Sometimes what isn’t visible at a crime scene is just as important as what is.
***UPDATE*** note the updated truss count. My original estimate of 23,000 trusses was based on the idea that they used single trusses in between the section breaks when in fact they did not, they used double trusses everywhere on each floor. My first count was based on doing a layout of the truss structure and then simply counting and multiplying that number by the number of floors which used these trusses. Turns out, the number of missing trusses is actually double my original number… about 43,000 – 46,000. With that one exception, I believe the research in this article still stands.
***UPDATE***
Please check out the companion article, The6,000.
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According
to the official explanation of the collapse of the Twin Towers on
Sept. 11th, 2001… the initial plane crashes damaged the core
structure of the towers enough so that when the resulting fires
“weakened” the floor trusses, the result was that the remaining
floors above the areas of the plane crash and fires crashed down on
the undamaged parts of the buildings, and “pulverized” them in a
gravity driven demolition of sorts.
This
“official” explanation, which if left unchallenged, stands as the
basis for the endless “War on Terror”, the war in Iraq, the war
in Afghanistan, the attacks on the general population of Pakistan,
the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, warrant-less and
illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens, and various other assaults on
our democratic freedoms… is basically a lie.
It is
impossible.
Sometimes
in an investigation, what you don’t find at the crime scene
is just as important as what you do find. Provided you know
what to look for and you understand why it is or isn’t there.
With that
in mind, I offer for your consideration, the great mystery of the
missing Trusses and Floor-Pans of the World Trade Center towers 1 and
2… and the (estimated) 10 tons of “iron-rich” spheres found in
the dust at Ground Zero by every single investigative agency that has
bothered to look.
First:
What exactly were the floor trusses and how were they used?
The floor
trusses were used to span the distance between the 47 core columns
and connecting beams of the “core” of the Twin Towers (the heart
of the strength of the design) and the 200+ exterior columns that
made up the distinctive look of the outside of the buildings.
(click on
image for larger view)
Typical
cross sectionThis is a typical cross section of the construction
design of the exterior column connection of the columns and the
trusses themselves. It is to scale. These are the trusses that
the NIST report concluded “bowed” inward and caused the exterior
columns to “buckle” thus causing the “collapse sequence
initiation” that resulted in the destruction of the towers.
The drawing
is mine and it is just a rough sketch designed to give the readers
here a basic understanding of how the trusses were used. The source
material for this comes from the actual construction drawings of the
towers themselves and the FEMA report and NIST report details pages.
Here is one of them.
As you can
see, my representation is rather accurate in the depiction of the
truss and how it is used relative to the construction of the towers
themselves.
You can see
that there 12′ height from floor to floor, but with the depth of
the trusses and the dropped ceiling, the finished ceiling height was
around 8′. This is also evidenced by the NIST report as well
as from this photograph of a typical WTC North Tower office layout.
To give you
a still better understanding of how the floor trusses were used in
the design of the Twin Towers, again I refer to the FEMA report.
The trusses
and floor-pans (“Metal Deck”) were fabricated off site in very
large sections and transported to the construction site where they
were hoisted via cranes into position and welded and bolted in place.
The steel
construction of the floor system sections was mainly A-36 structural
steel, commonly used in high rise buildings, with a melting temp of
around 2750 degs.
Carbon steels which can successfully undergo heat-treatment have a carbon content in the range of 0.30–1.70% by weight. Trace impurities of various other elements can have a significant effect on the quality of the resulting steel. Trace amounts of sulfur in particular make the steel red-short. Low alloy carbon steel, such as A36 grade, contains about 0.05% sulfur and melts around 1426–1538 °C (2600–2800 °F). Wiki
(I am
deliberately using FEMA and NIST diagrams for two reasons: 1. that
you understand that my information at this point is supported by the
documents of the “official story” itself so that you don’t
think this is some “crack pot” obscure reference… and 2. so
that you will come to understand my question later about how does
NIST and FEMA both spend so much time explaining the presence of the
trusses in the construction of the towers.. and so little time
wondering just what could have happened to them.)
Second:
Relative size and overall numbers of the trusses themselves.
In order to
give you a better understanding of the relative size of the trusses,
I created a few 3d models that accurately represent them. The first
is an isometric view coupled with an elevation of just one truss
along side a 6′ tall figure of a man.
As you can
see, the trusses themselves are quite long, the longest of the
standard trusses was about 59′ and the shortest of them was 35′.
The transverse trusses that spanned through the trusses and locked
them all together were even longer on average.
Now that
you have an idea of what the trusses looked like and what they did,
lets take a minute to see how many of them there were, per floor. The
following is from the architectural design drawing of the world trade
center as well as from the FEMA report.
[note: that
number should be revised to 200+]
What you
see here is the truss layout in plan view. The light blue
colored lines are the trusses themselves and the magenta would be the
transverse trusses or what the FEMA diagram calls the “Bridging
Trusses”.
The truss
count on this drawing that I did is an estimate based on the drawings
that I found. There were some trusses that were doubled up as
“girder” trusses to carry the live load of other trusses, so the
count I have up there is a bit low. But basically, it is pretty
accurate; about 106 trusses per floor.
Now look
back up at the isometric view of the truss. There were 106 of
those large, structural steel elements, per floor.
[edit] The
towers themselves were 110 floors. Do the math. 212 trusses x
110 floors = 23,320 trusses per tower
[edit] But
wait… there were TWO Twin Towers felled that day and when you look
at the photos of the aftermath of the “collapse” of the
buildings, the debris is mixed together at Ground Zero… so what
you are really looking for is the 46,000+ structural steel trusses
(and connected floor pans) of the Twin Towers.
That’s a
lot of 60′ and 35′ long trusses that could NOT have been
“pulverized” like the concrete floors or the desks. They were
structural steel.
These two
images will give you an idea of how they were used and the shear
volume of the trusses compared to the rest of the material of the
buildings.
First we
have an isometric view of only 2 (two) floors of the towers, again
drawn to scale based on the construction drawings and the NIST and
FEMA reports collectively.
The trusses
are drawn in the light blue color and you can see how they span the
distance between the core of the towers and the exterior columns.
For a better understanding of the shear volume of the trusses I have
dropped out the columns for this next image. Remember it is
just two floors.
We are
talking about a MASSIVE amount of floor trusses.
Third:
What you don’t see is the key.
According
to the official explanation of what happened to those towers, the
upper section of the buildings came crashing down on the lower floors
and “pulverized” the concrete floors while crushing the structure
of the buildings themselves.
There have
been many scientists and engineers who have attempted to prove that
there just isn’t the energy in the falling upper section of the
building to do what the “official explanation” says happened.
In my opinion, they are correct.
However,
let’s pretend for a moment that the official explanation is
correct, taken at face value. What does that mean for the
trusses and the floor pans?
The steel
trusses and floor pans would not “pulverize”. In fact, they would
probably shift one way or the other, connected together as they were,
and lay pretty much flat, just dominoed as it were, together.
Even if
they were somehow separated from one another, the tell-tale signs of
the trusses would be everywhere: the zig-zaged tension and
compression rod running through the trusses. Remember, there
were over 23,000 of them over 35′ long.
You
couldn’t POSSIBLY miss them. They should be scattered all over
Ground Zero.
Yet,
strangely, they are not.
The
following images come from a group of high resolution photos I have
found depicting the debris in the aftermath at Ground Zero. You will
see lots of exterior columns and interior columns… you will see the
pulverized concrete dust by the tons… and you will see the aluminum
cladding that made of the exterior surface of the buildings and lots
of steel rebar that had been inside the concrete floors…
What I dare
you to find is ONE… just ONE truss. Just ONE of the 23,000+
steel trusses that fell to the ground that day and COULDN’T have
been pulverized by the falling debris. The photos are all high
res so I invite you to click on them and explore to your hearts
content.
Now
remember what the webbing (tension and compression) from the trusses
look like. They have the tight angles, in a repeating pattern, over a
long span. Don’t be confused by the rebar that was in the
concrete floors. What you see to the right of Mr. Sonnenfeld is
rebar.
I have
personally been over and over these photos and many others. I have
yet to find one single truss. Not one.
23,000
trusses in the Ground Zero debris, and NOT ONE is visible in the
photos? Does that seem odd to anyone else?
Of course
it does.
But just
because they aren’t visible, doesn’t mean they aren’t THERE.
Forth
and final part: What
are the “Tons” of “iron rich spheres“
Ever since
the beginning of the investigation into the events of 911 almost
every single ‘official” and unofficial report has mentioned the
discovery of the “iron rich spheres” found in the dust collected
from Ground Zero.
The RJ Lee
report and the FEMA report as well as the investigative work of
Steven Jones and others all make mention of these mysterious metal
spheres mixed in with the pulverized concrete dust. This is
what they look like.
The
important thing here is the language they use to describe these
“spheres’ found in in the dust.
“Iron
rich” implys that they are iron, but they are also made up of other
metals and alloys, and of course… carbon.
Why is this
important? Because “steel” is made up of mainly IRON mixed
in with small amounts of carbon and, depending on the type of steel,
other elements. Steel itself is “iron rich”. The structural
steel of the trusses… is itself “iron rich”.
The
thermite that others have been considering as the source of these
spheres creates molten iron… not molten iron and carbon.
Plus the shear volume of the spheres found in the dust (at one time
suggested by Jones to be about 10 tons) suggests that they must have
come from a structural element of the towers themselves.
The
trusses.
At the
moment of detonation, a high explosive, strong enough to pulverize
the concrete floors, would also have to burn hot enough to instantly
melt the trusses themselves thus creating the microscopic “iron
rich” spheres found by FEMA, RJ Lee, and Steven Jones. But
also it would explain the “molten metal” that burned in the
debris pile for weeks after 9/11.
There is
only ONE high explosive used in the demolition industry capable of
that kind of combined result: PETN.
Curiously,
each and every single investigation that has been done on the
“collapse” of the Twin Towers, RJ Lee, FEMA, NIST, and even the
Jones/Harrit paper, has gone out of their way to make the statement
that they DID NOT test for residual trace elements of conventional
explosives in the debris from Ground Zero.
Conclusion:
The official explanation for the collapse of the towers cannot be
accurate.
There is no
amount of pressure that could possibly have been present in the
collapse of the Twin Towers that would explain the pulverization of
the trusses into the steel micro-spheres found in the dust at Ground
Zero.
At the
moment of collapse, those trusses were in the buildings and judging
from the visual evidence of the photos afterward, they were not after
the buildings came down.
If the
pulverization of the floors couldn’t have rendered the trusses into
micro-spheres of “iron rich” droplets, what in fact did do it?
As is often
the case, the simplest explanation is often the most accurate.
Test the
remaining evidence from Ground Zero for trace elements of explosive
materials commonly used in the demolition industry with special
attention given to PETN and RDX.
The
photographs don’t lie. They are a living record of the crime of
911. And from them we can and will finally prove, beyond any
reasonable doubt, that the official story of what happened that day
cannot be accurate.
Sometimes
what isn’t visible at a crime scene is just as important as what
is.
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