By Christopher Bollyn

American Free Press The fact that a Spanish skyscraper is still standing after an intense

fire consumed the steel and concrete tower for 24 hours provides real

world evidence that fire alone does not cause high-rise towers to

collapse.



As an intense fire consumed the 32-story Windsor Building in Madrid's

business district, the press reports all began with the words "fear

of collapse." After 24 hours, however, the tower, which was a similar

construction to the twin towers of the World Trade Center, remained

standing.



The fact that an extremely severe fire did not cause the Spanish

steel and concrete tower to collapse raises serious questions about

the events of 9/11 and how they have been explained. Why did the

Windsor Building remain standing when similar towers in New York City

collapsed completely after being affected by much less intense fires

burning for considerably shorter periods of time?



The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) sponsored engineers to

conduct the World Trade Center Building Performance Study (BPS) to

examine how the buildings of the WTC responded to the airplane

crashes and fires that allegedly caused the collapses of the twin

towers and WTC 7, a 47-story office building on the next block.



"Prior to September 11, 2001, there was little, if any, record of

fire-induced collapse of large fire-protected steel buildings," the

BPS says in the chapter about the mysterious collapse of WTC 7, the

third tower to collapse on 9/11. WTC 7 was not hit by aircraft or

large pieces of debris and had only sporadic fires. At about 5:25

p.m., WTC 7, owned by Larry Silverstein, collapsed in what appeared

to be a controlled demolition.



It would be more accurate to say that no steel framed high-rise, like

WTC 7, has ever collapsed due to fire. The fact that the Windsor

Building is still standing is proof that fire alone does not cause

properly constructed steel and concrete towers to collapse.



Dr. W. Gene Corley, Senior Vice President of Construction Technology

Laboratories (CTL) of Skokie, Ill., was team leader of the engineers

who wrote the BPS.



CTL is a subsidiary of the Portland Cement Association and "provides

structural and architectural engineering, testing, and materials

technology services throughout the U.S. and internationally."

According to its website, "CTL’s expertise extends beyond cement and

concrete, encompassing virtually all structural systems and

construction materials."



WACO, OKLAHOMA CITY, AND WTC



Corley served as expert adviser during the government's investigation

of the 1993 fatal fire at the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, Texas.

In 1995, Corley led a Building Performance Assessment Team (BPAT)

investigation of the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in

Oklahoma City. In September 2001, once again, Corley was selected to

head the team to study building performance after the attack on New

York’s World Trade Center.



In the executive summary of the WTC study, Corley wrote that

secondary fires caused the twin towers to collapse:



"The heat produced by this burning jet fuel does not by itself appear

to have been sufficient to initiate the structural collapses.

However, as the burning jet fuel spread across several floors of the

buildings, it ignited much of the buildings' contents, causing

simultaneous fires across several floors of both buildings," Corley

wrote. "Over a period of many minutes, this heat induced additional

stresses into the damaged structural frames while simultaneously

softening and weakening these frames. This additional loading and the

resulting damage were sufficient to induce the collapse of both

structures."



In the section that deals with the collapse of the twin towers, the

BPS says: "Because the aircraft impacts into the two buildings are

not believed to have been sufficient to cause collapse without the

ensuing fires, the obvious question is whether the fires alone,

without the damage from the aircraft impact, would have been

sufficient to cause such a collapse…it is impossible, without

extensive modeling and other analysis, to make a credible prediction

of how the buildings would have responded to an extremely severe fire

in a situation where there was no prior structural damage."



The Windsor Building fire in Madrid provides an excellent real-world

model to show how the twin towers should have responded to "an

extremely severe fire" alone. The Windsor Building has central

support columns in its core section, which is similar to the

construction of the twin towers. This central core is what supported

the gravity load of the towers.



In the Windsor Building fire, the fire is thought to have started on

the 21st floor late on Saturday night, Feb. 12. The upper floors were

consumed by intense fire for at least 18 hours. The fire moved down

the building and burned the entire structure. The fire is reported to

have burned temperatures of at 800 degrees Celsius, or nearly 1,500

degrees Fahrenheit.



There was a partial collapse of parts of the top 10 floors as the

trusses, which went from the core columns to the outside walls,

appear to have failed. It is important to note, however, that the

lower floors did not collapse and the core section is still standing

with a construction crane on the roof.



The complete failure of the 47-central support columns in the twin

towers of the WTC is one of the key outstanding questions about what

caused their collapses. It would be expected that they should have

remained standing even if some of the floor trusses failed. There is

no explanation for what caused the huge box columns to fail.



Two of the contractors who removed the rubble told AFP that they had

found molten steel in the 7th basement level when they reached the

bedrock where the columns were based. There is no explanation for

what caused such intense residual heat to be found at the base of the

twin towers, although some experts have pointed to powerful

explosives.



By press time, Dr. Corley had not responded to questions about the

BPS findings and the questions raised by the Windsor Building fire.

Corley's assistant told AFP that he had just gone to the airport and

would not be returning to the office until Feb. 28.



The Windsor Building was built from 1973-1979 in an area of Madrid

where commercial property was developed on land owned by Rio Tinto,

the international mining giant. This is thought to be the reason why

the Windsor Building carries the name of the British royal family.

The WTC towers were completed in the early 1970's.



The Windsor Building housed the offices of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu,

a multinational financial services company, which occupied 20 floors

of the tower.



The area where the Windsor Building stands is a mixed residential and

commercial area known as the AZCA zone. Dubbed 'Madrid's Manhattan',

AZCA contains a cluster of modern skyscrapers. The tallest one is the

Torre Picasso, a 516-foot tower built in 1989. The Picasso Tower was

designed by Minoru Yamasaki, who also designed the twin towers of the

WTC. Unión de Explosivos Río Tinto, S.A., owns the land where the

tower stands.



Finis



The Windsor Building (Edificio Windsor) in Madrid, Spain burned "like

a torch" for more than 18 hours from Saturday night, Feb. 12. After

burning in an uncontrolled inferno the tower's core columns remain

standing with a huge construction crane on top of the roof. This

evidence supports the fact that prior to 9/11 NO steel-framed high-

rise had ever collapsed due to fire. On 9/11 the 47-story WTC 7,

owned by Larry Silverstein, collapsed at 5:25 p.m. There is no

explanation for why the WTC 7 collapsed except for the fact that

Silverstein told PBS that the decision was made to "pull it" and "we

watched it come down."

