_______________________________________________________________ | | New Seismic Data Refutes Official WTC Explanation | http://uscrisis.lege.net/911/#911seismic | http://uscrisis.lege.net/911/911seismic.txt | | Source: http://intellex.com/~rigs/page1/wtc/seismic.htm | | | SEISMIC DATA | | IMAGE: [ http://intellex.com/~rigs/page1/wtc/seismic.gif or | http://uscrisis.lege.net/911/911seismic.gif ] | | | New Seismic Data Refutes Official WTC Explanation | | By Christopher Bollyn | Exclusive to American Free Press 9-5-2 | | Two unexplained "spikes" in the seismic record from Sept. 11 | indicate huge bursts of energy shook the ground beneath the | World Trade Center's twin towers immediately prior to the | collapse. | | American Free Press has learned of pools of "molten steel" | found at the base of the collapsed twin towers weeks after | the collapse.* ( possible explanation below -ed ) | | | IMAGE [ http://intellex.com/~rigs/page1/wtc/thermite.jpg or | http://uscrisis.lege.net/911/911thermite.jpg ] | IMAGE TEXT: The INCREDIBLE INCENDIARY, THERMITE, was | thought to be used on some of the beams in the bottom of the | 7 story basement which could easily cause the pools of | molten steel. It is composed of 3 to 1 parts of Iron Oxide | and Aluminum power and set off with a Magnesium fuse. The | white hot burning temperature is around 3000 deg. C or 5400 | deg F. Demolitions alone would not result in molten steel. | Experts agree that Kerosene pouring down the elevator shaft | could not cause the melted steel, especially in an oxygen | starved environment. It just doesn't get that hot. Thermite | with bonding material is used in military applications. | Israeli "security agents" had the run of the building.! This | editor does not buy the Israeli explanations of the Urban | Moving Company.... Com'on FBI. ! | | | Although the energy source for these incredibly hot areas | has yet to be explained, New York seismometers recorded huge | bursts of energy, which caused unexplained seismic "spikes" | at the beginning of each collapse. | | These spikes suggest that massive underground explosions may | have literally knocked the towers off their foundations, | causing them to collapse. | | In the basements of the collapsed towers, where the 47 | central support columns connected with the bedrock, hot | spots of "literally molten steel" were discovered more than | a month after the collapse. Such persistent and intense | residual heat, 70 feet below the surface, in an oxygen | starved environment, could explain how these crucial | structural supports failed. | | Peter Tully, president of Tully Construction of Flushing, | N.Y., told AFP that he saw pools of "literally molten steel" | at the World Trade Center. | | Tully was contracted after the Sept. 11 tragedy to remove | the debris from the site. | | Tully called Mark Loizeaux, president of Controlled | Demolition, Inc. (CDI) of Phoenix, Md., for consultation | about removing the debris. CDI calls itself "the innovator | and global leader in the controlled demolition and implosion | of structures." | | Loizeaux, who cleaned up the bombed Alfred P. Murrah Federal | Building in Oklahoma City, arrived at the WTC site two days | later and wrote the clean-up plan for the entire operation. | | AFP asked Loizeaux about the report of molten steel on the | site. | | "Yes," he said, "hot spots of molten steel in the | basements." | | These incredibly hot areas were found "at the bottoms of the | elevator shafts of the main towers, down seven [basement] | levels," Loizeaux said. | | The molten steel was found "three, four, and five weeks | later, when the rubble was being removed," Loizeaux said. He | said molten steel was also found at 7 WTC, which collapsed | mysteriously in the late afternoon. | | Construction steel has an extremely high melting point of | about 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit. | | Asked what could have caused such extreme heat, Tully said, | "Think of the jet fuel." | | Loizeaux told AFP that the steel-melting fires were fueled | by "paper, carpet and other combustibles packed down the | elevator shafts by the tower floors as they 'pancaked' into | the basement." | | However, some independent investigators dispute this claim, | saying kerosene-based jet fuel, paper, or the other | combustibles normally found in the towers, cannot generate | the heat required to melt steel, especially in an | oxygen-poor environment like a deep basement. | | Eric Hufschmid, author of a book about the WTC collapse, | Painful Questions,* told AFP that due to the lack of oxygen, | paper and other combustibles packed down at the bottom of | elevator shafts would probably be "a smoky smoldering pile." | | Experts disagree that jet-fuel or paper could generate such | heat. | | This is impossible, they say, because the maximum | temperature that can be reached by hydrocarbons like | jet-fuel burning in air is 1,520 degrees F. Because the WTC | fires were fuel rich, as evidenced by the thick black smoke, | it is argued that they did not reach this upper limit. | | The hottest spots at the surface of the rubble, where | abundant oxygen was available, were much cooler than the | molten steel found in the basements. | | Five days after the collapse, on Sept. 16, the National | Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) used an Airborne | Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) to locate and | measure the site's hot spots. | | Dozens of hot spots were mapped, the hottest being in the | east corner of the South Tower where a temperature of 1,377 | degrees F was recorded. | | This is, however, less than half as hot at the molten steel | in the basement. | | The foundations of the twin towers were 70 feet deep. At | that level, 47 huge box columns, connected to the bedrock, | supported the entire gravity load of the structures. The | steel walls of these lower box columns were four inches | thick. | | Videos of the North Tower collapse show its communication | mast falling first, indicating that the central support | columns must have failed at the very beginning of the | collapse. Loizeaux told AFP, "Everything went | simultaneously." | | "At 10:29 the entire top section of the North Tower had been | severed from the base and began falling down," Hufschmid | writes. "If the first event was the falling of a floor, how | did that progress to the severing of hundreds of columns?" | | Asked if the vertical support columns gave way before the | connections between the floors and the columns, Ron | Hamburger, a structural engineer with the FEMA assessment | team said, "That's the $64,000 question." | | Loizeaux said, "If I were to bring the towers down, I would | put explosives in the basement to get the weight of the | building to help collapse the structure." | | | SEISMIC 'SPIKES' | | Seismographs at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth | Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., 21 miles north of the WTC, | recorded strange seismic activity on Sept. 11 that has still | not been explained. | | While the aircraft crashes caused minimal earth shaking, | significant earthquakes with unusual spikes occurred at the | beginning of each collapse. | | The Palisades seismic data recorded a 2.1 magnitude | earthquake during the 10-second collapse of the South Tower | at 9:59:04 and a 2.3 quake during the 8-second collapse of | the North Tower at 10:28:31. | | However, the Palisades seismic record shows that-as the | collapses began-a huge seismic "spike" marked the moment the | greatest energy went into the ground. The strongest jolts | were all registered at the beginning of the collapses, well | before the falling debris struck the Earth. | | These unexplained "spikes" in the seismic data lend credence | to the theory that massive explosions at the base of the | towers caused the collapses. | | A "sharp spike of short duration" is how seismologist Thorne | Lay of University of California at Santa Cruz told AFP an | underground nuclear explosion appears on a seismograph. | | The two unexplained spikes are more than 20 times the | amplitude of the other seismic waves associated with the | collapses and occurred in the East-West seismic recording as | the buildings began to fall. | | Experts cannot explain why the seismic waves peaked before | the towers actually hit the ground. | | Asked about these spikes, seismologist Arthur Lerner-Lam, | director of Columbia University's Center for Hazards and | Risk Research told AFP, "This is an element of current | research and discussion. It is still being investigated." | | Lerner-Lam told AFP that a 10-fold increase in wave | amplitude indicates a 100-fold increase in energy released. | These "short-period surface waves," reflect "the interaction | between the ground and the building foundation," according | to a report from Columbia Earth Institute. | | "The seismic effects of the collapses are comparable to the | explosions at a gasoline tank farm near Newark on Jan. 7, | 1983," the Palisades Seismology Group reported on Sept. 14, | 2001. | | One of the seismologists, Won-Young Kim, told AFP that the | Palisades seismographs register daily underground explosions | from a quarry 20 miles away. | | These blasts are caused by 80,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate | and cause local earthquakes between Magnitude 1 and 2. Kim | said the 1993 truck-bomb at the WTC did not register on the | seismographs because it was "not coupled" to the ground. | | "Only a small fraction of the energy from the collapsing | towers was converted into ground motion," Lerner-Lam said. | "The ground shaking that resulted from the collapse of the | towers was extremely small." | | Last November, Lerner-Lam said: "During the collapse, most | of the energy of the falling debris was absorbed by the | towers and the neighboring structures, converting them into | rubble and dust or causing other damage-but not causing | significant ground shaking." | | Evidently, the energy source that shook the ground beneath | the towers was many times more powerful than the total | potential energy released by the falling mass of the towers. | The question is: What was that energy source? | | While steel is often tested for evidence of explosions, | despite numerous eyewitness reports of explosions in the | towers, the engineers involved in the FEMA-sponsored | building assessment did no such tests. | | Dr. W. Gene Corley, who investigated for the government the | cause of the fire at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco | and the Oklahoma City bombing, headed the FEMA-sponsored | engineering assessment of the WTC collapse. | | Corley told AFP that while some tests had been done on the | 80 pieces of steel saved from the site, he said he did not | know about tests that show if an explosion had affected the | steel. | | "I am not a metallurgist," Corley said. | | Much of the structural steel from the WTC was sold to Alan | D. Ratner of Metal Management of Newark, N.J., and the New | York-based company Hugo Neu Schnitzer East. | | Ratner, who heads the New Jersey branch of the Chicago-based | company, sold the WTC steel to overseas companies, | reportedly selling more than 50,000 tons of steel to a | Shanghai steel company known as Baosteel for $120 per ton. | Ratner paid about $70 per ton for the steel. | | Other shipments of steel from the WTC went to India and | other Asian ports. | | Ratner came to Metal Management after spending years with a | metal trading firm known as SimsMetal based out of Sydney, | Australia. | | | (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this | material is distributed without profit to those who have | expressed a prior interest in receiving the included | information for research and educational purposes.) |______________________________________________________________