Do you believe the final NIST report on WTC 7?

Question

And, with all the C.S.I. dramas that people watch, don't they have any idea of how an investigation works. NIST did not forensically check the WTC 7 site. They modeled the collapse in remote laboratories which is in

opposition to their own protocols: http://www.fire.nist.gov/bfrlpubs/fire80/PDF/f80004.pdf

Answer 1

I do not believe NIST has proved their hypothesis.

The final report and the supporting documentation are revealing, though. We learn that structural damage from the debris that exploded outward from WTC 1 did not contribute significantly to Building 7's demise, other than possibly starting some fires in the building.  The cantilevered construction over the substation was not at fault.  Fires from fuel in fuel oil tanks didn't even happen.  In fact, NIST's report clearly says that the temperatures in Building 7 were hundreds of degrees below that needed to weaken steel.

What the steel did do, they postulate, is expand.  Based on NIST's computer simulation, this expansion broke the connection between one girder and one column. This resulted in one floor partially collapsing, which in turn caused several more floors below to also partially collapse. This left the one column unsupported and it buckled.  Then its neighboring columns buckled too and before you know it, the entire building just fell down, looking exactly like a controlled demolition would have.  However, NIST has this to say about its simulation:

"Once simulation of the global collapse of WTC 7 was underway, there was a great increase in the uncertainty in the progression of the collapse sequence, due to the random nature of the interaction, break up, disintegration, and falling of the debris... the details of the progression of the horizontal failure and final global collapse were increasingly less precise."

In other words, they were not able to get a simulation that faithfully matched the real video that we all saw.

One reason the "thermal expansion" explanation is troubling to me is that it seems to ignore the fact that steel is an excellent conductor of heat.  By NIST's own fuel-load calculations, the office fires lasted no more than 20 minutes in any location.  So how did enough heat accumulate in a particular girder without being dispersed throughout the rest of the framing?  The rest of the framing would have acted to distribute and dissipate the heat.

And why didn't NIST thoroughly examine a controlled demolition hypothesis?  They claim they were unable to find enough broken windows or a video with a sound track that had the sounds of a loud enough explosion on it.  So they stopped right there.  Of course, they had no physical evidence to work with, and they are, after all, a government agency.

So no, I do not believe the conclusions drawn by NIST in their final report.  But I'm not surprised they theorized that a never-before event occurred to bring down Building 7 -- what else could they have said?

Answer 2

It's interesting that one of the earlier theories, (of stored diesel fuel burning), being a contributory cause of the collapse, was championed by many on this forum, as if it was obvious, all those who disagreed were accused of "not understanding science"-this theory has been abandoned.

Then it was obfuscating chat about the power station, and assymetry of the building being, again, a contributary cause of the collapse-the same again, after all the sheep regurgitating it as fact, that theory is also abandoned.

The same will happen with this report. I am no expert but have seen crucial flaws in the latest NIST thesis (won't go into detail here).

It has just struck me what it reminds me of; that is of a very rich felon prolonging the legal process, hoping the prosecution will just give up trying.

Answer 3

Yes I do. And I believe what I saw with my own eyes. Conspiracies are great fun, but usually wrong.

Answer 4

Yes, I believe it. Conspiracy theorists will always say there is a cover up, no matter how overwhelming the evidence. These people are experts and I'm sure they've spent a huge amount of time examining the smallest details. The conclusion is common sense. After 220 floors of debris rained down on the building and hours of uncontrollable burning, it collapsed. What's so unbelievable about that? It would be very difficult to plant explosives in a building and make it look as if it collapsed from a fire. 9/11 was a terrible event, and the fact that people out there blame our government for intentionally killing thousands of people for political purposes is ridiculous. I'm sure many of the victim's families would be offended.