World Trade Center 7

It's this one thing I just can't get out of my system. WTC 7 aka Salomon Bros. Building. Why did it collapse? It was not hit by a plane, nor by enough debris to make it come down. There was without doubt a fire raging inside the building at the time of the collapse, but a 47-story building shouldn't collapse solely due to a fire, should it?

But let's not get ahead of things. Let's start right after the Twin Towers collapse. Falling debris from the towers hit the facade of the WTC7, causing minor damage and setting off fires inside the building, which by now is evacuated. Fire fighters later enter the building to put out the fires, but are withdrawn due to "concerns for the safety of personnel". At 5:20 PM, WTC7 collapses, without any evident reason.

Now, what confuses me about this whole deal is why it came down. A fire has never before made a 47-story building come down like that. Ever. And the way it collapses looks suspiciously like a controlled demolition. Wikipedia writes: "The collapse of 7 World Trade Center is remarkable because it was the first known instance of a tall building collapsing primarily as a result of uncontrolled fires." It has never occurred before. Nor afterwards.

But it may just as well be that it was the raging fires that made the building come down. The falling debris from the Twin Towers tore a 12-story gap in the facade of WTC7, and setting off fires at multiple stories may have weakened the core of the building, causing it to collapse. However, judging from the way it fell, this is not likely the case. If this were the case, the building would have collapsed gradually, not free-fall and perfectly vertically as was the case.

Also, in a live report by BBC that aired around 5:00 PM, i.e. some 20 minutes prior to the collapse of WTC7, reporter Jane Stanley, who is actually on-site, says that WTC7 has collapsed due to raging fires. Yet, the building is clearly visible in the background...

Part 2 of this post is coming shortly...