Survival of Firemen in North Tower Collapse Corroborates Use of
Demolition Charges
Mighty upward rush of wind in staircase supports demolition
model for tower collapse. Ground-level staircase preservation argues
against pancake model, according to laws of physics.
by Sterling
D. Allan
MANHATTAN, NY, USA -- A dozen firemen, a
civilian, and a police officer, who were on Stairway B between floors 1
and 6, survived the collapse of the 110-floor north World Trade Center
tower on September 11, 2001.
Their story is documented in the book Report
from Ground Zero: The Story of the Rescue Efforts at the World Trade
Center by Dennis Smith, which contains testimonies of several of
the survivors from this pocket of life in a tower that plummeted to
destruction.
The twisted stairway ended up near the top of the rubble from the
thousand feet of building above them, and the fourteen survivors from
that pocket were able to make their way out through a tangled opening in
the heap. It was because they had stopped to help a civilian,
Josephine, who was having a hard time getting down the stairs, that
several firemen were in that section of the stairway.
While the story of survival is gripping on a human level, their account
is also valuable from the point of view of a crime-scene reconstruction,
inasmuch these are first-hand witness accounts from within the building
at the time of the collapse.
The particular point of interest in this case is the report of a very
strong wind going through the stairwell. Though there are a few
contradictions among the individuals’ accounts, a careful review of
their statements explains these differences and creates a cohesive
conclusion: a powerful wind was going up the stairs as the building was
collapsing down.
This would seem to refute the official pancake theory of collapse in
which one floor after another fails as the mass from above comes
down. That would have created a downward wind due to the air being
expulsed as the floors pancaked together, creating a piston-like effect.
However, the survivors in Stairway B did not experience a downward
wind. They experienced a very strong upward wind.
Witness Accounts
In Dennis Smith's book, the first account from this group of survivors
is the most compelling. Lieutenant Mickey Croft of Engine Company
Sixteen was somewhere around the second floor in Stairway B when the
building began to collapse. He described the wind as being
"fierce" and that it almost lifted his body. He notes
that he had to hold on to his helmet so it wouldn't blow off. As
an instructor to new fireman, he routinely drilled into them the
importance of snapping their helmets in place, and yet here he was,
without his helmet snapped on, so that he was having to hold it by hand
to keep it on. That particular comment lends high credibility to him as
a witness. It involves being truthful enough to admit to having broken
his own rules. And the wind was strong enough to demand his full
attention and action. A downward wind would not have caused this risk of
helmet loss, nor coaxed him to reveal his non-compliance with safety
rules.
Jim McLean from Engine 39 was between the 1st and 2nd floors when the
building began to fall. He also described a "rush of air
going up".
Officer Dave Lim of the Port Authority's Police K-9 unit said that when
building began to collapse, he was on the 4th floor, where he had
stopped to help Josephine. He used the expression "huge
windstorm" but the report of his experience in this book does not
mention a direction of up or down.
Captain Jay Jones of Ladder 6 had broken into the 4th floor to try to
find a chair on which to carry Josephine, when the building began to
collapse. He said he was about six to seven feet from the staircase and
that he ran to the stair door. He described the wind as "a gust of
strong wind coming down the stairs." His direction of
"down" contradicts that given by Mickey Croft and Jim McLean.
The building took just over ten seconds to collapse to the ground, and
it would have taken him one or two of those seconds to interpret from
sound and vibration clues and register the level of danger, and then two
or three additional seconds to get to the door and into the stairwell.
So his account of the wind direction in the stairs may either be in
error or represent a shift or a later stage of the collapse. Thus it may
not undermine the two accounts of people who were already in the
stairwells and who felt the wind from the beginning of the collapse
event as an upward force.
An upward wind would be consistent with the demolition model of
collapse, in which demolition charges are pre-positioned on support
structures in the building’s interior. Their triggering and explosive
reaction would tend to consume oxygen within the structure, sucking more
air inward from the stairwells, while forcibly ejecting solid matter
outward.
Survival from ground floors contradicts pancake model
According to Wikipedia,
only 20 individuals survived the towers' collapse. In addition to
the fourteen mentioned above, four were in the underground mall.
The remaining two were also in the North Tower's Stairway B, on the 13th
floor.
Pasquale Buzzelli, a structural engineer at the Port Authority, and
Genelle Guzman McMillan, a secretary at the Port Authority, were
together in Stairway B on the 13th floor of the North Tower when it
collapsed. After losing consciousness, Buzzelli awoke on the surface, on
top of a pile of rubble, and was carried away with minor injuries.
McMillan survived in an air pocket for 27 hours before she was rescued.
She is famous for being the last person pulled alive from the rubble.
The pancake model of collapse would have an increasing mass of
kinetically charged objects piling down, burying everything beneath it,
arguing against any survival from any lower floors, let alone objects
from the lower floors emerging at or near the top of the heap.
However, this observed fact is consistent with the demolition model in
which the upper floors are reduced to powder from the demolition
charges, and the falling debris, while substantial, could spare a
stairwell below, falling around it, rather than crushing it.
Each tower had three stairways labeled A, B and C. On most floors, the
stairways were about 30 feet apart in the core with the plumbing,
elevators and other infrastructure. Stairway B of the North tower
was the only one to yield survivors. One possible explanation for
these survivors, in the demolition model, is that explosives that were
placed in the vicinity of this stairwell section failed to go off.
Other Evidences
These are not the only evidences for demolition, but are submitted
as additional evidences in an already lengthy list of evidences that
point to demolition from pre-positioned explosives, which point to this
having been an inside job being covered up by the present
administration.
Additional evidences are presented amply elsewhere. In brief, a
summary is as follows:
- The engineers who designed the building
designed it to withstand impact by planes and fire.
- Building 7, which was not structurally
damaged by aircraft, came down in a manner that matches the
signature demolition model, complete with triggering squibs (outward
explosions of support structures preceding the falling mass), and
falling into its footprint. Slow motion video footage
highlights these features.
- Towers 1 and 2 also fell in a manner
consistent with demolition, and had numerous visible squibs
preceding the falling mass. Bear in mind that a
"tidy" and "safe" fall would not necessarily be
the objective of individuals pulling off such a thing.
- Rate of speed of the fall is near that of
free-fall, which contradicts the pancake model in which a delay must
be expected due to conservation of momentum – one of the
foundational Laws of Physics.
- The fine powder into which the building was
converted during the collapse is consistent with the demolition
model and its associated explosives. There would have been
some pulverization in the pancake model, but not to the extent seen
in this case.
- Molten iron in the wreckage, weeks after
the collapse, is consistent with military-grade demolition charges,
which chemicals continue to react with the metal long after the
initial implosion event.
- Numerous eyewitnesses described hearing
explosions not associated with the planes hitting the buildings.
- The wreckage from the towers was quickly
shipped off for scrap, contrary to laws governing removal of items
from a crime scene.
- WTC buildings 1,2 and 7 had undergone
unannounced security evacuations in the days prior to Sept.
11. A concurrent power outage disabled security cameras.
Explosives-sniffing dogs were called off as part of that evacuation
procedure. Martin Bush, brother to the President, was involved
with the security company involved in this process.
- It would take 10 men ten trips to place the
necessary explosives to bring the towers down by demolition.
- The 911 Commission report says that there
were no central support columns, which is a lie. The WTC had
the most robust central support columns in the world at the time it
was built, and was designed to be centrally supported.
RESOURCES:
See also
Page composed by Sterling
D. Allan Mar. 29, 2006
Last updated March 30, 2006
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