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Preface: Bill Black writes today that Wall Street apologists say that calling for prosecution of Wall Street fraud is like saying the Twin Towers were brought down by controlled demolition.

Now that Bin Laden has been confirmed to be dead, it has been established that Saddam Hussein was not behind 9/11 (one of the main reasons for the Iraq war), and Iran has been accused of having a hand in 9/11 - potentially forming the basis for a war against Iran - it is time to revisit some important, unanswered questions.

This essay does not argue that bombs brought down the Twin Towers or World Trade Building 7, even though many top structural engineers believe that is what happened, and people could easily have planted bombs in the trade centers without anyone noticing and without the conspiracy being discovered.

It simply addresses the frequent argument that fires caused the metal to sag, which brought down the 3 buildings, and that the case is closed.





The Fires at the World Trade Centers Were NOT Very Hot

The government agency in charge of the investigation of why three buildings collapsed on 9/11 - the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) - says that paint tests indicated low steel temperatures -- 480 Fahrenheit -- "despite pre-collapse exposure to fire". NIST also said that microstructure tests showed no steel reached critical (half-strength) values of 600 Celsius (1112 degrees Fahrenheit) for any significant time.

Numerous top fire protection engineers have said that the fires in the World Trade Centers were not that hot. For example:

A mechanical engineer with 20 years experience as a Fire Protection Engineer for the U.S. Departments of Energy, Defense, and Veterans Affairs, who is a contributing Subject Matter Expert to the U.S. Department of Energy Fire Protection Engineering Functional Area Qualification Standard for Nuclear Facilities, a board member of the Northern California - Nevada Chapter of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers, currently serving as Fire Protection Engineer for the city of San Jose, California, the 10th largest city in the United States (Edward S. Munyak) says that the fires weren't big enough to bring down Building 7:





The former head of NIST's Fire Science Division, who is one of the world’s leading fire science researchers and safety engineers, a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering (Dr. James Quintiere), called for an independent review of the World Trade Center collapse investigation. "I would really like to see someone else take a look at what they've done; both structurally and from a fire point of view. ... I think the official conclusion that NIST arrived at [that fire and damage from the attacks brought down the buildings] is questionable .

In addition, Thomas Eager, a Professor of Materials Engineering and Engineering Systems at MIT and a defender of the official story, concluded that the temperatures in the Twin Towers never exceeded 800 Celsius (1472 degrees Fahrenheit). Eager pointed out that, contrary to popular belief, jet fuel from the planes did not increase the temperature of the fires.

Structural engineer Antonio Artha notes:

Fire and impact were insignificant in all three buildings.

Structural engineer Graham John Inman points out:

The fire on this building [World Trade Building 7] was small & localized therefore what is the cause?

Thermal images also suggest that the temperature of the steel in the north tower at the time of the fire was not much more than 250 degrees Fahrenheit (and see this).

The Argument Evaporates Upon Inspection



Defenders of the "official" version of 9/11 say, in rebuttal, that the fires didn't have to be that hot, because - while not hot enough to melt steel - they were hot enough to cause the metal to sag.

It is irrelevant (and beyond the scope of this post) whether or not their argument is correct. Specifically, since even defenders of official story admit that the fires were not hot enough to melt steel, then it is impossible to explain the huge quantify of molten steel which was observed under Ground Zero for months after the attacks (see next section, below).

Indeed, not only was structural steel somehow melted on 9/11, but it was EVAPORATED. Specifically, as the New York Times reports, an expert stated about World Trade Center building 7:

A combination of an uncontrolled fire and the structural damage might have been able to bring the building down, some engineers said. But that would not explain steel members in the debris pile that appear to have been PARTLY EVAPORATED in extraordinarily high temperatures.

(pay-per-view).

Note that evaporation means conversion from a liquid to a gas; so the steel beams in building 7 were subjected to temperatures high enough to melt and evaporate them.

It is simply impossible that fires from jet fuels and office materials could do that.

Molten Metal Under Ground Zero for MONTHS After Attacks

There was molten metal under ground zero for months after 9/11:

The structural engineer responsible for the design of the WTC, described fires still burning and molten steel still running 21 days after the attacks (page 3)

A structural engineer who worked for the Trade Center's original designer saw "streams of molten metal that leaked from the hot cores and flowed down broken walls inside the foundation hole." (pages 31-32)

An engineer stated in the September 3, 2002 issue of The Structural Engineer, "They showed us many fascinating slides ranging from molten metal, which was still red hot weeks after the event."

The fact that there was molten steel under ground zero for months after 9/11 is very odd, especially since firefighters sprayed millions of gallons of water on the fires and applied high-tech fire retardants. Specifically, 4 million gallons of water were dropped on Ground Zero within the first 10 days after September 11, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories:

The spraying continued for months afterward (the 10 day period was simply the timeframe in which the DOE was sampling). Enormous amounts of water were hosed on Ground Zero continuously, day and night: "firetrucks [sprayed] a nearly constant jet of water on [ground zero]. You couldn't even begin to imagine how much water was pumped in there," said Tom Manley of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, the largest fire department union. "It was like you were creating a giant lake." This photograph may capture a sense of how wet the ground became due to the constant spraying:







Moreover, the fires were sprayed with thousands of gallons of high tech fire-retardants.



It was not the collapses which caused steel to melt. Specifically, a professor emeritus of physics has proven that the collapses themselves could not have melted steel. And Brent Blanchard - a recognized expert in controlled demolition - stated in a telephone interview with physicist Steven Jonesv that he has witnessed hundreds of controlled demolitions, but has never seen molten metal at any of the demolition sites.



So how does NIST explain the molten metal? It denies its existence:



