@Leadfoot,
September 19-October 2001: Structural Engineer Finds Evidence of Extreme Temperatures at WTC
An engineer investigating the remains of the World Trade Center sees melted girders and other evidence that the towers experienced extreme temperatures on 9/11. Dr. Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He specializes in studying structural damage done by earthquakes and terrorist bombings. [CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, 12/7/2001; CBS
He examines numerous pieces of steel taken from Ground Zero. [CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, 12/7/2001] Astaneh-Asl will describe the WTC as “the best-designed building I have ever seen.” [SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 10/22/2001] Yet he notices unusual warping and other damage in its remaining steel:
bullet At a recycling center in New Jersey, he sees 10-ton steel beams from the towers that look “like giant sticks of twisted licorice.” [CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, 12/7/2001] He shows the San Francisco Chronicle a “banana-shaped, rust-colored piece of steel” that has “twisted like toffee during the terrorist attack.” [SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 10/22/2001]
bullet
He later recalls, “I saw melting of girders in [the] World Trade Center.” [PBS, 5/10/2007]
bullet He notes that steel has bent at several connection points that had joined the floors of the WTC to the vertical columns. He describes the connections as being smoothly warped, saying, “If you remember the Salvador Dali paintings with the clocks that are kind of melted—it’s kind of like that.” He adds, “That could only happen if you get steel yellow hot or white hot—perhaps around 2,000 degrees.” [CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, 12/7/2001]
bullet Astaneh-Asl says that steel flanges have been reduced “from an inch thick to paper thin.” [BERKELEYAN, 10/3/2001]
-------------
reported that some engineers said that a “combination of an uncontrolled fire and the structural damage might have been able to bring the building down,” but that this “would not explain,” according to Dr. Barnett, “steel members in the debris pile that appear to have been partly evaporated in extraordinarily high temperatures.”
“A one-inch column has been reduced to half-inch thickness. Its edges – which are curled like a paper scroll – have been thinned to almost razor sharpness. Gaping holes – some larger than a silver dollar – let light shine through a formerly solid steel flange. This Swiss cheese appearance shocked all of the fire-wise professors, who expected to see distortion and bending – but not holes.”
camlok: These last two quotes relate to the FEMA study,
https://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_apc.pdf
wherein you can see pictures of what has been described above.
In discussing “the deepest mystery,” the New York Times story said:
“The steel apparently melted away, but no fire in any of the buildings was believed to be hot enough to melt steel outright.” [16] That was an understatement, because a building fire, even with a perfect mixture of air and fuel, could at most reach 1,000°C (1,832°F). [17] In fact, Professor Thomas Eagar of MIT estimated that the fires were “probably only about 1,200 or 1,300°F [648 or 704°C].” [18]
[bold is mine]
I-B. The RJ Lee Report
In May 2004, the RJ Lee Group issued a report, entitled “WTC Dust Signature,” at the request of the Deutsche Bank, in order to prove (to its insurance company) that the building was “pervasively contaminated with WTC Dust, unique to the WTC Event.” [19] The report listed five elements in this signature, one of which was: “Spherical iron and spherical or vesicular silicate particles that result from exposure to high temperature.” [20] This was the only statement about iron’s being modified by high temperature in this 2004 report.
However, RJ Lee had written an earlier report in 2003, entitled “WTC Dust Signature Report,” which contained much more about iron. It said: “Particles of materials that had been modified by exposure to high temperature, such as spherical particles of iron and silicates, are common in WTC Dust … but are not common in ‘normal’ interior office dust.” [21] This 2003 version of the report even pointed out that, whereas iron particles constitute only 0.04 percent of normal building dust, they constituted an enormous amount of the WTC dust: 5.87 percent (meaning that there was almost 1,500 times more iron in the dust than normal). [22] This earlier version also explicitly stated that iron and other metals were “melted during the WTC Event, producing spherical metallic particles.” [23]
In addition, whereas the 2004 report did not use the word “vaporize,” this earlier version spoke of temperatures “at which lead would have undergone vaporization.” [24] Accordingly, whereas the 2004 report referred to “high temperatures,” the earlier report indicated that the temperatures were not merely high but extremely high, because for lead to boil and hence vaporize, it must be heated to 1,749°C (3,180°F). [25]
camlok: You can read the above, the entire argument, which proves that steel was melted, steel was vaporized, ... on 9-11. That is simply not possible. The link,
http://www.consensus911.org/point-tt-6/
