"The real damage in the World Trade Center resulted from the size of the fire. Each floor was about an acre, and the fire covered the whole floor within a few seconds." [Nova] "The way [the mast of WTC 1] fell suggests it was failure of the inner core that began the collapse ... The 767 had smashed through the outer wall and hit the inner core directly destroying the fire protection. The intense fire that followed had then concentrated around the core [between floors 93 & 98]." [BBC]

Okay, let's take a look...

Twelve employees of the American Bureau of Shipping ... were on the 91st floor of the north tower when the first plane hit almost exactly at their level. But they were on the northwest corner of the building. The bulk of the plane's fuselage entered the building about 100 feet south of them. The plane's left wing, banked toward the ground, wiped out the east side of the floor. But the plane's right wing, banked toward the sky, sliced through the office above them.

George Sleigh had been at work at ABS since about 7:30 a.m. He was in his cubicle, surrounded by technical shipping manuals. "I heard this unusual sound. A roaring sound," he said. "As I looked up I saw the plane. I thought: 'This guy is really low.' "

A wing flashed past his eyes, followed by the plane's smooth belly. Then the world caved in. Down the hall from ABS, an office was obliterated. Above them, Marsh USA Inc., an insurance and risk management firm that occupied the 93rd through 100th floors, was hit badly. It would later report as many as 400 workers missing.

Sleigh, who occupied the easternmost desk in the ABS office, was buried under a pile of ceiling tiles and bookshelves. His colleagues were fine, as surprised they were still alive as they were that a plane had just crashed into their building. They dug Sleigh out, and they all escaped. [Los Angeles Times]

An 800°C inferno supposedly engulfed the levels impacted Flight 11. To put this in perspective a photograph of the Windsor Building Fire in Madrid which did burn at 800°C is shown on the right.

Why weren't the above WTC survivors affected by the searing heat of an 800°C inferno?

95TH FLOOR

Patricia Alonso, victim

Marsh & McLennan

She managed one phone call to her husband, Robert. This is his brief account:

She worked in Tower 1, 95th floor. She was on the southeast side looking over the Brooklyn Bridge. I talked to her while she was evacuating. She called me on her cell phone at 9:07. She said she was leaving. She was evacuating.

I said, "I'm coming down to get you.'' And I told her I loved her. And she told me she loved me. She didn't know that a plane had hit the building. She just said there was smoke. [New York Times]

Twenty minutes after Flight 11 hit WTC 1 survivors in the aircraft impact area were attempting to leave the building. There should have been no survivors between floors 93 and 98 if an 800ºC inferno was raging at the core of WTC 1.

This photograph taken from the World Trade Center report shows the aircraft impact area of WTC 1:

Note the survivor looking out from the aircraft impact hole

Note the survivor looking out from the aircraft impact hole

If an 800°C fire was burning at the core of the the building then the visible core area should be glowing bright cherry red through heating:

The following table (see http://www.processassociates.com/process/heat/metcolor.htm) provides data regarding the melting temperatures of lead, aluminum, structural steel and iron, along with approximate metal temperatures by color. Note that the approximate temperature of a hot metal is given by its color, quite independent of the composition of the metal. (A notable exception is aluminum, which due to low emissivity and high reflectivity appears silvery-gray in daylight conditions, at all temperatures whether in solid or liquid forms. Aluminum does incandesce like other metals, but faintly, so that in broad daylight conditions in air, it appears silvery-gray according to experiments done at BYU. [physics.byu.edu]

--------------------------F------C-----K

Lead (Pb) Melts     621  327    60l

Faint Red        930    500    770

Blood REd        1075    580    855

*Aluminum Melts        1221    660    933

Medium Cherry        1275    690    965

Cherry             1375    745    1020

Bright Cherry        1450    790    1060

Slamon            1550    845    1115

Dark Orange        1630    890    1215

Orange            1530    890    1215

Lemon            1830    1000    1270

Light Yellow        1975    1080    1355

White            2200    1205    1480

Red hot metal being retrieved from the WTC wreckage.

The World Trade Center report photograph shows no glow in WTC 1's core area - it is black, i.e. cold.

1. What caused the massive structure of WTC 1's core to catastrophically fail?

2. What caused the extreme temperatures in the wreckage of the buildings?

World Trade Center construction photograph showing the building's core - click for full sized image

World Trade Center construction photograph showing the building's core - click for full sized image

Sakher Hammad had a WTC 1 basement pass dated 9/5/2001. This pass gave him access to the 6 underground levels of WTC 1 and he was working on the sprinklers. Hammad worked for Denko Mechanical, but the Port Authority of New York have no knowledge of this company.

Who signed Sakher Hammad's WTC basement level pass, and what was he doing? [Full details]

See also:

The 9/11 WTC Fires: Where's the Inferno?

The 9/11 WTC Collapses: An Audio-Video Analysis

www.whatreallyhappened.com/wtc1_fire.html