- Despite reports from numerous eyewitnesses and experts,
including news reporters on the scene, who heard or saw explosions
immediately
before the collapse of the World Trade Center, there has been virtual
silence
in the mainstream media.
-
- Television viewers watching the horrific events of Sept.
11 saw evidence of explosions before the towers collapsed. Televised images
show what appears to be a huge explosion occurring near ground level, in
the vicinity of the 47-story Salomon Brothers Building, known as WTC 7,
prior to the collapse of the first tower.
-
- Van Romero, an explosives expert and former director
of the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center at New Mexico Tech,
said on Sept. 11, "My opinion is, based on the videotapes, that after
the airplanes hit the World Trade Center there were some explosive devices
inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse."
-
- The collapse of the structures resembled the controlled
implosions used to demolish old structures and was "too methodical
to be a chance result of airplanes colliding with the structures,"
Romero told The Albuquerque Journal hours after the attack.
-
- Implosions are violent collapses inwards, which are used
to demolish buildings in areas of high density, to prevent damage to
surrounding
buildings. Precision-timed explosives are placed on strategic load-bearing
columns and beams to cause the controlled collapse.
-
- Demolition experts say that towers are the most difficult
buildings to bring down in a controlled manner. A tower tends to fall like
a tree, unless the direction of its fall is controlled by directional
charges.
The WTC towers "smokestacked" neatly, falling within the
boundaries
of their foundations.
-
- Skeptics say this could not have happened coincidentally
and it must have been caused by strategically placed and precisely timed
internal charges. Videotape images may reveal these internal charges
precipitating
the controlled demolition of the towers and WTC 7.
-
- Romero is vice president of research at New Mexico
Institute
of Mining and Technology, which studies explosive materials and the effects
of explosions on buildings, aircraft and other structures, and often
assists
in forensic investigations into terrorist attacks, often by setting off
similar explosions and studying the effects.
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- After being hit by the aircraft, the twin towers appeared
to be stable. Then without warning, at 9:58 a.m. the south tower imploded
vertically downwards, 53 minutes after being hit. At 10:28, 88 minutes
after being struck, the north tower collapsed.
-
- "It would be difficult for something from the plane
to trigger an event like that," Romero said. If explosions did cause
the towers to collapse, "It could have been a relatively small amount
of explosives placed in strategic points," he said.
-
- "One of the things terrorist events are noted for
is a diversionary attack and secondary device," Romero said. Attackers
detonate an initial, diversionary explosion, in this case the collision
of the planes into the towers, which brings emergency personnel to the
scene, then detonate a second explosion.
-
- Ten days after the attack, following criticism of his
initial remarks, Romero did an about-face in his analysis of the collapse,
"Certainly the fire is what caused the building to fail," he
told the Journal on Sept. 21.
-
- The twin towers were struck by Boeing 767's carrying
approximately 23,000 gallons of fuel.
-
- However, there is other information that lends credence
to Romero's controversial scenario. One eyewitness whose office is near
the World Trade Center told AFP that he was standing among a crowd of
people
on Church Street, about two-and-a-half blocks from the South tower, when
he saw "a number of brief light sources being emitted from inside
the building between floors 10 and 15." He saw about six of these
brief flashes, accompanied by "a crackling sound" before the
tower collapsed. Each tower had six central support columns.
-
- One of the first firefighters in the stricken second
tower, Louie Cacchioli, 51, told People Weekly on Sept. 24: "I was
taking firefighters up in the elevator to the 24th floor to get in position
to evacuate workers. On the last trip up a bomb went off. We think there
were bombs set in the building."
-
- Kim White, 32, an employee on the 80th floor, also
reported
hearing an explosion. "All of a sudden the building shook, then it
started to sway. We didn't know what was going on," she told People.
"We got all our people on the floor into the stairwell . . . at that
time we all thought it was a fire . . .We got down as far as the 74th floor
. . . then there was another explosion."
-
- The accepted theory is that as the fires raged in the
towers, the steel cores in each building were heated to 2,000 degrees
Fahrenheit,
causing the support beams to buckle.
-
- A lead engineer who designed the World Trade Center
Towers
expressed shock that the towers collapsed after being hit by passenger
jets.
-
- "I designed it for a 707 to hit it," Lee
Robertson,
the project's structural engineer said. The Boeing 707 has a fuel capacity
of more than 23,000 gallons, comparable to the 767's 23,980-gallon fuel
capacity.
-
- Another architect of the WTC, Aaron Swirski, lives in
Israel and spoke to Jerusalem Post Radio after the attack: "It was
designed around that eventuality to survive this kind of attack,"
he said.
-
- Hyman Brown, a University of Colorado civil engineering
professor and the World Trade Center's construction manager, watched in
confusion as the towers came down. "It was over-designed to withstand
almost anything including hurricanes, high winds, bombings and an airplane
hitting it," he said.
-
- Brown told AFP that although the buildings were designed
to withstand "a 150-year storm" and the im pact of a Boeing 707,
he said the jet fuel burning at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit weakened the
steel.
Brown ex plained that the south tower collapsed first as it was struck
lower with more weight above the impact area.
-
- Brown told AFP that he "did not buy" the theory
that the implosion was caused by the fires sucking the air out of the lower
floors, which has been speculated.
-
- The contractor who is reported to have been the first
on the WTC collapse scene to cart away the rubble that remains is a company
that specializes in the scientific demolition of large buildings,
Controlled
Demolition, Inc. (CDI) of Baltimore, headed by Mark Loizeaux.
-
- CDI is the same contractor that demolished and hauled
away the shell of the bombed Oklahoma City Murrah building, actions that
prevented independent investigators from pursuing evidence on leads
suggesting
that there were bombs set off inside the building.
-
- In February 2000, a federal grand jury indicted Mark
Loizeaux, Douglas Loizeaux and Controlled Demolition, Inc. on charges of
falsely reporting campaign contributions by asking family members and CDI
employees to donate to the campaign of Rep. Elijah E. Cummings
(D-Md.).
-
- The Baltimore Sun reported that the illegal contributions
allegedly occurred between 1996 and 1998. The Loizeaux brothers and CDI
were acquitted in Sept ember 2000. Cleaning up the estimated 1.2 million
tons of rubble will reportedly cost $7 billion and take up to a
year.
-
- Removing the debris has also been controversial. The
police said that some scrap metal has been diverted to mob-controlled
businesses
rather than the dump where investigators are examining rubble for clues
and human remains.
-
- The second plane nearly missed the South Tower, cutting
through a corner. Most of its fuel burned in an outside explosion. However,
this building collapsed first, long before the North Tower, into which
a similar plane entered completely.
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