It Fell in Silence: The Collapse of World Trade Center 7

by

Nathan Janes

Many Americans are unaware that three buildings within the World Trade Center complex fell on Sept 11, 2001. Located just 300 feet from the North Tower, World Trade Center Building 7 (WTC 7) was a forty-seven story steel framed building, which collapsed vertically in 6.5 seconds more than 6 hours after the collapse of the Twin Towers. Although the collapse of the towers was televised hundreds of times in the days following 9/11, the collapse of WTC 7 was seldom shown or discussed. The widely publicized 9/11 Commission Report fails to mention the collapse of WTC 7 in its 568 pages. Looking beyond the limited information provided by the mass media about the fall of WTC 7, a number of questions arise.

Construction began on WTC 7 in 1984; it was opened to the public in 1987. The building had 47 stories, was 570 feet tall, and had 81 support columns with 24 core columns and 57 perimeter columns spanning from basement to roof. If it were located elsewhere, it would have been the tallest building in more than half of the states of the nation. The 50,000 square foot building housed offices for The Department of Defense, the Securities & Exchange Commission, and the Internal Revenue Service; outside of Washington D.C., it was the Central Intelligence Agency’s largest facility. New York City's Office of Emergency Management's Operations Center was on the 23rd floor where it served as an emergency bunker for the mayor with its own air supply and generators.

On the morning of 9/11, several of the surrounding buildings were damaged when the towers fell. Building 3 was nearly split in half; nine-story Building 4 was almost completely crushed; Building 5 suffered severe structural damage and fires; and Building 6, located between the towers and WTC 7, suffered a giant hole in the center of the building. Despite all of the heavy damage, none of these buildings collapsed. The damage sustained to WTC 7 paled in severity when compared to the other buildings surrounding the Towers.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a federal agency of the US Department of Commerce, was tasked with investigating the collapse of WTC 7. Despite two high-level government workers as well as many others witnessing explosions within the building, NIST released it's final report on August 21, 2008 stating that the collapse of WTC 7 was solely due to fire. In the time before the collapse of WTC 7, there were fires on the East face of the building, between floors 11 & 12, on the North face between floors 7 & 12, and on the West face between floors 29 & 30.

By 3:00 pm the Chief of the Fire Department of the City of New York, Daniel Nigro, setup a collapse zone around WTC 7. Video footage shows firefighters and police warning many of the volunteers and on lookers that the building was about to collapse with exchanges heard such as, “Keep your eye on that building, it’ll be coming down soon,” and, “The building is about to blow up, move it back.” Prior to the buildingcollapsing, it was reported by both CNN and BBC that WTC 7 had fallen. At 5:21 pm, WTC 7 fell into it’s own footprint in approximately 6.5 seconds. Before 9/11, no other steel buildings throughout history had ever collapsed due to fire alone. Not even steel buildings with fires many times larger than those that WTC 7 suffered had ever collapsed. How did the fire department, police, and news stations know that such a collapse was about to occur?

Prior to the NIST report, the Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA) assembled a volunteer team of engineers to investigate the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. The engineers found that temperatures of 1,000 °c or 1,800 °f were present in all three of the buildings that collapsed. WTC 7 was reported to have only isolated office fires; the burning of only office material could not reach fires of this temperature. In its final report, NIST states that the collapse of WTC 7 was specifically due to thermal expansion of one support beam on the 13th floor that failed and then caused one column to collapse triggering a progressive collapse of the rest of the support structure. This theory does not match the evidence collected by researchers independent of NIST.

Professors from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the University of California as well as scientists at the US Geological Survey studied steel from WTC 7 and found that it had been subject to temperatures much higher than even 1,800 °f. These researchers found that steel from the building had reached the temperature of vaporization, nearly 2800 °f, and that atoms in the steel had formed compounds with sulfur. Sulfur is found in explosives and lowers the melting point of steel. Researchers also found evidence of a thermite reaction and active thermitic material in dust collected from the scene. Thermite is an incendiary, which can be used to cut through steel.

NIST further ignores evidence that refutes its theory when it fails to explain why the building fell at free fall or gravitational acceleration for 105 feet. One theory that explains this occurrence is that of controlled demolition, which would have allowed the top floors of the building to fall without resistance. This evidence is consistent with video footage that reveals a crimp, a classic mark of implosion, developed in the center left top of the building as it began to fall. The crimp could have been caused by one of the central columns being blown at the base of the building causing the building to fall in on itself, rather than in an outward direction.

In the years since the buildings fell, the federal government has earned harsh criticism for their handling of the investigation of 9/11. It is almost unbelievable that no steel was recovered from WTC 7 for the NIST investigation and that the agency failed to test dust from WTC for incendiaries. One may ask how an investigational report can be trusted as accurate and thorough when the evidence of the crime has been so assiduously mismanaged and disregarded. Engineers and scientists are stepping forward to publicly reject the official explanation of the collapse. Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, which represents over 1,200 professional architects and engineers as of 2010, is calling for a new investigation of the collapse of WTC 7 as well as the twin towers.

The number of Americans learning of the evidence refuting the official explanation of the collapse of WTC 7 is growing. The mass media continues to ignore the call by millions both within and outside of the United States for a new investigation. State crimes against democracy have been recognized by American social scientists as an area of criminality needing to be studied in a scientific manner. Although we are beginning to recognize the criminality within our government, we have yet to hold individuals accountable for the most serious of crimes. Let's take back our country. Review the evidence for yourself. Refuse to allow corruption to further erode our republic and undermine popular sovereignty.