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WTC Building 7 appears to have suffered significant damage at some
point after the WTC Towers had collapsed,
according to firefighters at the scene. Firefighter Butch Brandies
tells other firefighters that nobody is to go into Building 7 because
of creaking and noises coming out of there. [Firehouse Magazine, 8/02] According to Deputy
Chief Peter Hayden, there is a bulge in the southwest corner of the
building between floors 10 and 13. [Firehouse
Magazine, 4/02] Battalion Chief John Norman later recalls, “At the
edge of the south face you could see that it was very heavily damaged.”
[Firehouse Magazine, 5/02] Deputy Chief Nick
Visconti also later recalls, “A big chunk of the lower floors had been
taken out on the Vesey Street side.” Captain Chris Boyle recalls, “On
the south side of 7 there had to be a hole 20 stories tall in the
building, with fire on several floors.” [Firehouse Magazine, 8/02] The building will collapse hours later.
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According to Captain Michael Currid,
the sergeant at arms for the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, some
time after the collapse of the North
Tower, he sees four or five fire companies trying to extinguish fires
in Building 7 of the WTC. Someone from the city�s Office of Emergency
Management tells him that WTC 7 is in serious danger of collapse. Currid says, “The consensus was
that it was basically a lost cause and we should not lose anyone else
trying to save it.” Along with some others, he goes inside WTC 7 and
yells up the stairwells to the fire fighters, “Drop everything and get
out!” [September 11: An Oral History, by Dean E. Murphy,
8/02, pp. 175-176] Although Currid doesn�t say exactly at what time
this occurs, it is later reported that at 12:10 to 12:15 p.m. fire
fighters find individuals inside the building and lead them out. [NIST Progress Report, 6/04, p. L-18] So
presumably it is some time after this when they call the fire fighters
to evacuate. However, contradicting this account, one report later
claims, “Given the limited water supply and the first strategic
priority, which was to search for survivors in the rubble, FDNY did not
fight the fires [in WTC 7].” [Fire Engineering, 9/02] And a 2002 government
report says, “the firefighters made the decision fairly early on not to
attempt to fight the fires, due in part to the damage to WTC 7 from the
collapsing towers.” [FEMA study, 5/1/02, p. 5-21] Building 7
eventually collapses late in the
afternoon of 9/11 (see (5:20
p.m.)).
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The area around WTC Building 7 is
evacuated at this time. [Kansas
City Star, 3/28/04] New York fire department chief officers, who
have surveyed the building, have determined it is in danger of
collapsing. Several senior firefighters have described this
decision-making process. According to fire chief Daniel Nigro, “The
biggest decision we had to make was to clear the area and create a collapse zone around the severely damaged
[WTC Building 7]. A number of fire officers and companies assessed the
damage to the building. The appraisals indicated that the building's
integrity was in serious doubt.” [Fire Engineering, 9/02]
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The 47-story WTC Building 7 collapses. It housed New York City's
emergency command center, offices of the FBI, CIA, and various
commercial offices. The collapse of the
building buries an electrical substation containing more than 130,000
gallons of oil from transformers and high-voltage lines—most of which
contain low levels of hazardous PCBs—that will provide fuel for a fire
that will burn for more than three months contaminating the city's air
with a number of toxins including dibenzo-p-dioxins, dibenzofurans and
other polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons. [Alexander's Gas & Oil Connections, 1/9/02;
Kupferman, 2003; Stanford Report, 12/5/01; The Washington Post, 9/12/01; Environmental
Law, 12/26/2001; New York Daily News, 11/27/2001; New York Daily News, 11/29/2001 Sources:
letter, 11/26/01]
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Building 7 of the WTC complex, a 47-story tower, collapses. No one is killed. [CNN, 9/12/01; Washington Post, 9/12/01; Associated Press, 8/19/02 (B); MSNBC,
9/22/01] Many questions will arise over the cause of this collapse in the coming weeks and months.
Building 7, which was not hit by an airplane, is the first modern,
steel-reinforced high-rise to collapse
because of fire. [New York Times, 3/2/02; Stanford
Report, 12/3/01; Chicago Tribune, 11/29/01] Some later suggest
that the diesel fuel stored in several tanks on the premises may have
contributed to the building's collapse.
The building contained a 6,000-gallon tank between its first and second
floors and another four tanks, holding as much as 36,000 gallons, below
ground level. There were also three smaller tanks on higher floors. [FEMA
study, 5/1/02; New York Observer, 3/25/02; Chicago Tribune, 11/29/01; New York Times, 3/2/02] However, the cause of
the collapse is uncertain. A 2002
government report concludes: “The specifics of the fires in WTC 7 and
how they caused the building to collapse
remain unknown at this time. Although the total diesel fuel on the
premises contained massive potential energy, the best hypothesis has
only a low probability of occurrence.” [FEMA
study, 5/1/02] Some reports indicate that the building may have
been deliberately destroyed. Shortly after the collapse,
CBS News anchor Dan Rather comments that the collapse
is “reminiscent of ... when a building was deliberately destroyed by
well-placed dynamite to knock it down.” [CBS News,
9/11/01] In a PBS documentary broadcast in 2002, the World Trade
Center's leaseholder Larry Silverstein talks about a phone call from
the Fire Department commander he had on 9/11. Silverstein recalls
saying to the commander about the building: “You know, we've had such
terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it. And
they made that decision to pull and then we watched the building collapse.” [PBS, 9/10/02]
It is unclear what Silverstein meant by the phrase “decision to pull.”
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The Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA) and its contractor, Greenhorne and O'Mara, Inc., from
Greenbelt, Maryland, begin putting together a Building Performance
Assessment Team (BPAT), to conduct a formal analysis of the World Trade
Center collapses, and produce a report
of its findings. FEMA routinely deploys such teams following disasters,
like floods or hurricanes. The 23-member BPAT team set up at the WTC collapse site is assembled by the American
Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and headed by Dr. W. Gene Corley of
Construction Technologies Laboratories in Skokie, Illinois. Corley was
previously the principal investigator for FEMA's study of the Murrah
Building, in Oklahoma City in 1995. [New Yorker, 11/12/01] BPAT team members are
based nationwide and have to communicate with each other mostly by
phone, as they continue with their regular jobs. While some of them are
being paid for their efforts, others are working on the investigation
voluntarily. They are told not to speak with reporters, under threat of
dismissal from the team, supposedly because of the delicacy of the
subject with which they are dealing. The BPAT team receives $600,000 of
funding from FEMA, plus approximately $500,000 in ASCE in-kind
contributions. [Associated Press, 1/14/02; Committee on Science hearing, 3/6/02; New
York Times, 12/25/01] The team will have great difficulty accessing
the collapse site and evidence they
want to see (see March
6, 2002). The end product of their investigation is the FEMA World
Trade Center Building Performance Study, released in May 2002 (see May 1, 2002).
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In the month following 9/11, a significant amount of the steel debris
from the WTC collapses is removed from
the rubble pile, cut into smaller sections, and either melted at a
recycling plant or shipped out of the US. [Committee on Science hearing, 3/6/02] Each of
the twin towers contained 78,000 tons of recyclable steel. Much of this
is shipped to India, China, and other Asian countries, where it will be
melted down and reprocessed into new steel products. Asian companies
are able to purchase the steel for just $120 per ton, compared, for
example, to a usual average price of $150 per ton in China. Industry
officials estimate that selling off the steel and other metals from the
WTC for recycling could net a few tens of million dollars. [New York Times, 10/9/01; Reuters, 1/21/02; CorpWatch, 2/6/02; Reuters, 1/22/02; Eastday (.com), 1/24/02] 9/11 victims'
families and some engineers are angered at the decision to quickly
discard the steel, believing it should be examined to help determine
how the towers collapsed. A respected
fire fighting trade magazine comments, “We are literally treating the
steel removed from the site like garbage, not like crucial fire scene
evidence.” [Fire Engineering, 1/02 (B)] Rep. Joseph
Crowley (D) will later call the loss of this evidence “borderline
criminal.” By March 2002, 150 pieces of steel from the WTC debris will
have been identified by engineers for use in future investigations (see
March 6, 2002).
[FEMA report, p. D-13] A study by the National
Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which commences in Augretavot
2002 [Associated Press, 8/21/02; NIST, 8/21/02] , will have 236 pieces of
recovered steel available to it. Of these, 229 pieces are from WTC 1
and 2, representing “roughly 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent of the 200,000
tons of structural steel used in the construction of the two towers.” [NIST draft report, 9/05, p. 85] New York
Mayor Mike Bloomberg defends the decision to quickly get rid of the WTC
steel, saying, “If you want to take a look at the construction methods
and the design, that's in this day and age what computers do. Just
looking at a piece of metal generally doesn't tell you anything.”
Officials in the mayor's office decline to reply to requests by the New
York Times regarding who decided to have the steel recycled. [New
York Times, 12/25/01; Eastday (.com), 1/24/02]
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The New York Police and FBI are
investigating the theft of over 250 tons of steel from the remains of
the collapsed WTC towers. Apparently,
the steel was hauled away by trucks involved in the official clear-up
operation (see September
12-October 2001), but instead of being taken to Fresh Kills—the
FBI-controlled dump on Staten Island where it was intended to go—the
steel was driven to three independently-owned scrapyards, two in New
Jersey and one on Long Island. The London Telegraph says the scrap
metal value of the stolen steel would have been roughly $17,500.
Investigators believe the theft was organized by one of New York's
Mafia families. [Daily Telegraph, 9/29/01] Consequently, on
November 26, 2001, the city initiates use of an in-vehicle Global
Positioning System (GPS), to monitor the locations of nearly 200 trucks
removing steel from the WTC collapse
site, at a cost of $1,000 per unit. This system sends out alerts if any
truck travels off course or arrives late at its destination. One driver
involved with the clear-up operation is subsequently dismissed simply
for taking an extended lunch break. [Access Control and Security Systems, 7/1/02]
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