BBC Piece Post-Mortem: Mark Loizeaux and the Special Engineer

by Scott Creighton (archive reposted from Feb. 16, 2009)

It is difficult for me to know where to begin peeling away the layers of misinformation the BBC peddled to their audience in last weeks exposé on the collapse of Building 7 of the World Trade Center in New York.

There are so many people out there grinding away at exposing the flawed production, I don’t feel the need to repeat what they have already done with journeyman-like effectiveness, yet there is something that I have yet to see addressed that I feel is crucial to exposing the overall lack of trustworthiness of the piece. And there is another related aspect of it, that I feel may in fact, be almost an unintended admission, of sorts.

At issue? Mark Loizeaux’s direct misrepresentation of facts and Peter Hayden’s uncanny admission about a “special engineer” on site before Building 7 came down,  and how those two things may in fact be related.

I have to admit that I have been studying a little on the process of controlled demolition. A theory that I have been working on, that I submitted here, a month ago, led me to CDI, Mark Loizeaux’s family company.

 

It’s impossible to look into the process of controlled demolition without eventually turning pages on the CDI website. They wrote the book. I mean they really wrote the book. Mark’s father is credited with creating the process and the business itself. So these guys know a thing or two about bringing buildings down in a hurry.

Now in all fairness, the BBC piece did cover the fact that CDI has been suspect in the controlled demolition theory of the Trade Centers since it began. And they talk about the reason…

They were brought in almost immediately after the attack to help with the clean up.

Now, logically speaking, the people who are convinced that 9/11 was an example of a very well constructed controlled demolition, would have to view that fact as a big clue.

Let’s face it; if a group of rogue elements in the government were going to blow up a building on the QT, would they bring in a demo company to help with the clean up if they weren’t in on it? Of course not. Those people would recognize certain things that others wouldn’t, and so the gig would be up, and people would go to prison.

It would be stupid to bring in a company of demo experts to “clean up” your secretly demoed site. And if anything, these people are not stupid.

So, people looked at CDI right off the bat.

But one thing I don’t know if others found in their CDI research is something interesting that I came across a month ago, and it has been nagging at me, so I think I will toss it in here. I am not saying that CDI “did it”, but it is rather interesting.

This is from a Washington Technology article dated 12/16/02 Vol. 17 No. 18, titled “Survival Guide: Mark Loizeaux, demolition expert”;

“WT: Once a project starts, how do you manage risk?

Loizeaux: At the site, we track very carefully the chain of custody, the ownership of debris, hazardous materials, things like that. We track everything from cradle to grave in writing.”

I understand that this is a very dangerous business and that extends to the litigation of damages after the charges go off as well. People who are born into this life must also develop very stringent habits of covering their own asses, inside the buildings and out. Before the demo and afterwards. They have to or someone is going to sue them for a foundation crack in an adjacent building that was there a year before the demo, and they would lose everything. It must become second nature for them. Like a code. Because in their line of work they could lose everything in a flash, including their lives.

They leave nothing to chance, even cleaning their brass, so to speak. They would have it no other way. And there is CDI, on site, in charge of the “clean up”. Interesting to me at least.

Which makes me wonder why Mark Loizeaux would make such a glaring error as to say something on this program that is clearly untrue? And it is proven untrue by his own website.

At 27:23 into the BBC piece they introduce Loizeaux, correctly, as one of the foremost experts on demolition. He not only shows the J.L. Hudson building demolition, but mentions it by name as holding several world records for demolition. He probably shouldn’t have mentioned that one, for several reasons.

He says it took months to “prepare the structure” and took months “to set the charges. Months”. But that’s just not true, according to his website;

“CDI’s 12 person loading crew took twenty four days to place 4,118 separate charges in 1,100 locations on columns on nine levels of the complex. Over 36,000 ft of detonating cord and 4,512 non-electric delay elements were installed in CDI’s implosion initiation system, some to create the 36 primary implosion sequence and another 216 micro-delays to keep down the detonation overpressure from the 2,728 lb of explosives which would be detonated during the demolition.”

What took so long, according to the website, was the design of the implosion because there were 12 separate sections to the 2.2 million sq. ft. building. All built at different times, with different construction techniques. And no drawings of the building.

Now compare that to Building Seven. 47 floors, as opposed to the Hudson buildings 30 levels; the Hudson building had 2.2 million sq ft of floor space, where Building Seven had roughly 45,000 sq ft per floor totaling… 2.2 million sq ft.

So, theoretically, the demolition requirements would be similar and the design part would certainly be easier. Now, that would mean, that the actual charges if they used a 12 person team could be set in 24 days. Or, if they used 20 people… you do the math. But this is all factually based on real world experience provided by CDI’s own site.

So it didn’t take “months and months” to set those charges and by extraction, it wouldn’t take that time to have prepped Building 7.

But that wasn’t the misstatement that I was referring to. I just threw that one in for the fun of it.

At 31:10 into the piece, Mark Loizeaux commits what I know to be a misrepresentation of fact. He claims that yes, some of the windows facing the building were blown out, but, he says if explosives of the type that would be needed to cut the columns were used, then, he says, “…all of the windows on the surrounding buildings would be blown out all the way around. No way around it.”

Yet, on Mark’s own website, the same exact page that we talked about the other misinformation from Mark, he clearly boasts about how that job posed a significant problem with the surrounding historic structures and there old glass, and they were able to demo the Hudson building, another steel framed structure, without cause hardly any window breakage. On the sides facing the buildings!

“Even with all the precautions to control overpressure, the age, existing cracks, and poor condition of glazing windows in vacant structures on the north, east and west sides of the J.L. Hudson complex, window breakage was a concern.”
…

“There was far less window breakage in adjacent buildings than glass company crews were prepared to handle. Many of the broken windows appeared to have been those which were cracked before the implosion,…”

Unbelievable. The arrogance of these people. He mentions the one job that he has detailed on his site as being very successful in keeping from breaking vintage windows facing the building that was demo’d.

Not to mention the fact that they didn’t ‘break the windows all the way around the buildings”. “No way around it”? Apparently there was on the Hudson building. Which was, by the way, dropped in 1998. Three years before 9/11.

And that brings me to the last point, which is directly tied into CDI again.

During the video, Peter Hayden is addressing the issue of fore knowledge of the collapse of Building 7 and he says something very, very interesting. He says they had a ‘special engineer’ with seismic equipment who told them around 12:00 that day that Building 7 would fall in 5 hours. And of course, he was correct. At 5:21pm, Building 7 came down.

Now, why would a ‘special engineer’ be there in the first place with seismic equipment shooting a building fire? Did he just happen by? And how did he get so accurate with the seismic equipment that it could tell the rumblings of regular office fires?

Here’s the payday boys and girls (I know you have been waiting for it): the continuation of the quote from CDI’s reporting on the J.L. Hudson building…

“…cracked before the implosion, according to Dave Miller of Schnabel Engineering, the third party geotechnical firm hired to do pre/post blast surveys and record the vibration from the blast. Miller said that the vibration from the fall of the structure was well within allowable limits as recorded at adjacent properties.”

That’s right. CDI and Mark cover their asses so much, that they bring in engineers with seismic equipment to record the blast before and after in order to make sure no other damage is done to other buildings.

Is this why the ‘special engineer’ was on site on 9/11?