pretty sure that 7 World Trade Center would collapse. Early on, we saw a bulge in the southwest corner between floors 10 and 13, and we had put a transit on that and we were pretty sure she was going to collapse. You actually could see there was a visible bulge, it ran up about three floors. It came down about 5 o’clock in the afternoon, but by about 2 o’clock in the afternoon we realized this thing was going to collapse.
Firehouse: Was there heavy fire in there right away?
Hayden: No, not right away, and that’s probably why it stood for so long because it took a while for that fire to develop. It was a heavy body of fire in there and then we didn’t make any attempt to fight it. That was just one of those wars we were just going to lose. We were concerned about the collapse of a 47-story building there. We were worried about additional collapse there of what was remaining standing of the towers and the Marriott, so we started pulling the people back after a couple of hours of surface removal and searches along thesurface of the debris. We started to pull guys back because we were concerned for their safety.
Firehouse: Chief Nigro said they made a collapse zone and wanted everybody away from number 7— did you have to get all of those people out?
Hayden: Yeah, we had to pull everybody back. It was very difficult. We had to be very forceful in getting the guys out. They didn’t want to come out. There were guys going into areas that I wasn’t even really comfortable with, because of the possibility of secondary collapses. We didn’t know how stable any of this area was. We pulled everybody back probably by 3 or 3:30 in the afternoon. We said, this building is going to come down, get back. It came down about 5 o’clock or so, but we had everybody backed away by then. At that point in time, it seemed like a somewhat smaller event, but under any normal circumstances, that’s a major event, a 47-story building collapsing. It seemed like a firecracker after the other ones came down, but I mean that’s a big building, and when it came down, it was quite an event. But having gone through the other two, it didn’t seem so bad. But that’s what we were concerned about. We had said to the guys, we lost as many as 300 guys. We didn’t want to lose any more people that day. And when those numbers start to set in among everybody… My feeling early on was we weren’t going to find any survivors. You either made it out or you didn’t make it out. It was a cataclysmic event. The idea of somebody living in that thing to me would have been only short of a miracle. This thing became geographically sectored because of the collapse. I was at West and Liberty. I couldn’t go further north on West Street. And I couldn’t go further east on Liberty because of the collapse of the south tower, so physically we were boxed in.
It mirrors what Silverstein said.
- WTC Building 7 appears to have suffered significant damage at some point after the WTC Towers had collapsed, according to firefighters at the scene. Firefighter Butch Brandies tells other firefighters that nobody is to go into Building 7 because of creaking and noises coming out of there. [Firehouse Magazine, 8/02 — METABUNK]
- Battalion Chief John Norman later recalls, “At the edge of the south face you could see that it is very heavily damaged.” [Firehouse Magazine, 5/02 — METABUNK]
Heavy, thick smoke rises near 7 World Trade Center. Smoke is visible from the upper floors of the 47-story building. Firefighters using transits to determine whether there was any movement in the structure were surprised to discover that is was moving. The area was evacuated and the building collapsed later in the afternoon of Sept. 11.