Tuesday, October 22, 2024
2 Planes Hit Twin Towers at Exactly the Worst Spot – Los Angeles Times Posted on September 12, 2001 by Usha McFarling, the LA Times’ Science Writer, is an example of outright lies and disinformation printed and posted daily in order to mislead, by reading lies – in the attempts to sway/manipulate our thoughts.
McFarling: The terrorists who piloted two planes into the World Trade Center apparently managed–either by careful calculation or evil luck–to have hit the buildings at their weakest spot to cause their disastrous collapse, structural engineers said Tuesday.
“It’s like hitting someone at the back of the knee,” said Nabih Youssef, a structural engineer who heads the Tall Building Council in Los Angeles and is an expert on the design and strength of skyscrapers. “With enough weight above you, you take the entire building down.”
Government officials believe the terrorists wrested control of the passenger jets, then skillfully steered the planes toward the doomed towers.
“Whoever took over the plane knew what they were doing,” said Greg Fenves, a professor of civil engineering at UC Berkeley.
Had the buildings been hit higher up the towers, they would have sustained damage but probably would not have collapsed because the weight on the damaged portion of the building would not have been enough to overwhelm a tower’s structural supports, engineers said.
Planes Had to Clear Nearby Buildings
The planes might have done more damage if they had hit the buildings lower, but they had to fly at a height of about 60 stories to clear nearby buildings. The first tower was hit at about the 80th story. The second tower was hit at about the 60th story.
“They showed some knowledge of physics in the attempt to make the hits as low as possible,” said Ron Hamburger, chief structural engineer for ABS Consulting in Oakland and a past president of the Structural Engineers Assn. of California.
To many who saw the buildings fall on television, the collapse resembled a planned demolition, especially in the way that the twin towers imploded–tumbling in on themselves. But engineering experts discounted the notion that additional explosives had been planted around the base of the buildings to ensure that they came down.
Demolition of a building the size of the ones in the World Trade Center would require “literally hundreds of charges around the building,” Hamburger said. “It’s inconceivable to me anyone would be able to place that many charges–even with years of planning.”
Instead, the impact of the planes themselves, and the tremendous heat generated by tons of burning jet fuel–upward of 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit–would suffice to destroy the buildings, said Scott Gustafson, owner of Demtech Inc. of Blue Springs, Mo., one of the world’s leading demolition experts.
A Boeing 767 has a fuel capacity of 20,000 gallons. A Boeing 757 has an 11,000-gallon fuel capacity. Because the planes were scheduled for transcontinental flights, they would have been fully loaded with fuel.
Plane Was ‘a Highly Explosive Bomb’
“The plane probably made its way halfway to the core of the structure,” Gustafson said. “The fuel went through a couple of floors, loaded them with fuel, and the impact opened a corridor to the outside for air. Some fuel probably got into the elevators and spread the fire. One thing led to another, and it just kept snowballing.”
“It was very well thought out,” said Hank Koffman, who directs the construction engineering department at USC. “These guys were evil geniuses.
“The plane was really a highly explosive bomb,” he said. Terrorism experts were calling the attack “low-tech and high-concept.”
Even though structural steel used in buildings is coated with a fireproof material, extreme amounts of heat cause the steel to soften and lose its strength. The weight of the floors above then causes them to crash.
“The technical term is progressive collapse–the slang term is pancaking,” said Ron Klemencic, president of Skilling Ward Magnusson Barkshire, the Seattle firm that engineered the World Trade Center. “What basically happens is that one floor falls on top of the floor below it, and with one floor falling on top of another there’s no way to stop it.”
The steel is protected to certain temperatures and for certain periods of time, but “an explosion of this magnitude would have exceeded all those limits,” said James C. Anderson, a professor of civil engineering at USC. “Buildings are not designed for this. Not in their wildest dreams.”
“Buildings are designed thinking of internally generated heat,” added Jon Magnusson, the chairman and chief executive of the Skilling firm. “Nobody anticipates putting jet fuel in a building. If you had to build buildings to withstand this sort of event, you wouldn’t be able to build any buildings.”
In 1945, a B-25 bomber smashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building. It caused an explosion and fire and killed 14 people but did not destroy the building. That plane was not loaded with the huge amount of fuel that Tuesday’s jetliners carried.
Engineers suggested that the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed first, even though it was hit by the second plane, because the fireball caused by the crash was larger and because the plane hit the corner of the building, rather than the center, where there is more structural support.
The World Trade Center towers have always been a familiar icon to those visiting New York. They were New York’s most frequently purchased postcard image.
To structural engineers, however, they are famous for something else: their strength.
“I was personally very surprised to see the entire building collapse,” Hamburger said.
‘Tubular Skyscraper’ Construction Hailed
The towers were so tall–1,362 and 1,368 feet–that they swayed by up to 11 inches in a strong wind. Building towers of such height posed challenges for engineers, requiring development of a new system of construction that placed major supporting elements in the outer portions of the building to increase stability. Traditionally, such elements had been placed in the building’s core around elevators and restrooms.
At the time of the towers’ construction, this “tubular skyscraper” scheme was hailed as the key that would push the world’s buildings to elevations undreamed-of by previous generations.
In most buildings, structural steel supports are 20 to 25 feet apart. In the World Trade Center, the supports are only 39 inches apart, said John Hooper, a structural engineer with the Skilling Ward Magnusson firm.
“Watching something come down without our say-so is just a nightmare,” Hooper said. End quote.
There’s more if you care to read it. Because a Mitchell B-25 bomber hit the Empire State Building in 1945 extensive research was done before building the Twin Towers. It was determined in study done in the 1960s it would take at least three Boeing 707 strikes, the largest airliners at the time, which are bigger than Boeing’s 757 and 767, before the Towers would lose structural integrity. Then that portion would Shear Off, not explode and implode, which is what we saw on 9/11 – controlled demolitions.
Remembering FDNY Hero Battalion Chief Orio J. Palmer | National September 11 Memorial & Museum Everyone should read three paragraphs:
On Sept. 11, after taking an elevator to the 41st floor Palmer climbed 37 flights of stairs with approximately 50 pounds of gear and made it to the South Tower sky lobby on the 78th floor. He is one of the few reported first responders able to make it that far up.
He reported via radio, out of breath and gasping, “Battalion Seven…Ladder 15, we’ve got two isolated pockets of fire. We should be able to knock it down with two lines. 78th floor numerous 10-45 Code Ones (victims).”
According to The 9/11 Commission Report, Palmer and his team freed a group of civilians who were trapped in an elevator one minute before the tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m. Following his death, the FDNY named its fitness test after Palmer.
The powers that be didn’t want the tapes released, and rags like the NY Times printed and posted pieces saying fires were raging above Chief Palmer on the 80th floor.
Reality: the North Tower was the first Tower struck, however the black-hearts had to drop the South Tower first due to the majority of the fires had burned themselves out.
Concrete and steel office buildings routinely have office fires, and Fire Fighters go in those building on each occasion because they know it is impossible for that type of structure to collapse via fire. Please go on youtube and watch video after video of buildings burning for hour after hour. You won’t find a collapse like we watched on 9/11 because it is not possible.
Next point: The jet fuel was exhausted/burned up in the flash fire which we all saw when the South Tower was hit. Cameras from different angles recorded the flash fire immediately after the strike, and that footage was played day after day by local, national and international media including the bbc etc. for at least a week afterwards.
The same news provider, who along with cnn, announced #7 had collapsed 20 minutes before it was dropped by a controlled demolition. That live bbc footage is at (4) 911 – Full video of BBC report on building 7 collpase before it collapsed – YouTube homepage (truthlink.info) for all to see.
The bbc’s broadcast referred to the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor more than once which is an example of the co-operation between Washington, NYC and London, https://www.
One paragraph from the pilgrims’ link: The Pilgrims of the United States came into being at a meeting at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York on 13 January 1903. The Pilgrims of Great Britain and the Pilgrims of the United States have reciprocal membership. By tradition the Pilgrims join together in a single toast His/Her Majesty the King/Queen and the President of the United States. The first speech on British soil by a new American Ambassador to the United Kingdom is to the Pilgrims of Great Britain and the first speech by a new British Ambassador to the United States is to the Pilgrims of the United States.
(First the pilgrims pack in 1902 & 1903, who founded chatham house in 1920, and the cfr in 1921, followed by the bilderbergs in 1954 and next the trilateral commission in 1973.)
https://www.ae911truth.org/
The South Tower and Empire State Building were hit at approximately the same floors. One remains standing today due to the Fact office fires cannot cause a concrete and steel building to explode and implode.
Ladies and Gentlemen, that can only be accomplished, an implosion, dropping a concrete and steel building atop its foundation, is by a carefully planned out and then set explosives to cause a controlled demolition.