This is a post I made in the UK911 truth 'Critics' Corner' forum. Unfortunately it seems to have been buried in a rabid flamewar between CT advocates and deniers.
When I first saw this footage I was pretty stunned, but then I wasn't aware that there had been much forewarning of the collapse of WTC7 circulated. It's clear now with the CNN, BBC News 24 and BBC World footage that there was not only an anticipation of a collapse on the ground, but anticipation in the newsrooms as well, to the extent that when the collapse was finally broken on CBS Byron Pitts, CBS News correspondent said:
"About an hour ago, World Trade Center building number 7 collapsed. ... It was the one calamity that was not a surprise. Police had evacuated the area hours ago, fearful building number 7 would indeed fall down."
In fact the place was evacuated before midday.
According to Captain Michael Currid, the sergeant at arms for the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, some time after the collapse of the North Tower, he sees four or five fire companies trying to extinguish fires in Building 7 of the WTC.
Someone from the city?s Office of Emergency Management tells him that WTC 7 is in serious danger of collapse. Currid says, ?The consensus was that it was basically a lost cause and we should not lose anyone else trying to save it.? Along with some others, he goes inside WTC 7 and yells up the stairwells to the fire fighters, ?Drop everything and get out!? [Murphy, 2002, pp. 175-176] However, other accounts contradict this, claiming that no attempt is made to fight the fires in WTC 7 (see (11:30 a.m.) September 11, 2001). One report later claims, ?Given the limited water supply and the first strategic priority, which was to search for survivors in the rubble, FDNY did not fight the fires [in WTC 7].? [Fire Engineering, 9/2002] And a 2002 government report says, ?the firefighters made the decision fairly early on not to attempt to fight the fires, due in part to the damage to WTC 7 from the collapsing towers.? [Federal Emergency Management Agency, 5/1/2002, pp. 5-21] Building 7 eventually collapses late in the afternoon of 9/11 (see (5:20 p.m.) September 11, 2001).
911 timeline
So the idea that WTC7 was doomed was circulating already by midday, and it appears this information may have originated from the OEM. There is word of a 'appraisals' that determined that WTC7 was 'compromised'.
Fire Chief Daniel Nigro: "The biggest decision we had to make on the first day was to clear the area and create a collapse zone around the severely damaged 7 World Trade Center, a 47-story building heavily involved in fire. A number of fire officers and companies assessed the damage to the building. The appraisals indicated that the building's integrity was in serious doubt. I issued the orders to pull back the firefighters and define the collapse zone. It was a critical decision; we could not lose any more firefighters. It took a lot of time to pull everyone out, given the emotionalism of the day, communications difficulties, and the collapse terrain." (Daniel Nigro, "Report from the Chief of Department," Fire Engineering, 9/2002)
Frank Cruthers (in another account): "Of primary importance early on in the operation was the structural condition of 7 World Trade Center. Assistant Chief Frank Fellini had been approached by several chiefs who were concerned about its stability. It had been heavily damaged in the collapse and was well-involved in fire. Chief Fellini had looked at it and described to us some damage to its south side; he felt that structural components of the building had been comprised[sic]. So when Chief Dan Nigro arrived at the command post, he convened a meeting of staff chiefs, and this was a major subject of the meeting. We were all in accord about the danger of 7 WTC, and we all agreed that it was not too conservative of a decision to establish a collapse zone for that building, move the firefighters out of the collapse area, and maintain that strategy." (Frank Cruthers, "Postcollapse Command," Fire Engineering, 9/2002)
So it makes sense that with the setting up of the 'collapse zone' firefighting efforts were over by midday on WTC7.
What is not certain is exactly what evidence they based these conclusions on, or which individuals initiated speculation of a possible collapse. However the collapse of a skyscraper through fire and debris can't have seemed like such an unlikely event after witnessing the collapse of the twin towers already that morning.
Then we have Larry Silverstein's recollection of a decision to "pull it"
I remember getting a call from the fire department commander, telling me they were not sure that they were going to be able to contain the fire. I said, ?You know, we?ve had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it." And they made that decision to pull and then we watched the building collapse.
PBS, 9/10/2002
Which is a rather odd comment, as the wording implies little time elapsing between the 'pulling' and the collapse. If Silverstein was referring to a withdrawal of firefighters (an event that is placed by most sources as no later than midday) it certainly downplays the 5+ hours that elapsed before the collapse itself. Could the ambiguity of his language suggest that he might in fact be referring to the controlled demolition of building 7? It seems an odd thing to admit to on TV, especially with hundreds of millions of dollars insurance money at stake for this building alone, but then when put on the spot about it, could it be he was being deliberately ambiguous, should proof of CD later come to light?
It's clear that WTC7 had sustained significant damage to its southern face as a consequence of the collapse of the North Tower. What's maddeningly unclear is the true extent of this damage - by the time of the collapse it was clearly 'fully involved in fire' but the structural damage is far from certain - there is photographic and film evidence of damage to the SW corner, but no-where else. According to
www.study911.com only one eyewitness talks about a substantial hole in the centre of the building.
Captain Chris Boyle:
Boyle:"...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."
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."
This is contradicted by Former NYPD Officer Craig Bartmer:-
As I approached, I came down and saw the big hubbub going on around Building 7. I walked around it, I saw a hole, I didn't see a hole bad enough to knock a building down though. There was definitely fire in the building, but I didn't hear any creaking or any indication that it was going to come down.
It had some damage to it but nothing like what they're saying...nothing to account for what we saw. I am shocked at the story we've heard about it, to be quite honest.
Link
It's of course possible the extent of the damage was obscured by smoke by the time it was witnessed by Bartmer, but it's also possible that Boyle was mistaken or exaggerating, as he seems to be the sole publicly available source for this damage.
Regardless of the exact extent of the fires and the damage to the south face, it seems probable that the damage was asymmetrical. If people saw building 7 buckling or leaning as a consequence of its damage, it seems strange that the collapse, when it occurred was a vertical collapse into its own footprint rather than a toppling in the direction of the damage. Even NIST have admitted that their best hypothetical collapse scenario from fire and structural damage has a low probability of occurring.
WTC7's collapse bears all the hallmarks of a controlled demolition. It doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to have predicted WTC7's collapse, but the nature of its collapse seems anomalous.
The widespread predictions of collapse clearly substantially impacted the media perception of the event when it did occur, and served to lessen reaction to what was an extremely unusual event.
It seems possible, if not probable then, that Silverstein's decision 'to pull' was in fact an instruction to conduct an ad hoc demolition to bring the building down in a controlled manner, which had the obvious side benefit of avoiding any costly repairs should the building have remained standing, or loss of life due to an unpredictable toppling.
If that is the case then the question has to be, 'is this remotely feasible?' According to Dutch CD expert Danny Jowenko, the nature of WTC7s structure would have made such an ad hoc demolition feasible, providing the ready availability of a group capable of the task.
INTERVIEWER: These are the steel carrying columns:
JOWENKO: ( looks at the positioning of WTC7's columns)
That is not really much. No that is not really much. That explains quite a lot.
INTERVIEWER: What does it explain? That you can do it fast? That you can blow it up fast?
JOWENKO: (Nodding) You can blow this up fast...
.<snip>
...You could even do this with cutting torches and cutter charges.
Jowenko interview:-
Part1
Part2
Part3
Could the fine people from Controlled Demolition Inc (who so expeditiously removed the steel from Ground Zero in the following days) have been on hand? It seems hard to imagine such a scenario without foreknowledge of the attacks, regardless of whether you believe in the technical feasibility of a rapid 'pulling' of WTC7.
So where does this leave the BBC footage? Clearly there was anticipation of the imminent WTC7 collapse. How did anyone know a collapse was imminent? How did a story get on the wires that WTC7 was collapsed or collapsing when the event itself was so sudden - 6.5 seconds, straight down? In fact it was so sudden that no network, to my knowledge caught the collapse live.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwjmqkjwnvQ
People near to the building immediately prior to collapse were warned verbally or by radio rather than by the evidence of their own senses. How did anyone know the building had 'gone critical?', unless in fact the final collapse was initiated not by the force of gravity, but by human beings?
As an interesting aside, if it was the OEM, and not the FDNY that was the source of the prescient BBC and CNN stories, it wouldn't have been their first such prediction:
I said the buildings are going to collapse; we need to evac everybody out. With a very confused look he said who told you that? I said I was just with John at OEM. OEM says the buildings are going to collapse; we need to get out.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/oem_wtc.html
Giuliani:
?I went down to the scene and we set up headquarters at 75 Barkley Street, which was right there with the Police Commissioner, the Fire Commissioner, the Head of Emergency Management, and we were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse. And it did collapse before we could actually get out of the building, so we were trapped in the building for 10, 15 minutes, and finally found an exit and got out, walked north, and took a lot of people with us.?
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/wtc_giuliani.html
