ASSERTION #7 “WTC 7 was intentionally ‘pulled down’ with explosives. No airplane hit it, and the building owner himself was quoted as saying he made a decision to ‘pull it’.” PROTEC COMMENT: This scenario is extremely unlikely for many reasons.
The above assertion has taken several forms over the past few years and has developed into a major point of discussion amongst conspiracy theorists. Most recently, it was used as a cornerstone allegation on C-SPAN’S national broadcast of a 9/11 symposium hosted by Mr. Alex Jones, an author and radio personality who is highly critical of the government’s handling of 9/11.
However, from a demolition standpoint, several aspects of this claim are problematic.
1. A building owner would never be in a position to dictate to fire personnel or emergency workers whether his building should be “pulled” or demolished. We know of no case where command and control of a disaster scene has ever been transferred to a private third party, much less a disaster of such scope. This action would violate a number of ethical canons regarding the safety of emergency responders and the general public, not to mention exposing those who transferred and assumed such authority to substantial liability risks. Therefore, even if such a statement was made on 9/11, it is highly doubtful that the comment would have affected decisions at the scene.
2. We have never, ever heard the term “pull it” being used to refer to the explosive demolition of a building, and neither has any blast team we’ve spoken with. The term is used in conventional demolition circles, to describe the specific activity of attaching long cables to a pre-weakened building and maneuvering heavy equipment (excavators, bulldozers, etc.) to “pull” the frame of the structure over onto its side for further dismantlement. This author and our research team were on site when workers pulled over the six-story remains of WTC-6 in late fall 2001, however we can say with certainty that a similar operation would have been logistically impossible at Ground Zero on 9/11, physically impossible for a building the size of WTC 7, and the structure did not collapse in that manner anyway.
3. Any detonation of explosives within WTC 7 would likely have been detected by seismographs monitoring ground vibration in the general area (see Assertion #4). To our knowledge, no such telltale “spike” or vibratory anomaly was recorded by any monitoring instrument.
4. Saying, “No airplane hit it” implies the structure suffered minimal effects from the planes crashing into the adjacent towers. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Video and photographs of the north tower collapse clearly depict substantial upper sections of the building falling outward and impacting WTC buildings 6 and 7. This was not a glancing blow from extraneous material, rather thousands of tons of steel girders falling directly into the building from hundreds of feet above. WTC 7 sustained significant impact damage to its southwest corner up to the 18-20th floor, or a little less than halfway up the building. There was also significant damage to the building’s south face, although dense smoke present in most photos hinders an exact assessment. Other photos depict several lower floors fully involved in a large fire that either began upon impact or shortly thereafter, and most experts point to the large stockpile of diesel fuel stored in the basement as the likely catalyst. Regardless of the fire’s origin, these flames are clearly visible from all four sides of the structure. With most local firefighting equipment destroyed and the search for survivors being of primary concern, these intense fires were left to burn uncontrolled for more than six hours, further compromising the already badly damaged structure. Given these facts, any implication that WTC 7 was not substantially affected by the original plane crashes is not accurate.
5. Several demolition teams had reached Ground Zero by 3:00pm on 9/11, and these individuals witnessed the collapse of WTC 7 from within a few hundred feet of the event. We have spoken with several who possess extensive experience in explosive demolition, and all reported hearing or seeing nothing to indicate an explosive detonation precipitating the collapse. As one eyewitness told us, “We were all standing around helpless...we knew full well it was going to collapse. Everyone there knew. You gotta remember there was a lot of confusion and we didn’t know if another plane was coming...but I never heard explosions like demo charges. We knew with the damage to that building and how hot the fire was, that building was gonna go, so we just waited, and a little later it went.”
6. Finally, we have not discovered or been presented with any physical evidence indicating explosives were used to fell the structure. We do not know exactly how or why WTC 7 fell when it did, and we decline to hypothesize here. All we can offer is that, from a demolition and structural failure standpoint, available data does not rule out the possibility of the building collapsing as a direct result of the structural conditions detailed above.
