Mysteries abound about World Trade Center 7's (WTC-7) demise on September 11, 2001. In
the early evening in the Big Apple of that horrific day this 47-story steel building suddenly collapsed. An odd
series of failures had occurred.
They begin when a small amount of debris falls from the implosion
of World Trade Center 1, a block away. Somehow small fires subsequently break out in WTC-7. The fireproofing
systems completely fail. The fires burn all day from an unknown fuel. Eventually, the flames
reach tanks of diesel fuel at ground level. Suddenly, the penthouse begins to fall. The entire
lower levels immediately experience the same massive failures. About seven seconds later
the entire building is gone. It takes a minute for 2 million square feet of office
space to become a large pile of rubble.
Satellite photos later confirm that the vast majority of WTC-7's rubble rests in what
was the building’s footprint. The neatness of the rubble enables clean-up crews to
swiftly remove and recycle the steel after just a
cursory examination.
World Trade Center 7 (WTC-7) was built in 1985. It was located across Vesey Street from
the main World Trade Center compound. It was a largely-conventional steel building which
had forty-four floors. Somewhat dark and sleek, it was designed by Emery Roth & Sons.
It collapsed at 5:20 p.m. on September 11, 2001. Fortunately, WTC-7 had been evacuated and no
one is known to have been killed by its demise.
It fell about seven hours after
the strange collapses
of the North and South Twin Towers. (WTC-2, the South tower, collapsed around 10:00 a.m. WTC-1, the
North, came down about a half hour later.) The unknown quantity of debris from WTC-1 is said to have
caused fires in WTC-7 that prevailed on the 11th floor.
Sherlock Holmes once remarks how odd it is that a guard dog did not bark at a midnight intruder.
Similarly, it is curious how few people bothered to photograph a building about to totally
collapse when destruction of an
inconceivable scale had been released just hours before (only 200' away). Apparently, the
WTC-7 fires were not photogenic. Indeed, when viewing the extant
documentation there are
only small fires that are localized within the offices of the Securites Exchange Commission (SEC). Ironically,
never before 9/11/01 in history has a steel building even partially collapsed from a fire. Neither
has any since.
According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (“World Trade Center Building Performance Study”,
document number 403, May, 2002), 36,000 gallons of
diesel fuel was stored in diesel tanks just above and at ground level. The fuel, stored in
fire-resistant containers, was there to run backup generators. However, the report
never says for sure whether any burned. It also fails to confirm that burning diesel
was the source of the building’s collapse. The report even ignores the biggest mystery of all. How
this building could have fallen in its own footprint rather unlike what is expected
from the Leaning Tower of Pisa is not discussed.
FEMA’s report is filled with rampant speculation and hypothetical scenarios. Throughout
it are weasel-words such as “appears” and “apparently”. The tone is set in the first
paragraph. It says that the “performance of” World Trade Center 7’s collapse is “of
significant interest because it appears the collapse was due primarily to fire, rather
than any impact damage from the collapsing [Twin] towers.” Overall, very little of
this report is stated with conviction.
FEMA's nonchalance about WTC-7’s collapse is stunning. Structural failures of this magnitude
do not normally take place. In addition, there was high-profile, large-budget government
agencies leasing office space in WTC-7 that day. Besides the SEC, the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Department of Defense (DOD), the Internal Revenue
Service (IRS) and New York’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) were all tenants. None of
the current heads of these departments have been vocal in demanding to know why this
building collapsed. In addition, while some details have been released, a full accounting of
what data these agencies lost has not been prominently reported.
Another source of curiosity is what the NYC Office of Emergency Management (OEM)
was doing prior to 9/11/01. We know that the OEM took up the entire 23rd floor, serving as
some sort of command center for then-Mayor Guiliani. Also, currently their
website
offers “Pet Preparedness” tips. However, their activities at that time remain a
source of widespread speculation.
With the two-year anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Center arriving the
subject of WTC-7's odd disintegration is due some scrutiny by the liberal US media. To name just one,
does Z Magazine believe that we
now live in an era when tall steel buildings can collapse in large cities without any
significant discussion of why? Even George Orwell might have trouble imagining
that scenario.
Scott Loughrey
|
