The widespread claim that there was molten metal under the WTC is debunked - actually, it was molten steel!
Here we go:
A report on the Government Computer News website quotes Greg Fuchek, vice president of sales for LinksPoint Inc. as stating:
| QUOTE |
| „In the first few weeks, sometimes when a worker would pull a steel beam from the wreckage, the end of the beam would be dripping molten steel.“Source |
A report by Waste Age describes New York Sanitation Department workers moving
| QUOTE |
| "everything from molten steel beams to human remains." |
The article also mentions that the subdivisions of the WTC
| QUOTE |
| „continued to burn for approximately three months.“ Source |
A Messenger-Inquirer report recounts the experiences of Bronx firefighter "Toolie" O'Toole, who stated that some of the beams lifted from deep within the catacombs of Ground Zero by cranes were
| QUOTE |
"dripping from the molten steel."Source
|
transcription of an audio interview of Ground Zero chaplain Herb Trimpe contains the following passage:
| QUOTE |
„When I was there, of course, the remnants of the towers were still standing. It looked like an enormous junkyard. A scrap metal yard, very similar to that. Except this was still burning. There was still fire. On the cold days, even in January, there was a noticeable difference between the temperature in the middle of the site than there was when you walked two blocks over on Broadway. You could actually feel the heat.
It took me a long time to realize it and I found myself actually one day wanting to get back. Why? Because I felt more comfortable. I realized it was actually warmer on site. The fires burned, up to 2,000 degrees, underground for quite a while before they actually got down to those areas and they cooled off.
I talked to many contractors and they said they actually saw molten metal trapped, beams had just totally had been melted because of the heat.“Source
|
A report in the Johns Hopkins Public Health Magazine about recovery work in late October quotes Alison Geyh, Ph.D., as stating:
| QUOTE |
„Fires are still actively burning and the smoke is very intense. In some pockets now being uncovered, they are finding molten steel.“
Source |
An article inThe Newsletter of the Structural Engineers Association of Utah describing an speaking appearance by Leslie Robertson (structural engineer responsible for the design of the World Trade Center) contains this passage:
| QUOTE |
| „As of 21 days after the attack, the fires were still burning and molten steel was still running.“Source |
A publication by the National Environmental Health Association quotes Ron Burger, a public health advisor at the National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who arrived at Ground Zero on the evening of September 12th. Burger stated:
| QUOTE |
„Feeling the heat, seeing the molten steel, the layers upon layers of ash, like lava, it reminded me of Mt. St. Helen’s and the thousands who fled that disaster.“Source
|
A member of the New York Air National Guard's 109th Air Wing was at Ground Zero from September 22 to October 6. He kept a journal on which an article containing the following passage is based:
| QUOTE |
„Smoke constantly poured from the peaks. One fireman told us that there was still molten steel at the heart of the towers' remains. Firemen sprayed water to cool the debris down but the heat remained intense enough at the surface to melt their boots.“Source
|
The book American Ground, which contains detailed descriptions of conditions at Ground Zero, contains this passage:
| QUOTE |
„... or, in the early days, the streams of molten metal that leaked from the hot cores and flowed down broken walls inside the foundation hole.“ (American Ground, p.32)
|
A review of of the documentary Collateral Damage in the New York Post describes firemen at Ground Zero recalling
| QUOTE |
"heat so intense they encountered rivers of molten steel." Source
|
Dr. Keith Eaton toured Ground Zero and stated in The Structural Engineer ,
| QUOTE |
| "They showed us many fascinating slides [Eaton] continued, ranging from molten metal which was still red hot weeks after the event, to 4-inch thick steel plates sheared and bent in the disaster." (Structural Engineer , September 3, 2002, p. 6;.) |
Another danger involved the high temperature of twisted steel pulled from the rubble. Underground fires burned at temperatures up to 2,000 degrees. As the huge cranes pulled steel beams from the pile, safety experts worried about the effects of the extreme heat on the crane rigging and the hazards of contact with the hot steel.
SourceSarah Atlas was part of New Jersey's Task Force One Urban Search and Rescue and was one of the first on the scene at Ground Zero with her canine partner Anna. She reported in Penn Arts and Sciences, summer 2002,
‘Nobody's going to be alive.' Fires burned and
molten steel flowed in the pile of ruins still settling beneath her feet. (Penn, 2002)
The FEMA report titled World Trade Center Building Performance Study, Appendix C
Source“Limited Metallurgical Examination”, shows evidence of explosives used, by way of photographs, microscopic, and chemical examination. They do not draw this conclusion though. Instead, the authors write
| QUOTE |
“Evidence of a severe high temperature corrosion attack on the steel, including oxidation and sulfidation with subsequent intergranular melting, was readily visible in the near-surface microstructure.”... “The thinning of the steel occurred by high temperature corrosion due to a combination of oxidation and sulfidation.”...“The unusual thinning of the member is most likely due to an attack of the steel by grain boundary penetration of sulfur forming sulfides that contain both iron and copper.”...“A liquid eutectic mixture containing primarily iron, oxygen, and sulfur formed during this hot corrosion attack on the steel.”... “The severe corrosion and subsequent erosion of Samples 1 and 2 are a very unusual event. No clear explanation for the source of the sulfur has been identified.“
|
The results of the examination are striking. They reveal a phenomenon never before observed in building fires: eutectic reactions, which caused intergranular melting capable of turning a solid steel girder into Swiss cheese. The New York Times described this as
| QUOTE |
| "perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation." |
| QUOTE |
„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.“
Source
|
Note that sulfur is:
| QUOTE |
"The most popular vaporizing agent due to the fact it lowers ignition temperature for most pyrotechnic mixtures." --From the web page: Pyrotechnic ChemicalsSource
|
Take also this into consideration:
The government reports admit that the building fires were insufficient to melt steel beams -- then where did the molten metal pools come from? Metals expert Dr. Frank Gayle (working with NIST) stated:
| QUOTE |
| Your gut reaction would be the jet fuel is what made the fire so very intense, a lot of people figured that's what melted the steel. Indeed it did not, the steel did not melt. (Field, 2005;) |
Prof. Thomas Eagar explained in 2001 that the WTC fires would NOT melt steel:
| QUOTE |
"The fire is the most misunderstood part of the WTC collapse. Even today, the media report (and many scientists believe) that the steel melted. It is argued that the jet fuel burns very hot, especially with so much fuel present. This is not true.... The temperature of the fire at the WTC was not unusual, and it was most definitely not capable of melting steel.
In combustion science, there are three basic types of flames, namely, a jet burner, a pre-mixed flame, and a diffuse flame.... In a diffuse flame, the fuel and the oxidant are not mixed before ignition, but flow together in an uncontrolled manner and combust when the fuel/oxidant ratios reach values within the flammable range. A fireplace is a diffuse flame burning in air, as was the WTC fire. Diffuse flames generate the lowest heat intensities of the three flame types... The maximum flame temperature increase for burning hydrocarbons (jet fuel) in air is, thus, about 1000 °C -- hardly sufficient to melt steel at 1500 °C."
"But it is very difficult to reach [even] this maximum temperature with a diffuse flame. There is nothing to ensure that the fuel and air in a diffuse flame are mixed in the best ratio... This is why the temperatures in a residential fire are usually in the 500 °C to 650 °C range [Cote, 1992]. It is known that the WTC fire was a fuel-rich, diffuse flame as evidenced by the copious black smoke.... It is known that structural steel begins to soften around 425 °C and loses about half of its strength at 650 °C [Cote, 1992]. This is why steel is stress relieved in this temperature range. But even a 50% loss of strength is still insufficient, by itself, to explain the WTC collapse... The WTC, on this low-wind day, was likely not stressed more than a third of the design allowable... Even with its strength halved, the steel could still support two to three times the stresses imposed by a 650 °C fire." (Eagar and Musso, 2001; emphasis added.) |
Happy debunking!
First tell me how the hell the fire got there in the first place.
Then try to explain me how a fire with NO fuel could melt TONS of steel with almost NO O2.
IT--
| QUOTE |
| The widespread claim that there was molten metal under the WTC is debunked - actually, it was molten steel! |
Just for your information: structural steel melts at higher temperature than many metals. So, be specific - which metal?