Sulphided steel at the WTC

[Bushwacker]

[Stefan]

Oh Bushwacker you genuius you - sitting on your chair at the station you figured out what the FEMA report couldn't!

FEMA were no doubt aware of sulfur present in the dry wall mix. But they are scientists and therefore could not credibly claim that beign exposed to an office fire would make dry wall act this way. They clearly said that it was a mystery.

Your notion that just by being exposed to an office fire dry wall was able to form a liquid eutectic mixture which corroded the steel.

Let's meet up and try it - lets get some dry wall, put it on top of a hunk of structural steel and chuck it in a bonfire and see if we get the same result.

But on 9/11 a building collapse which would normally take expert planning (WTC7) to make fall neatly fell from random damage - and complex chemical reactions happened when fire touched dry wall.

I'd love to take a day to wander around in a critic's mind - I imagine lots of candy floss fairies and marsh mallow rivers and cartoon birds singing...

[Bushwacker]

[Stefan]

Bushwacker,
First off all I appologise for the sarcastic tone of my last mail - it was the end of a trying day at work and I had little patience.

I have respect for the working scientists on both NIST and FEMA - I have no respect for the heads of each report (consisting of much the same people - who also headed Silverstein's Insurance Claim Report along with the OCK Bombing report) - these the people the government turn to in order to sign off any dubious happening at all - they decide what goes into the report, what the working scientists do, and deal with the conclusions.

So a scientist might do a perfectly good piece of work showing that the floor assemblies sagged 2 to 4 inches, then the heads of the report will throw it out and decide they sagged 42 inches instead, for example.

FEMA scientists worked hard and dedicated an entire appendix to this odd steel, now in discussion, and concluded they did not know where that amount of sulphur would come from. They also stated that the steel was probably at 1000 degrees. Do you think a scientist admits drawing a blank without looking into possibilities? Do you think the team working on it did not consider and look for any plausible source of enough sulfur?

They drew a blank and suggested the next investigation looked into it - NIST ignored it. But never fear - here come the ametuer non-scientist critics to stab around in the dark and "solve" the mystery the scientists couldn't simply by saying "well an ingredient of drywall is sulfur - Case Closed!" do you have any idea how absurd the land of critic-dom is?

What gets me is how many complex scenarios - usually the result of hard work in a lab or months of detailed planning - supposedly happened by complete random on 9/11. We have dry wall + fire = a liquid eutectic mixture which can corrode and melt along the grains of steel. No lab conditions, just chuck a bit of drywall on a fire next to some steel and it eats through it.

Bushwhacker - shouldn't someone get the word out? Thousands of steel buildings use dry wall around the world - if any office fire will turn the steel into swiss cheese shouldn't it be banned immediately and every building shut down until they are cleared?

Of course not - because like many other claims - these sorts of things only happen on 9/11.

WTC7 is another perfect example - even you must admit that if you were to take a building the same as building 7 and recreate that collapse - it WOULD take experts and a lot of careful planning? You agree to this surley? Just lopping off a few bits of the building and starting a couple of fires would not re-produce it? But on 9/11 that was all that was needed.

NIST could not create a model to demonstrate complete collapse - yet on 9/11 it was so likely that it happened to two different buildings with two different patterns of damage and fire.

I even read on some critic site a claim that in correct conditions, water poured onto hot steel can cause a reaction which will make it melt. A little research showed this is an incredibly delicate reaction which takes exactly the right parameters - but on 9/11 critics say - if anything is remotely possible - it happened.

It is this kind of junk logic which turned me towards 9/11 truth in the first place.

[Bushwacker]

You cannot have much respect for the working scientists of FEMA and NIST if you believe that they allow reports to be published in their name that misrepresent their work!

You in fact are misrepresenting their work by your repeated pretence that they tested trusses in their assumed condition after the impacts, when in fact they tested them in their intact "as built" state.

The FEMA report on the steel concluded:

The severe corrosion and subsequent erosion of Samples 1 and 2 are a very unusual event. No clear explanation for the source of the sulfur has been identified. The rate of corrosion is also unknown. It is possible that this is the result of long-term heating in the ground following the collapse of the buildings. It is also possible that the phenomenon started prior to collapse and accelerated the weakening of the steel structure. A detailed study into the mechanisms of this phenomenon is needed to determine what risk, if any, is presented to existing steel structures exposed to severe and long-burning fires.

There is nothing there to indicate that they had considered and eliminated possible sources of suphur, had they done such a substantial piece of work they would surely have reported on it.

You then move on to misrepresent me, a far more serious matter!
I did not say that gypsum was the source, case closed, I pointed out that gypsum present on large quantities and in a finely divided and all pervasive form after the collapse, was a far more likely source than thermate, not known to be present and anyway containing only a very small percentage of sulphur. I also pointed out other possible sources, and the known reaction of molten aluminium with calcium sulphate. Like it or not, the reaction did happen at the WTC, not under laboratory conditions, and at random, whatever the source of the sulphur.

There is no need to close existing buildings, their occupants would not anyway survive a severe and long-burning fire, the danger would be that the phenomenon would hasten their collapse, causing other damage. For what it is worth, I think personally that it occurred in the debris pile, when some steel stayed at high temperatures for weeks. FEMA is right, it should be investigated, whether NIST is planning to do so I have no idea.

There is little point discussing the collapse of WTC7 until NIST reaches its long-awaited conclusions. However, it is not correct to say that it suffered just a couple of fires. The FDNY considered it fully involved with fire and likely to collapse, the fact that it then did so does not surprise me.

NIST did not attempt to create a model to demonstrate complete collapse of the towers, which would be a pointless exercise. A simple calculation shows that once the fire floors gave way, total collapse was inevitable.

If junk logic turned you on to 9/11 truth, what on earth do you make of 9/11 truth sites, even the best of which are full of it? Not to mention the unmitigated rubbish put out by the no-planers. I got turned on to 9/11 criticism not only by the illogic of the truth movement, but by the lies and misrepresentation that are so prevalent in it.

[Stefan]

And where is this simple calculation - in the NIST report?

[Bushwacker]

[pepik]

[Stefan]

Not cover to cover - but I have read much of it. And I know they did no calculations to demonstrate the collapse would progress - they simply said it was "inevitable" and left it at that. Since such a thing has never happened before - I think that is very suspicious.

[pepik]

[sam]

[marky 54]

[Bushwacker]

[Dallas]

Falling through 86 intact floors != freefall. How do you account for freefall time without CD?

[Bushwacker]

[Dallas]

[Bushwacker]

[Micpsi]

Maybe, but what you totally ignore is that there is NO video evidence that there was ANY floor-by-floor collapse. One can argue until eternity about whether such a type of collapse was theoretically possible. But all such discussion is beside the point because, when one watches the videos in slow motion of the South and North Towers undergoing destruction, one does not see falling floors. Instead, one sees successive explosions, floor-by-floor, like a controlled demolition. Plumes of smoke/debris are seen erupting from a few windows twenty floors below the level of destruction at that instant - clearly from mistimed firing of demolition charges, because, if air compressed by falling floors had caused them, more plumes nearer the destruction level where the pressure would be higher would have occurred. Instead of successive compactification of floors, the tower simply gets rapidly turned mostly to dust, with some massive debris hurled horizontally at speeds too high to be explained by available kinetic energy of impacting material. Even if the floors had fallen, the 240 core columns would have remained intact. Instead, there was nothing left of them, either! Impossible, unless they, too, were blown up just prior to commencement of the general destruction.

[sam]

[Micpsi]

[sam]