Leroy Hulsey’s WTC 7 Evaluation

The most confounding discrepancy in the events that took place on 9/11 is the collapse of World Trade Center tower number seven, or WTC 7. If there is any evidence of a more sinister, underlying plot, WTC 7 is the smoking gun. While the official story behind the collapse of the main towers is similarly suspicious, the fact that they were hit by planes lends slightly more credence to the official narrative. However, WTC 7 was never struck by a plane, instead it caught fire after the collapse of towers one and two.

Prior to, and since that day, fire has never caused the total collapse of a steel-framed, high-rise building. This is the argument coming from many structural engineers and architects, most notably Leroy Hulsey. Hulsey, who is the chair of the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, has been working in conjunction with a non-profit group called Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

An expert in engineering and mathematical modeling, Hulsey has led a team of Ph.D. students in a four-year study, virtually recreating the collapse of WTC 7. Last week, Hulsey and his team released their report, critiquing the official 2002 investigation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and detailing their research based on the alleged reasons given for WTC 7’s collapse. Their conclusion: fires did not cause the collapse of WTC 7.

In the past, Hulsey has testified in front of the Lawyers Committee for 9/11 Inquiry with the basic assertion that fires could not have caused the collapse of the building. Hulsey details the numerous flaws in the evaluation made by NIST with his process of research and scrutiny between he and his doctoral students. When asked, hypothetically, if he would fail one of his students if they submitted an evaluation of the collapse of Tower 7 like the one NIST used to achieve its findings, he resoundingly replied yes.

NIST’s Faulty Evaluation

So, what was the official evaluation given by NIST that was supposed to definitively end any speculation as to why WTC 7 collapsed? According to their report, a thermal expansion of floor beams pushed an adjoining girder off its seat, which led to a subsequent collapse of eight floors. An additional failure of other girders from the same thermal expansion caused a nine-story column to collapse, followed by the collapse of the rest of the interior and then the exterior.

One of the flaws and obvious biases of NIST’s report is that it was started with a predetermined conclusion. Given the nature of the building’s collapse, it would obviously make sense to at least entertain the idea of a controlled demolition, considering that all of the tell-tale signs were there. A report published in Europhysics News, by a group of engineers and physicists, details the flaws in NIST’s report and the apparent bias in its process.

Not to mention that despite the urging that evidence be preserved in the form of debris from the tower’s collapse, the city had it all removed and destroyed in the weeks immediately after the tower collapsed.

Steven Jones, one of the authors of the report who has gained notoriety in his research, even pointed out a flaw in NIST’s data that led them to change their original evaluation. Jones says this flaw was more along the lines of ignored evidence. NIST’s report ignored the fact that the building, upon collapse, went into free fall.