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Are Millions of Business People At Risk of Dying In Collapsing Buildings?
This is one in a series of safety-related public service announcements.
Death Traps?
Millions of people work in or visit high-rise buildings … assuming the buildings were more or less safe.
But it turns out that there is a severe, lethal risk of sudden collapse in even the best-made skyscrapers in America, Britain, Germany, Japan and other nations worldwide.
A New Understanding
Before 9/11, no modern steel-frame high-rise building had ever collapsed due to fire.
9/11 radically changed our understanding of architecture and engineering …
Specifically, 3 steel-frame buildings collapsed on that day. That includes one that was never hit by a plane, and had only small, isolated office fires prior to its collapse.
This was unexpected, as much hotter, longer-lasting fires have never before brought down a modern steel-frame office building. For example, the 2005 Madrid skyscraper fire “reached 800 degrees Celsius (1,472 F), said Javier Sanz, head of Madrid firefighter” and lasted some 20 hours without collapsing.
In other words, officials who write building codes, architects and structural engineers had never before worried about small office fires causing office buildings from collapsing.
Appendix A of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s World Trade Center Building Performance Study notes:
In the case of the fire at One Meridian Plaza, the fire burned uncontrolled for the first 11 hours and lasted 19 hours. Contents from nine floors were completely consumed in the fire. In addition to these experiences in fire incidents, as a result of the Broadgate fire, British Steel and the Building Research Establishment performed a series of six experiments at Cordington in the mid-1990s to investigate the behavior of steel frame buildings. These experiments were conducted in a simulated, eight-story building. Secondary steel beams were not protected. Despite the temperature of the steel beam reaching 800-900 °C (1,500-1,700 °F) in three tests (well above the traditionally assumed critical temperature of 600 °C [1,100 °F]), no collapse was observed in any of the six experiments.
Underwriters Laboratories tested the steel components at the Twin Towers and found they could withstand fires for hours without failure:
“NIST [the government agency - National Institute of Standards and Technology, a branch of the Department of Commerce - responsible for investigating the collapse of the 3 buildings on 9/11] contracted with Underwriters Laboratories, Inc. to conduct tests to obtain information on the fire endurance of trusses like those in the WTC towers…. All four test specimens sustained the maximum design load for approximately 2 hours without collapsing… The Investigation Team was cautious about using these results directly in the formulation of collapse hypotheses. In addition to the scaling issues raised by the test results, the fires in the towers on September 11, and the resulting exposure of the floor systems, were substantially different from the conditions in the test furnaces. Nonetheless, the [empirical test] results established that this type of assembly was capable of sustaining a large gravity load, without collapsing, for a substantial period of time relative to the duration of the fires in any given location on September 11.” (NIST, 2005, p. 140).
Other fire tests have also failed to cause failures at high temperatures.
So the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 on 9/11 (not hit by a plane) was a surprise … and should be a huge concern to the millions of people who work in office buildings worldwide.
To get to the bottom of this issue, Washington’s Blog reached out to a former manager at Underwriters Laboratories – Kevin Ryan – to seek reassurance that the danger was small for the millions of financial services industry workers, business men, lawyers, web executives, and others who work in office buildings:
[Question] Wasn’t the steel used in the Twin Towers and Building 7 of inferior quality? So as long as builders use better-quality steel, can’t we be assured of safety?
[Kevin Ryan] The steel used to build WTC Building 7 was the standard grade for high-rise construction–still used to this day–called ASTM A36 grade steel. It was not inferior in any way from the steel used to make many of the other high-rise buildings in America.
For the Twin Towers, fourteen different grades of steel were used in the construction, including A36, which has a nominal strength of 36 ksi. The other grades used were higher strength steels like 100 ksi WEL-TEN steel which was manufactured in Japan and shipped to the States. The steel used in the Towers was actually far superior to typical structural steel.
The official government reports on the destruction of the WTC buildings did not find any problem with the quality of the materials or construction methods used. And although those reports did make some recommendations for changes to building codes, those changes have not been incorporated in municipal codes or adopted by the building construction community.
[Question] You write in Foreign Policy Journal:
“And if people actually understood and believed the official account of what happened at the WTC they would not enter tall buildings because in doing so they would be putting their lives at risk.”
What do you mean?
[Ryan] What I mean is that high-rise buildings are designed and constructed to withstand fires that are much worse than what we know existed in WTC Building 7. My former company, Underwriters Laboratories (UL), plays a big part in that process. We know that UL did the fire resistance testing that was behind the selection of the steel components for WTC7 because that fact is in the NIST WTC7 report. Therefore the steel columns and floor assemblies should have withstood 2 to 3 hours of intense fire in a testing furnace, as required by the NYC code. But on 9/11, the fire lasted only 20 minutes in any given area, a fact that NIST admits, and the entire structure was destroyed due to an inexplicable failure to resist fire.
Moreover, NIST abandoned its previous hypotheses that suggested the destruction of WTC7 might have resulted from diesel fuel fires, or damage from falling debris, or the design of the building. In the end, NIST said that it was only the effects of the fire fed by office furnishings, on fully-fireproofed steel components, that caused the total destruction of this 47-story building. And since no actions have been taken to retrofit any existing high-rise buildings, we must assume that what happened to WTC7, according to the official account, could happen to any tall building that experiences a typical office fire.
No Change (?!)
Given that 9/11 totally changed our understanding of how dangerous small office fires could be, we couldn’t believe Ryan’s claim that “changes have not been incorporated in municipal codes or adopted by the building construction community.”
So Washington’s Blog contacted Richard Gage, a practicing architect for more than two decades, who has worked on most types of building construction, including one project which used around 1,200 tons of steel framing:
[Question] Have high-rise architects and engineers changed how they build skyscrapers, to prevent collapses after 9/11?
And have they changed how they build skyscrapers to prevent office fires from knocking down steel buildings?
[Richard Gage] No – they haven’t made any structural changes.
No structural changes?!
Either building code writers, architects and engineers are cavalierly ignoring this catastrophic new understanding of the extreme danger of small office fires, or the investigation into the collapse of World Trade Center building 7 on 9/11 was flawed.
No wonder New York residents have launched a High Rise Safety Initiative to try to protect the safety of those who work or visit office buildings.
Postscript: Until this issue is resolved through a complete revision of building codes and architectural and engineering practices, we recommend that everyone stay out of office buildings. Because if even small office fires can cause the whole building to collapse, it’s just not worth the risk to go inside.
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propaganda and belief systems can overwhelm any level of intelligence. So its not an intelligence thing, its a 'belief' thing
"It is always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge"
Adolf Hitler
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oops...sorry to steal your 'staying off airplanes' joke, mumbo. i didn't see it before i laid into cuntscarlet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21pPpYw_axQ
http://www.corbettreport.com/911-a-conspiracy-theory/
cpnscarlet is the stupidest person on ZH. That's my vote.
Airplanes didn't have to hit WTC 7? Right, because the dustcloud did it. The fucking dustcloud.
you've finally hit on my argument, WHERE ARE THE NEW BUILDING CODES!!!!
High rise office buiding are deathtraps. I wont even enter a building thats over 4 stories tall. Heck I wont even walk by a high rise building, anything could fall off of the building due to galvanic corrosion.
Dont even get me started about the dangers of nail guns and steep embankments.
Nail Guns and Steep Embankments need to be banned. You cannot be too safe. Mommy Government will fix it for you.
Great post!
Architecture has become so sloppy in the last 15 years, porous steel and concrete throw-ups. It's a global phenomenon.
Santiago Calatrava (Robert Greene's 10,000 hr master) slop jobs:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/arts/design/santiago-calatrava-collect...
Glass towers, NYC - ready to cook the fools:
http://gothamist.com/2014/02/04/your_glass-walled_high_rise_is_tryi.php
etc etc etc
Cronies.
Go pedal your conspiracy nonsense to people stupid enough to buy it.
The World Trade center buildings were total unlike the heavy steel girder construction used in almost every other tall building in the world. It was held up by hollow steel tubes which lost some their tensile strength when heated to only 600 deg F and failed totally at only 900 deg F. On top of that they were never properly insulated due to fear of using the industry standard asbestos. The buildings were so poorly built that they swayed in the wind. Even during constuction some of the engineers stated that any sort of internal fire would bring the whole thing down. It was not built according to the New York fire codes due to the fact that it was built by a government agency.
The buldings were a house of cards and everybody, including bin Laden, knew it.
http://www.oilempire.us/wtc-design.html
Absolutely right, 0b1knob, the WTC designs were unique, and ill advised. The fire insulation on the beams was blown away by a jet crash and the wings cut big sections of the main support structure. The horizontal beams only had to sag enough to disconnect from the outer shell to start pancaking. This explanation was reported on the Nova science show and is more plausible than any thermite conspiracy. People just don't want to believe that a 747 fully loaded with fuel flying at 350mph was sufficient to take the building down, but it was.
WTC7 is a more complex failure, but it was retrofitted with heavy equipment on the roof, was hit by debris at terminal velocity, contained large diesel tanks, no effort was made to put out the fire, it sagged before it came down just like a typical collapse as known to firefighters, etc. Not a picture of stability.
This is not to say that the Cheney Administration is off the hook; they clearly let the attack happen.
Not a 747.
PBS Nova also supported the magic bullet theory in the JFK killing.
PBS is an Establishment Liar.
0b1knob
Well I'm glad you settled that. I'm sure you believe that the Nazis didn't kill any jews, and that santa is real, and you have lunch with the easter bunny every saturday.
Ob, do us all a favor and get that gasoline you have out in your shed, douse yourself in it and see if it really will catch on fire.
Let's see how many PsyOps Gvmt trolls we can find in this one thread You're #1.
"The buldings were a house of cards and everybody, including bin Laden, knew it."
Really? I thought the whole world already knew that 911 was a setup. This whole story and the shills commenting here are trying to revise the true story. Look at the evidence dumbass.
Even during our county's constuction some of its engineers stated that any sort of internal fire would bring the whole thing down
everything you've said is a total fabrication.
if steel failed at 600F, you'd have pizza ovens all over this country melting in their own footprint.
please share the quotes of these engineers who knew their buildings were going to just suddenly crumble some day at the advent of a waste-bin flash fire and a stiff breeze....you're a sleazy liar, and you fucking know it.
the twin towers were constructed to withstand anything (except a controlled demolition with thermite)...they were in every way superior to coded standards...they were so heavily reinforced that, in point of fact, their archtects and engineers boasted of all they would doubtlessly withstand (and they specifically mentioned 7 series airliners).
yes, the most important and wealthiest people in finance and other heavy-hitters, just like bin laden and 'everybody' else, KNEW that they were placing their lives at risk by entering a death trap every fuckin day.
take your sneering piece-meal propoganda somewhere else...or, at the very least, say something true or verifiable; or at the very least, something that makes some shred of sense.
i don't take the deaths of 3000 americans lightly; nor do i overlook the hundreds of thousands dead and trillions spent. you may continue through life complicit in this foul duplicity; you may have no shame or compunction or honor whatsoever; you may excell in deciet and crapulence...this is, supposedly, a free country. but, bitch, you peddle this shit to the wrong people, and you're going to get called out on it.
and now you'll be able to brag to your grandkids about your calling out by janus.
no need to thank me,
janus
"if steel failed at 600F, you'd have pizza ovens all over this country melting in their own footprint."
Steel doesn't melt at 600F. That has never been an issue. Structural steel losing strength from being heated, is the issue. No pizza oven is going to melt at 600F. Neither is a pizza oven going to be holding up 15 floors of a skyscraper at 600F.
And bending steel acts differently than dripping steel... The former wouldn't be able to achieve shape distortions at rates of speed close to that of the forces of gravity on a body in free-fall.
Considering kerosene burns at about 495 F in ambient air:
It is not even close to the first critical temperature of 600° C (1,100° F) where steel loses about half its strength and it is nowhere near the quotes of 1500° C that would be required for your hypothesis to work out.
Also, Structures have a built-in margin of safety of 200-300% additional load redundancy in support structures. You could hold a steel beam under a kerosene fire until the end of time with no result, except the beam being covered in soot.
So genius, where did the extra temperature come from? Also, why was the debris pile 2000 degrees F in an O2 starved environment for weeks? There can be only one answer and it's thermite. Unless you believe Al CIAda used fusion powered suicide vests. That's about as credible as Atta's passport being found in the street, while all the gold in the vault vaporized.
"Considering kerosene burns at about 495 F in ambient air:
It is not even close to the first critical temperature of 600° C (1,100° F) where steel loses about half its strength and it is nowhere near the quotes of 1500° C that would be required for your hypothesis to work out.
Also, Structures have a built-in margin of safety of 200-300% additional load redundancy in support structures. You could hold a steel beam under a kerosene fire until the end of time with no result, except the beam being covered in soot.
So genius, where did the extra temperature come from? Also, why was the debris pile 2000 degrees F in an O2 starved environment for weeks? There can be only one answer and it's thermite."
One does not have to be a genious to know that the fire temperature of kerosine is some sort of a deflection. The extra temperature came from the office combustibles, particularly hydrocabons, such as plastic.
Themite is a rapid chemical reaction, not a prolonged heat source.
Just how O2 starved was the pile? Smoke managed to billow up from it.
I kind of like the "fact" that aluminum totally melted at the Pentagon and they were still able to do DNA.
9/11, the day the empire was caught with it's hand in the cookie jar- the jig is up. Nothing left but the fighting now...
Also, the Port Authority of NY & NJ (owner of the former WTC towers) has a large engineering department, including fire protection specialists.
One of their fire protection engineers described the remedial work undertaken in WTC-1 after a fire ascended several stories in one of the electrical chases.
The Port Authority's fire safety engineers are well-funded, serious pros, who do not accept half-ass, slipshod, non-code compliant work.
Why do we even waste our time shooting down keyboard commandos who make up ridiculous shit?
Only a keyboard commando would imply that "half-ass, slipshod" construction work can't also be code compliant. Anyone who has ever been on a job-site would know different.
Furthermore, would this be the same Port Authority of NY & NJ that is packed with the lazy fat-ass crony cohorts of Gov Crispy Kreme and the like, because shit flows downhill and those are some really huge asses that must produce massive output.
And is this the same Port Authority of NY & NJ that is responsible for the maintaining the safety of organized crime groups stealing, smuggling, and cutting corners to line their own pockets at NY & NJ ports & airports?
I'm sorry if you have a relative who is the "one honest guy" in a den of thieves and patronage hacks, but there are a at least a few good men at hidden away within JPM, but I certainly wouldn't such pen such glowing testimonials of the integrity and professionalism of the broader organization.
So, horrible corruption doesn't exist elsewhere in the world (fires in other skyscrapers only took place in buildings where construction corruption didn't happen)?
"And is this the same Port Authority of NY & NJ that is responsible for the maintaining the safety of organized crime groups stealing, smuggling, and cutting corners to line their own pockets at NY & NJ ports & airports?"
Easy enough to test. Tear apart the buildings where they reside and compare to other buildings that they put their seal of approval on. IF there is a significant difference then I'll buy the premise that shody construction work is to blame.
I don't blame shoddy construction for 9/11 or rely on it my modeling, and it does happen everywhere, except in the deluded minds of people of who equate the engineering of WTC 1 & 2 to the Great Pyramids.
Proper engineering is a balance one starts with initial requirements and required safety factors, and then downrates performance based on how crappy they know or think the contractors is, and then when the client gets sticker shock -they figure out how to do as much as possible with less and whether they can still do it safely.
Residential houses are also over-engineered, yet they fall down and burn down all the time. And the delta of safety factors between residential and commercial construction is not that great.
But holding the .gov of NY and NJ up as competent??? I tired to get one my building products approved up there (and this was in the last 10 years), which unfortunately would have cut into the gravel mafia business, even though it's much better for the environment and saves the taxpayer money, the engineers happily carried the mobs water, so as you can guess what I really think of the integrity and competence of state employed engineers.
Fine, I get it that you dislike the folks there, but the probability that they had any signifcant role in what happened is, SMALL, extremely SMALL. If you're looking to pick on corrupt entities then I suggest chopping the head off (NY can deal with it's own, on its own).
That swaying in the wind is a design feature to relieve structural pressure from wind flow.
For example, the taller a building is, the more design elements engineers must incorporate to make sure it can sway in the wind. Engineers place joints at the corner of steel beams that can expand and contract, allowing a structure to sway when it encounters heavy winds.
The 206-story Burj Khalifa will sway slowly back and forth by about 2 meters at the very top.
It is NOT a sign of poor construction or design.
They put pendulums into Buildings to dampen sway. He does not have a clue that ALL SKYSCRAPERS SWAY. The Pressures that are on the Windward face are enormous. Likewise the lack of Pressure on the Leeward face causes massive turbulence. These Forces act upon the structure continuously.
If a Building were static in a Wind condition I would get the hell out fast. Buidings are designed as DYNAMIC Structures.
Shit. Even the old Union Bank Building in San Diego, at only 20 Stories, deflects a good 5 Foot off Centerline. It was fun that they let us up to the top as kids back in the day. (Whatever it is called now.)
http://www.corbettreport.com/911-a-conspiracy-theory/
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
I think if you properly read G.W's post, he doesn't mention shape shifting lizards from the 10th dimension.
Speaking of shape shifting lizards...
9/11 Masterminds - Explosive Connectionshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEQOh2NVVLo
David, what are your thoughts on Judy Wood's theory? Just found out about her from another poster. Although far out, the evidence is compelling.
Edit. Never mind. Saw your comment below.. Though not very constructive :-)
Why do you hate Dr. Venkman?
He fraternizes with zombies
Nice. I heard he once ate a french fry off my try at Wendy's but no one believes me :)
Ha! Busted
Idiot. Their proper name are Red Lectroids and they are from the 8th dimension.
"Laugh'a while you can, monkey boy."
"It's not my goddamned planet, understand monkey boy!" Frankly I'd like to get off this rock too...
I f*cking love that movie!
are you sure, 8-10th ?
They are soooooooooooo 2-dimensional.
Hardly matters what annoys typists when the reaction of world leaders, including muslim ones, showed, incredible power exercise of control. No media stepped out of line, and lots of folks have died talking about this, including one I know. She was a noisy one, till she developed throat cancer. I had nothing to do with it. I only watch the show.
I see the problem. The Fukushima reactors were built with that same japanese steel.
Can NIST have it both ways?
Sue the Building Code Inspectors in your County today asking for relief. Structural Steel Buildings are hazardous to Public Safety.
The NIST Report is evidential.
Ask a judge to issue Condemnation Orders for every single Skyscraper in existence. They are "dangerous" I tell you...."Dangerous". They are unfit for Human habitation.
You just cannot be too safe, right?
Use the Government against itself.
I remember rolling my eyes at all the "wackos" trying to say 9/11 was staged in some fashion. So, I spent a considerable amount of time trying to debunk all their crazy bullsh!t so I could figuratively spit in their faces once and for all. After seeing videos of highly irregular trading positions just prior to 9/11 involving airline company stocks, videos of engineers failing to reproduce similar collapses, videos of building 7, and videos showing molten lava pouring out of the building and concrete getting pulverized instead of crumbling, I was saying, "Holy sh!t, these wackos could have a point. I'm a logical, rational person, so allowing myself to even think such thoughts was, and is, a major battle of congitive dissonance. We'll never find out, just like we'll never get rid of The Fed.
"We'll never find out, just like we'll never get rid of The Fed."
These are two different things. One is just "information" (the truth of 9/11) while the other has to do with nature (the Fed can NOT overcome reality, eventually the physical world will stop the trainwreck).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsGxqytOuSM