The Basement Explosions - Scd Part I

The Basement Explosions

(Note: this is all about the explosions reported as the plane hit the North Tower (WTC 1), not about the basement explosions reported later just before the collapse of the tower).

Loose Change claims that the explosions, which occured in the basement levels of WTC 1, were not the result of a jet-fuel-fireball:
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"However, the World Trade Center's core and elevator shafts were hermetically sealed, AKA, air-tight. The fire could not possibly have had enough oxygen to travel 1,300 feet down, retaining enough energy to destroy the bottom 8 floors of the building."

Not only website like Screw Loose Change disagree with this claim.
WTC7.net, a Website which actually debunks the official version regarding the WTC, contradicts the statement made by Loose Change:

A fuel air explosion (FAE) is caused by ignition of a vapour cloud of fuel. In order for the right conditions to exist for a fuel air explosion, there must be the right amount of fuel and the right amount of air. There is a minimum percentage and maximum percentage of fuel/air ratio to achieve such conditions, these are called the lower explosive limit and the upper explosive limit. For jet fuel A, the lower explosive limit is 0.7%, the upper explosive limit is 5%, therefore in order for a fuel air explosion to have occurred in the WTC elevator shafts, there had to have been a mixture of no less then 0.7% fuel, and no more than 5% fuel to air ratio. Any ratio outside of these limits and a fuel air mixture would not ignite. The mistake made in the WTC7.net quote is, they discount the fact that the jet fuel that spilled down elevator shafts could still ignite. The lower and upper explosive limits of jet fuel do not determine whether fuel will burn, rather, they just determine the conditions required for a flammable fuel air mixture. The fuel certainly could ignite, and there are many examples of witnesses describing fireballs in elevator shafts immediately after the strikes on the WTC on the upper levels.
See also.

So this reduces the probability of unignited jet-fuel spilling down shafts, but WCT7.net is still right on the fact, that jet-fuel could have spilled down shafts before igniation. But it's misleading in giving a higher amount of presumabely unignited jet-fuel.

However, is Loose Change wrong and debunked? Let's check the facts.

First we have to look into the elevator-system of the Twin Towers to get an understanding of the situation.

This is confirmed by the blueprint of the WTC, as we can see here that there were only three continuing elevator shafts.

Freight elevators Car 50 and Car 6 (dual use), and express elevator Car 7. Here you can see their locations, on the opposite side of the impact (note that elevator Car 6 is labelled as express):
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So we conclude from all of the above only one elevator per building had access from the sixth basement level to the 108th floor, and this was Car 50. These would be the “main” freight elevators in each tower.

And we have two elevators serving only particulary floors, beginning from basement level 1, Car 6 and 7. Though their lowest elevator opening was in basement level 1, their shafts went as deep as basement level 4.

This is established due to the blueprints which have been made available through an anonymous source in March 2007. If we look into the blueprints of the core of the sublevels 3-5, we could see that the shafts of Car 6 and 7 ended in sublevel 3, and that the shaft of Car 50 ended not before sublevel 5 (note that the blueprints label the basement floors otherwise than NIST. Service level – B1(NIST), Sub level 1 – B2 (NIST), Sub level 2 – B3 (NIST), Sub level 3 – B4 (NIST), Sub level 4 – B5 (NIST), Sub level 5 – B6 (NIST)).
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Above Car 50 in sublevel 5 (B6), and 4 (B5):

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Car 6, 7 and 50 in sublevel 3 (Basement 4):

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One point should be adressed: due to misleading phrasing in NIST-reports (though NIST makes this false statement so often, that I have problems in believing that this isn't done deliberateley), many people think that there were more than three continuing shafts. Read again from the above NIST-quote:

And here are more:

This gives the impression that different elevators shared the same shaft, because they were stacked on top of each other to save floor space. Though it does not even seem to be technically possible, people often bring this point in to prove that there were more than three continuing shafts.

To make an end to this false assumptions, we only have to look at the floor plans.

The key point to observe from what NIST says is, “providing additional transport without increasing floor space”. The elevators were stacked, as in, local elevators would keep the in the same path throughout the building. For example, as per the NIST report, below shows the variations in floor plans as each bank of local elevators terminate, giving the higher levels more floor space.
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All four banks occupying floor space.
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Bank A terminates, giving these levels more floor space.
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Bank B terminates, giving these levels more floor space.
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Bank C terminates, giving these levels more floor space.
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Here is the 42nd floor upper mechanical room, bank D terminates to allow for the motor to be intalled over the shaft.
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Here is the bank D elevator elevation drawing. Note that the shaft terminates and does not continue past the mechanical room. If we look at the top of the drawing we can see that the mechanical room is sealed by the 43rd floor. The drawing shows above this area on the 43rd floor are toilets and a new zone 2 elevator shaft pit. Hence the elevators are stacked.
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Here we have the 43rd floor showing the postion of the toilets and the new zone 2 elevator shaft pits.
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Here is the 44th floor lobby starting off again. Notice the local elevators are in the same positions, hence they are “stacked”.

So now we have established that there were three shafts which continously run from the impact area of WTC 1 (floors 93-98) down to basement levels. Accordings to NIST:

Here the NIST is wrong on two points. First, as we will see later, Car 50 did not fall all the way to the pit in the sub-basement level. NIST repeatedly made this false statement:

Second, Car 7 was also in the impact zone and therefore could have fallen all the way down. In theory. In practice, also Car 7 could not have fallen all the way down, like all other elevators. Due to the safety standards, falling elevators would have been stopped by emergency brakes. See this short article from "How stuff works":
What if you were on an elevator and the cable broke.
So keep this in mind whenever NIST or some eyewitness states that elevators crashed down to the pits, that this is a misinterpretation of what really happened. So in fact, it's not that falling elevators were misinterpreted as explosions, but explosions were misinterpreted as falling elevators. Often this misinterpretation is accompanied by the phrase "what I found out later", or something similiar, of which we will see some examples in the further examination.

Before we look closer into the damage in the basement levels let's see what witnesses have to tell about their experience in Car 50, the main freight elevator.
Arturo Griffith, operated WTC1 elevator Car 50:

Though the door to Mr. Griffith’s elevator was knocked out when the safety brakes caught the free-falling elevator, there was no Fuel-Air-Explosion (FAE) down this elevator shaft. From this testimony we can rule out the shaft of Car 50 as the possible way for the jet-fuel to cause the reported damage in the basement, as the blast pressure had to go right through the elevator used by Grififth and a co-worker. And they certainly wouldn't have survived it when the pressure from the fireball travelling trough the shaft of Car 50 would be the same force that - as we will see later - caused walls to cave-in, blew out windows, threw people against walls, blew someone’s tongue out of their mouth. From the USA Today article we could not conclude on which floor the elevator stopped. From a CNN report we can assume that it was in a lower level:

Note that he reports three explosions. The first caused the elevator to fall, the second pushed the doors inside and therefore was originating from outside the elevator shaft. And the third pushed him against a wall. From another article we finally could learn on which exact location the elevator stopped:

Note that here it is reported that a fireball came down the shaft after the explosions damaged the elevator and injured Griffith. So this fireball could not be the cause for the explosions and the damage in the basement. This is important as several witnesses describe a fireball coming down and the odor of kerosine. In the official version, these distinguished events are mixed together to deny the possibility of additional explosives.

And regarding elevators 6 and 7, according to NIST they were inoperable on 9/11:

From this statement we can conclude that the elevator cars were parked in Basement 1, where they had their lowest elevator openings. This is also confirmed by NIST:

The damage in the basement

Now we look closer into the damage of the basemen, at first at some Port Authority Transcripts.

It's the talk of a big explosions. open water lines and smoke are mentioned, but no fires or odor of kerosine. Some say that the mentioning of Car 50 is evidence that the explosion emerged from their. But Car 50 is here mentioned as a reference point to where the caller is standing, "across the hall from the 50-car". From this we could not conclude from where exactly the explosion emerged, as their is no direct eyewitness, only that the Turner Construction area, right outside Car 50, was affected.

Again no fires mentioned, but as PAPD Officer 33 states, there was also a cave-in at the platform of the PATH (Port Authority Trans-Hudson) plaza. The platform is in Basement 5, and it's quite a distance from the WTC elevators to the Plaza PATH. See here the location of the PATH tunnel and the subway:
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Here's the blueprint of the foundation of Basement 5. The red box in WTC 1 refers to the shafts of Car 6 and 7, which ended in Basement 4.In the center of WTC1 you can see Car 50. The red lines refer to the PATH, on the right side of WTC1 you can see the platforms.

And Basement 5:
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Watch this live-report of an eyewitness-account about the subway-explosion: (LC 40min22sec)

The subway is outside the WTC Twin Tower foundation, on the eastern side. Therefore, the fireball (regardless of which elevator shaft) had to travel over 200 feet to impact the subway. And of course to impact all walls between.

Here are two other witness-accounts related to the subway: Download hereand here.

Note that 'plant' refers to the refrigeration plant, outside WTC 1 foundation to the south (see foundation blueprint above).

Construction worker Phillip Morelli was on the fourth basement level under WTC1 when it was impacted:

Note that Morelli experienced two explosions from the basement levels of WTC1, and he mentioned no fires. Note also that he experienced the same when supposedly the South Tower was hit. Here's another testimony from an eyewitness, Jose Sanchez, maintenance worker, located in Basement 4:

Note that the fireball went through the shaft of Car 50 after the first explosion. This is consistent with the testimony of Arturo Griffith who reported a fireball after the explosion(s) occured. More important, this fireball knocked him to the floor and burned his hair. Could this be the same fireball that caused cave-ins, causing walls to "hit someone in the face"?

Sanchez is another example of how people and elevator shafts survived the fire and overpressure nearest the explosion zone, but garages, offices, machine shops, PATH Level Plaza were damaged or destroyed farthest away from the - official - explosion zone.

Another eyewitness account from Basement 4:

The refrigeration plant was outside the tower's foundation and adjacent to it on the south-site (see B5 foundation blueprint above, it gives also the exatct location of the plant for B4). For the door to be exploded off its hinges the blast had to destroy at least three walls before.
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Blue marked are elevators 6 and 7, red marked are the walls and the green one is the door McCabe is talking of.

McCabe doesn't mention fire or the odor of kerosine, but if you read the full source, you will find also this:

"I later on found out the reason there was an explosion was the jet fuel filled the elevator shaft and seconds later a spark triggered an explosion."

Another one who "later found out", as if he researched it. He didn't witness jet fuel filling an elevator shaft. He didn't witness jet-fuel exploding,related effects like fire or smellodor of the jet-fuel. Assumable he didn't find out himself, he was told by someone else, or just made this explanation due to all the public accounts and reports, telling us the jet-fuel-caused-the-basement-damage-myth.

Compare this picture from the WTC 93 attack, showing a destroyed parking wall, with the following account, by WTC Stationary engineer, Mike Pecoraro:
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When the lights flickered Pecaro and his co-worker were in Basement 6, and after the room filled in with white smoke they decided to leave upstairs.

From the statement, that "they decided to ascend two more levels to the building’s lobby", we can conclude that Level C refers to Basement 2. This is also established when it's said that they ascended on floor above, where they found an Elevator Operator and a female Carpenter. The Elevator Operator is Arthuro Griffith, the femal carpenter is Marlene Cruz (watch her testimony here, or download it here).
So these witnesse are corroborating each other in their testimonies.

Note that when Pecaro speaks of "gone walls" in the parking area and the "gone machine shop", that he doesn't mention fire.

So we have blown walls in the Basement level 5 ("platform of PATH plaza cave-in"), Basement 4 ("walls hitting the face"), and 2 ("walls of parking garage gone", "machine-shop gone"), and also blast damage in Basement level 1 ("steel and concrete fire door that weighed about 300 pounds, wrinkled up").

According to the official version of events, the same jet fuel fireball that created the mentioned massive basement damage, would also leave elevator car(s) occupying the same shaft(s) this fireball supposedly travelled through, practically unscathed by comparison.

As the shaft of Car 50 could not be the source of this damage (of course the blast, which caused walls turn to rubble in basement levels, would have killed Arturo Griffith and Marlene Cruz), the two remaining shafts would be Car 6 and 7. But as these shafts didn't run lower than Basement 4, a jet-fuel explosion in these shafts would have had to blow off the walls and the bottom of these shafts to cause a cave-in in Basement 5.

Before we see that this is physically implausible, let's have a look into other eyewitness accounts. Starting with Bobby Hall, who was in Basement 1 or 2 (50 feet underground):

Note first, that what "they found out later" is a misinterpretation. Car 50 wasn't falling from the 88th floor, and Hall couldn't have been thrown against a wall due to a falling elevator. Also, I don't think that he and his colleagues researched what happened, so actually they didn't find out later, they were told.

Note secondly, that he doesn't mention fire or a fireball, but a hot wind, blowing him back.

William Rodriguez, janitor in the Twin Towers, who is also interviewed in Loose Change:

From the above testimony from Rodriguez, we can establish that Rodriguez was on Basement 1, and that the explosions came from below him, as he assumes, from Basement 2 or 3.

Rodriguez' testimony is corroborated by Felipe David:

and by Kenneth Joahannemann (watch here) and by Anthony Saltalamacia (watch here).
Another eyewitness, Salvatore Giambanco, was in a completely different location than Rodriguez and David, on the opposite side of Basement 1 by another elevator:

Another one who was later told. It's apparant how often witnesses of the basement explosions "find out" later explanations of what they experienced, fitting perfect with the official account.

No wonder, as they have been told. Incidentally, from the very beginning they have been told. By Secret Service members. But more on that later. Giambanco also stated this:

"We heard the explosion and the smoke all of a sudden came from all over. There was an incredible force of wind that also swept everything away. I remember hearing a scream of a woman, but I couldn't see her. I had just gotten off the elevator and I was standing by it with another man but didn't know his name."

Corroborating Bobby Hall, who also mentioned the "incredible force of the wind", just in different words, but was told that this wind was the effect of an elevator falling 90 levels. Hall and Giambanco both mentioned no fire or fireball. Then what caused this wind?



Another witness had this to say:

"The last stretch of floors went by rather quickly; 3rd... 2rd... 1st... Basement. We ended up in some weird storage closet with two WTC workers. "You went too far! The exits are on the 1st Floor," one of them yelled from behind the disheveled pipes and disarray. I noticed that the walls down here were heavily damaged. It was dark, damp, and it looked like the building really took quite a structural blow. It was pretty tough to backtrack against the steady flow of people coming down the stairs, but we managed to get back out to the ground level. "

Unfortunately, we don't know the name of this man, as this was only posted in a internet forum, and therefore should be taken with a grant of salt. However, his whole report seems to be accurate and not in contradiction to what other people reported.

In the Lobby

The situation in the lobby is the most complicated regarding the basement explosions. There are a lot of conflicting statements making it hard to figure out what happened. To get a full understanding it might be better to read the 'About explosions' section first, despite you are aware of the difference between detonation and deflagration.

For reference:
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We start with the account by FDNY Lieutenant William Walsh for the WTC Task Force:

According to his testimony the only damaged elevators were in the center of the core. From the figure ("Passenger and Freight Elevators in Tower") we could see that the only elevator in the center which would reach until the impact zone was Car 50.

If we look at the footage from the lobby, which is provided in the documentary by the Naudet-brothers, we could not see any signs of fire and soot - besides in the center of the core. Though there were reports of a fireball blowing through the lobby, this fireball had not ignited any of the visible contents of the lobby. We see broken windows, removed marble panels and fine dust. The damage looks very similar to the damage caused by the bomb from 1993, which was placed in a van in Basement 2.

Blown out windows in the lobby from the WTC 93 bombing:
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Blown out windows in the lobby on 9/11:
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This picture shows a blown out window from the west front of the building.
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Again we see blown out windows of the west front, from the view of the fire command post.
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View to the west, note the fire command post in the upper right corner, on the left side is the north elevator bank. Note the construction fence in front of the elevators 22 and 23.


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On the right side you can see the north elevator bank, people are going to the west side of the building. Note the fine dust.
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To the right again the north elevator bank.

Note that the pictures above confirm the testimony of Lt. Walsh, that the elevators on the north side were intact (not intact in the meaning of operable). Unfortunately, we have no pictures of the south elevator bank to confirm his testimony, but at least his testimony was accurate about the situation on the north bank, and as we will see soon, most probable he was also correct about the south side.

Marble panels blown off the walls in the lobby, here on the west- wall of the core, to the right is the west entrance to the core's elevators:
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From the same point of view, but in north-direction where the FDNY command post is. Note that the ground is covered with a layer of fine dust.

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Point of view from the FDNY command post to the south, note the fine dust in the background.

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Same, only closer and later.

Note that on all pictures we don't see any signs of burning or soot. But if the blast pressure of a fireball blow out the windows on the westfront of the building, and the marble panels from the core-walls, we'd expect to see such signs there. Even the plants in the area weren't singed. From the documentary of the Naudet-brothers we can see no indication that the blown windows and panels were the product of a fireball.

Another explanation sometimes given for the observed damage, is that the plane impact and the subsequent shaking of the building caused this damage. But this explanation doesn't sem to fit also. Why would a shaking tower only cause windows to break in the lobby level, and not in higher regions which are more stressed by swaying? And why should the windows only been blown out on a particular site of the building?

It should be noted that the towers were build with enough flexibility to sway. Wind forces were absorbed by the outer skeleton of the building, dumpsters would have reduced effects on the buildings core. Now let's compare the swaying of the towers on 9/11 with other events caused the towers to sway.

According to this report the towers swayed as much as 20 inches at their tops. This is confirmed by a NIST-figure of WTC 2 impact, which is even under 20 inches:

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(
NIST - PDF)

This is about the half the towers experienced in strong wind storms. (Source)

And according to NIST about one third the towers were designed for:

So even in storms which resulted in twice the number of sway-range, windows did not break. So I think we can rule out the plane-impact explanation. Besides the windows, if the removed marble panels were result of the impact one might expect to observe this phenomena also on the north-site of the core, where the plane hit and the columns experienced the most stress. And not to forget the seismic data, registering a 0.9 magnitude on the Richter-scale, which is very low and not even considered as earthquake.

So this was caused by an explosion, not by the plane impact. But again, for that we would expect to see signs of soot and charring in the damaged area if this was the result of blast-pressure from a fireball. Look also at this corroborating account:

As no fireball is mentioned, we can assume from this that the fireball and the shattering of the glass were indeed two different events.

But there was smoke and soot in the Lobby, as it is reported by Mike Pecoraro:

Now this contradicts the pictures we've just seen. The whole Lobby wasn't sooted and full of smoke. From Lt. Walsh's testimony we could conclude that the origin of the smoke was in the center of the lobby, and it's safe to say that Pecoraro mixed it with the 'whole lobby'. Which wouldn't be very surprising as he entered the lobby in the center from Stairway B, where the origin of the smoke was. So Pecoraro does not contradict Walsh's account. Here's a picture of the core, looking from east to west. On the right (north) side are the elevator banks A-D. On the left are express elevators, beginning with elevator 5. Then comes 6 and 7:
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Unfortunately the picture is of bad quality, but it seems that beginning from the location of elevator 5 the ceiling and walls are charred. Note that no removed marble panels are visible.

However, from the Naudet-brother documentary it is evident that, until the collapse of the South Tower, there was no fire, smoke and soot in the west and north area of the lobby. Only fine dust was visible. We have no footage of the south area of the lobby, but Welsh's account indicates that this was also the case for the south side

It's often said that Pecoraro's testimony proves that the damage is consistent with a jet-fuel explosion and not with explosives, as they wouldn't produce soot and burnt people.

But this argumentation is wrong, as it excludes the possibility of both events to have happened seperately. As we've already seen there is evidence of a fire-ball, but there's also evidence that this fireball occured after the initial basement explosion.

Furthermore, soot and black smoke would not be inconsistent with an explosive device, proven by the WTC 93 bombing:

According to the USFA-TR-076/February 93, besides others, the bombing resulted in the following:

- severe smoke and soot conditions throughout the towers (p.91)

From the same report:

Now we have all signs of a deflagration in the WTC 93 bombing, and even someone mentioned that "it felt like an airplane hit the building", certainly no one would have argued that there was no bomb.

When no one took this as evidence that there was no detonation device in the WTC 93 bombing, then why should we take the same observations as evidence that there was no detonation device in the basement on 9/11?. To exclude a detonation because there are also signs of a deflagration is illogical. Instead, it's logical to include a deflagration if there are signs of a deflagration. Same for detonations. (See "About explosions" section for more on that) .

Other firefighter accounts corroborate that all effects of a deflagration were found inside the core center, which would match with the location of the only possible shafts for the jet-fuel to spill down (6,7 and 50).

Compared to the floorplans, the only doors which would have been within visual, would have been 17,49,50,6,7 and maybe 48 and 5. It would not be unusual to see the doors missing off 50,6 and 7, also 17 and 49 could have easily been out of sight.

So this matches the official account.

Here we have for the first time explicitly mentioned elevators 6 and 7. This is of course again in line with the official version. But from that we couldn't conclude if the blown out doors were on the south side, or the center side, of the elevator bank, which would be helpful to corrobate Walsh's account.

But it would be amazing, if the doors of elevators 6 and 7 were only blown on one side, and not on both.

However, it seems that the most damage was not in those shafts :

These could not have been elevators 6 and 7 (which were out of service, and its cars were in B1), and not elevator 50. And why did they come down when their cables were not in the impact zone? How could they have been "blown out of their shafts", "crashed out of shaft", when even elevator 6, 7 and 50 were not blown out, though the only possible source for the explosion?

Firefighter Blaich corroborates Moribito's account regarding elevator cars been blown out. Unfortunately, we have not footage of the south side bank, banks A-D, only of the north side bank and a blurry view inside the core corridor. So we don't know the exact location of the blown out elevators, but we can conclude that these were not some which shafts reach into impact zone. If the blown out elevators would be that of 6 and 7, we could assume that Parente would have mentioned that and not only talked of blown out doors.

It's safe to say that "all the elevators were crashed down" is an exaggeration. And note that "chopped off legs" indicates a shock wave, in line with a detonation, not a deflagration (see explosion-section).

Note that between the plane impact and the situation of the burning man on West Street is a timespan of several minutes. If this man did not burn for several minutes, which is unlikely, than this further indicates that there was a later explosion which set people on fire.

Note also that he described a man pushed against the wall with his tongue on the floor. Hard to imagine the result of the same fuel fireball that Griffith witnessed, where Cruz was pulled from the car just seconds before a fireball engulfed it. Why wasn't Cruz and her rescuers blasted against the wall?

This again indicates that there were different explosions which caused different effects, at different times. Effects in line with a detonation and effects in line with a deflagration.

Please watch also this interview (at 6:45) by Firefighter John Schroeder, which corroborates that the lobby-fireball occured later then the first basement-explosion(s).

Why does firefighter Green still thinking that a bomb went off? Because what he describes matches with effects caused by a detonation. Even the ceiling over the pile of burned bodies wasn't charred. Though they were burnt so badly that a firefighter didn't recognize them as human bodies, the ceiling above wasn't charred. His account seems to match the observation that both events, a deflagration and a detonation, took place.

Finally, maybe the most important account regarding the lobby is this:

The revolving door is just across the south side of elevators 6 and 7. If they were the origin of the blast, then why didn't he see a fireball emerging from there, then why is the glass still intact? But the glass on the westfront is broken. And the marble panels on the west-wall of the core removed.

This proves that the shafts of 6 and 7 weren't the origin of the damage in the lobby. We have already ruled out elevator 50 for the basement damage. So what's left? A good question. Another good question: Why did Mark Roberts, who published a paper in an attempt to debunk sceptics of the official version, cut out the bolded part of the statement? Of all lobby-accounts the most incriminating part for the official version.

What is he hiding from us? And why is he hiding from us? And why has never footage been released showing the south side of the lobby, which certainly exists, or should we believe that despite all the footage of the lobby, nobody made even one picture of the zone, which according to the official version, should have been the most damaged one?

To understand the importance of the difference of both forms of explosions, deflagration and detonation, we will now look into it in more detail.

About explosions

The explosion at the South Tower, consuming an est. 1,000-3,000 gal of jet-fuel, is often referred to as 'tremendous'.


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But tremendous was its psychological impact rather than its impact on the building. From the FEMA:

So this fireball didn't create a shock wave. This isn't surprising as a jet-fuel explosion usually produces no shock wave, as it is a deflagration, not a detonation (but deflagrations are also explosions, it seems that FEMA here equates explosions with detonations).

An explosion is a sudden increase in volume and release of energy in a violent manner, usually with the generation of high temperatures and the release of gases. An explosion causes pressure waves in the local medium in which it occurs. Explosions are categorized as deflagrations if these waves are subsonic and detonations if they are superonic. The supersonic waves are the ones which are called shock waves.

Detonation is a process of supersonic combustion in which a shock wave is propagated forward due to energy release in a reaction zone behind it. In a detonation, the shock compresses the material thus increasing the temperature to the point of ignition. The ignited material burns behind the shock and releases energy that supports the shock propagation. This self-sustained detontion wave is different from a deflagration that propagates at a subsonic speed (i.e., slower than the sound speed of the explosive material itself), and without a shock or any significant pressure change. Because detonations generate high pressures, they are usually much more destructive than deflagrations.

In engineering terms, deflagrations are easier to control than detonations. Consequently, they are better suited when the goal is to move an object (a bullet in a gun, or a piston in an engine) with the force of the expanding gas. Typical examples of deflagrations are combustion of a gas-air mixture in a gas stove or a fuel-air mixture in an internal combustion engine, or a rapid burning of a gunpowder in a firearm. A detonation would result in the destruction of a gun, or the piston of an engine.

Flame speed of a deflagration is subsonic, with flame speed increasing in restricted areas and decreasing in open areas. Significantly, a detonation is supersonic, and will proceed through almost all of the available flammable vapor at the detonation reaction rate. This creates far more severe peak over-pressures and much higher amounts of blast energy. The speed of the flame front movement is directly proportional to the amount of blast over-pressure. A wide spectrum of flame speeds may result from flame acceleration under various conditions. High flame front speeds and resulting high blast over pressures are seen in accidental vapor cloud explosions where there is a significant amount of confinement and congestion that limits flame front expansion and increases flame turbulence.

Many parameters contribute to the potential damage from a vapor cloud explosion, including the mass and type of material released, the strength of ignition source, the nature of the release event, and turbulence induced in the cloud.

Therefore Fuel-Air-Explosions (FAE) could produce a high overpressure and are used as military weapons to destroy soft targets. However, these weapons are not one-to-one assignable to a scenario of a jet-fuel explosion. They have a high strength of ignition as detonators are used to bring them to explosion. And materials are used which have a higher ratio of lower and upper explosion limits. For example the 550-pound CBU-72 cluster bomb uses Ethylene Oxide, which has a ratio from 3 to 100% (compared to .7 to 5.0% from jet-fuel). But even military Fuel-Air-Explosions have limited effects, and the CBU ist described as "primarily useful as a psychological weapon" (Source) Another FAE-bomb, the BLU-95 is described as "Unfortunately the overpressures generated were not high enough to reliably detonate mines and had little effect on wire obstacles." (Source)

Even with this FAE-bombs it wouldn't be possible to destroy and reduce concrete walls to rubble over several levels of floors, over hundreds of feet. Furthermore, as we already know, only two elevator shafts, Car 6 and 7, could have been the possible way for the jet-fuel to get down to the basement and causing the observed damage. Of course such a shaft would be an area that limits flame front expansion and increases flame turbulence, thus increases blast pressure. Let's assume that the jet-fuel ran down shaft 6 and/or 7, and let's assume that this jet-fuel was within the ratio of fuel vapor to air to be explosive. And let's assume that the amount of jet-fuel was significant high (which is unlikely, see "Further indications"). Given this scenario, an explosion in a shaft would result in a high blast pressure. But which way would the pressure follow? The way of least or the way of most resistance? The least resistance of course would be the airspace within the shaft, so the flame front would expand throughout the shaft. Then the path of least resistance (as the shaft-space is not large enough for the expanding blast) would have been the area of the damage zone, as there assumable would be a lot of openings in the shaft due to the forces of the plane impact. If the flame front did not expend to this area, i.e. was emerging from the bottom and didn't come donwards, the way of least resistence inside the shaft would have been through the elevator door-openings. The path of more resistance would be the shaft walls. The path of maximum resistance would be the bottom of the shaft.

It's also important to note, that when one considers the 'jet-fuel collected at the bottom and then ignited' theory, to consider also, that there were accounts of broken water lines, sprinklers etc.. We should also assume that around the impact zone, all kinds of water services were severed and were gushing with water. This would have only dilluted and fuel that fell to the bottom of those lift shafts. When people imagine a nice clean lift shaft with clean jet fuel falling to the bottom of it, they are not being realistic.

Take this into consideration, from a website dealing with deflagration reducing risk:

And now watch this short clip, but before that, think of which path the overpressure will take: Watch here (wmv) (And here's how they reduced the risk.)

Back to the WTC. Which path would the overpressure generated by the fireball take? Of course through the openings and not through the walls and in particular not through the bottom. And this is exactly what NIST states about the shafts of Car 6 and 7:

So the pressure blow out the doors from the openings in basement level 1 and the lobby, hence the pressure in the shaft would reduce. But for the official version to be true, the blast had to take the path of maximum resistance through the bottom of the shaft in Basement 4 (after it had already blown out elevator openings three and four levels above aka pressure reduced), and then blowing walls in at least basement levels 5, 4 and 2. And leaving the elevator-cars burned, but not destroyed. It seems that this is not unlikely, but impossible.

And because this seems to be physical impossible, despite the fact that NIST goes in a lot of details in their 10,000-page report, they never adress the damage in the basement levels other then in vague descriptions. And making the false statement that the main freight elevator (Car 50) went down to the bottom of the shaft, to make even the vague descriptions believable.

For comparison, let's look at the South Tower after the impact explosion:

(Posted Image)

We can see exterior damage to the impacted region of WTC2, right next to where the fireball emerged. Note that the aluminum panels have been dislodged in some places, but otherwise the structure is still intact where the plane has not physically knocked steel columns out. There is no evidence of great overpressures from the fireball itself.

Now this tremendous jet-fuel explosion failed to remove this aluminum cladding, but later managed to destroy machine rooms, steel fire doors and cause cave-ins, and at the same time leaving the shafts it - officially - emerged from intact, is beyond me. But I#m not a Bush-Scientist, so that could be the reason for my failure to understand.

When talking about jet-fuel, please consider also this:

The basement explosions are causing so much confusion because they include characteristics of both, deflagration and detonation. The initial explosion(s) in the basement was (were) a detonation (s), including shockwave resulting in caved-in walls and blown people, and fine dust. And later there was one or more explosion (s), at least in the shaft of Car 50, and maybe in the shafts of Car 6 and 7, but this time it was a deflagration, resulting in burned people, soot and the odor of kerosine.

To the end of the explosive-section, here's a long quote, which is worth a reading:

I could have made the explosion-section very short, as all of this is already in Loose Change 2nd Edition (Go to: 26:22).

But -according to the official version - the fireball not only destroyed walls in the basement levels, on it's way down it also destroyed parts of the 22nd floor, making the official account even more implausible. We have to look at this closely to understand a possible motive to set up additional explosives in the moment of plane impact.

The 22nd floor

The question raises: why should bombs be installed in the basement levels? Though it would make sense in a demolition to set up explosives in the basement levels, where the columns are connected to the ground, would it make sense to initiate them an hour before the actual demolition? One might argue that they used the opportunity to do that. But would it make really sense in a top-to-bottom "collapse" to demolish the columns in the basement an hour before the actual collapse, taking the risk something happens to be observed matching better with a demolition but a structural collapse? Let's not forget that in a demolition which should be carried out in secret, every action like this results in a higher risk for the whole operation to demolish the building. Instead of contributing to a Secret Controlled Demolition (SCD), basement-explosions an hour before collapse seem to be a risk for the whole operation to be carried out in secret. So what would be the motive if the basement-explosions would only add higher risk to the success ot the operation? Actually, quite the opposite is true. The basement explosions did not raise, but lower the risk for the whole operation to be successfull. We will see that the basement explosions were necessary part in an attempt to bring down the Twins in secret.

To understand the situation, we have to take this into consideration:

For that, without fires the whole demolition operation would have been too risky, as then there wouldn't be a plausible explanation for collapse (though it's still not plausible, but that's not the point made here).

Therefore, to carry out the demolition it was necessary to prevent firefighters from knocking out the fires. And the explosions which occured simultaneously (or shortly before) the plane impact ensured this. Besides the explosions in the basement, there was another explosion, fitting into this pattern of preventing firefighting operations.

WTC1 housed the Security Command Center (SCC) on the 22nd floor. This command center controlled the Closed Curcuit TV (CCTV) of the WTC complex, the HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning)system and the access to the roof and the Mechanical Equipment Rooms (MER). Simultaneously with the basement explosions the SCC was disabled due to an explosion, causing more stress and handicaps to the emergency efforts.

From the 9/11-Commission Report:

From the NIST:

From Port Authority Transcripts:

The elevators on the 22nd floor

As we know, three shafts continued from the impact zone down to the basement. These three shafts were also the only ones reaching from impact zone to the 22nd floor.

It's important to note that Cars 6 and 7 didn't stop on floor 22. Only Car 5, 48, 50 and the elevators of Bank B did. So there were no doors or framing which could be blown out in the case of Car 6 and 7. The only one remaining for the official version to be true, is Car 50, the main freight elevator. But the witness also describes looking down and just seeing cables. Obviously the car would be in the shaft somewhere, most likely out of sight, but the witness describes seeing the elevator cables, which if severed as they were in the case of car 50, would not just be hanging there.

So elevator 6 and 7 had no door framings, and the remaining elevator 50 had no cables still hanging inside tha shaft. It seems that Yarembinsky is not talking about one of these three elevators, which would of course be in contradicition to the official version.

Despite this, from firefighter Dunne and Bessler we know also, that more than one elevator was affected. So more than elevator 50. This then must be 6 and 7, as no other shaft reaches the impact zone.

This would mean that two seperated fireballs, one in the shaft of Car 50, one in the shafts of Car 6 and/or 7, travelled down the shafts and both exploded on floor 22. This would be an incredible coincidence. An even greater coincidence considered that there were no openings on floor 22 for Car 6 and 7, making it even less probable that the overpressure of an explosion in shaft 6 and 7 would go this way.

This is highly unlikely, and it's reasonable to consider that the elevators the firefighters are describing are not 6 and 7, and likely not 50. This would lead to the question how the fuel got there. So both variants, that 6,7 and/or 50 where the origin of the damage on floor 22 or other elevators caused this, both variants contradict the official version. Because it was assumed that shaft 6 or 7 were the origin of the explosion, how could the fireball explode on the 22nd floor and on basement-levels without exploding on all the levels between?

In contrast to the damage on the 22nd floor, there's no damage one floor below:

And probably no damage one floor above ( unsure at the beginning, then seems to clarify as 23):

But there's a contraditing account:

But it seems Kross confused the floor numbers and was indeed referring to floor 22:

He misplaced the command post on the 22nd floor with the 23rd floor. His description of damage matches all other accounts about the damage on the 22nd floor, so it's not a contradictionuess but rather corroborating account.

So it seems that floor 22 was a specific target rather than damaged accidentally by a fireball.

The explosion on the 22nd floor disabled also the access to the roof of the Twin Towers:

And more important, it disabled the access to the Mechanical Equipment Rooms (MER):

The SCC had a back-up, the Operations Control Center (OCC):

From other sources we know that the OCC wasn't directly affected from the explosions like the SCC.

Look again at this quote from transcript 37 we already used before:

Ed Calderone died in the attacks and was last seen running toward the north tower after helping guide dozens of workers to safety. (Source)

That the OCC wasn't directly affected is also confirmed by this report of which we can conclude of that the CCTV still functioned in the OCC. Note also this statement from the report:

Interestingly, he experienced three loud bangs and then the building shock. As the building shock due to the plane impact, shouldn't the bangs, travelling with the sound of speed, be heared after the building shock?

Note that Compas left the OCC after the first plane hit, Ed Calderone left also the OCC for helping people, same as Douglas Karpiloff who was last time seen in the OCC, before he went out to help people.

And from William Rodriguez we know, that the OCC wasn't even manned when he was there, before the second plane hit:

Indeed, from the 9/11 Commission Hearings e also know that the OCC didn't play an important role in the firefighting and rescue efforts. The NIST "Emergency Response Operations Report" only mentions the OCC twice relating to the emergency response:

According to NIST, the OCC had also access to the electronically controlled doors:

So this means that also the OCC was affected by the explosions as it had lost control over the electronically accessible doors.

(It should be noted that the NIST confused the location of the OCC, "The Operation Control Center was located in the B1 Level of WTC 1 and was a backup Fire Command Center." (NIST NCSTAR 1-7, p.39). This would of course suggest that the WTC1 basement explosions did not produce severe damage when the nearby OCC wasn't even affected. The NIST makes this error only in Draft 7, in Draft 8 the location is given correct: "A new Operations Control Center with the capability to monitor all HVAC systems and elevators in both towers was constructed on the B1 level of WTC2" (NIST NCSTAR 1-8 , p.17) )

From this NIST-figure we can conclude that also the control over the HVAC system was lost.

(Posted Image)

Smoke (dark grey) in almost all floors of the tower indicates that the HVAC system controls were inoperable.

Of course smoke on almost all floors interferes the emergency efforts in a negative way and slows down the firefighting attempts.

The figure shows also, that jet-fuel (dark blue) was noted in over 40 floors underneath the impact zone. We will now look into this a bit further, as it's often said, that this proves that the basement explosions had to be from jet-fuel. First, jet-fuel/kerosine could be smelled in very small amounts. Most people can smell fuel oil at levels as low as 0.1 parts per million (ppm) in air. Amounts which could very well have been ventilated through the HVAC system. (Source)

It should also be considered that fuel could have been mixed with water, and we know from many accounts, that a lot of floors/stairways were flooded by water from broken pipes and - like in the lobby - from the sprinkler system. Of course fuel mixing with water could still be smelled, and for that it would be no surprise, that often water, contamined with fuel, would habe been misinterpreted as pure fuel.

Another thing to be considered is the possibility, that people confuse the odor of kerosine with diesel, which is similiar to jet-fuel or even with gasoline. Remember Pecaro, who said that he smelled kerosine and thought that this was from a burning car in the parking area. It could also not be excluded, that, besides fuel from cars, diesel from tanks from the machine rooms could have been contributing to this, and was later misinterpreted as kerosine. See for example this account:

He speaks of gasoline, others - a majority - of kerosene, when they refer to what they smelled.

However, the possibility that people could have misinterpreted diesel or gasoline as kerosene does not proof that there was no kerosene. And this does also work the other way round, people could have misinterpreted kerosene as diesel or gasoline.

That jet-fuel/kerosene could have been smelled on a lot of floors, does in no way prove that the basement damage was caused by jet-fuel. Again, really small amounts are enough to be noticed. If you go near an airport, you could smell kerosene from airplanes hundreds and hundreds of feet away, which of course doesn't mean that you're in danger of an explosion to occur.

And as we also already established that there was a fireball emerging from shaft 50, which was most likely jet-fuel, at least it's the most reasonable to conclude, then it's no surprise that a lot of people noticing the odor of kerosene. Which in no way proves the official version to be true, or to be untrue.

Back to the NIST-figure above. Why did NIST not adress the damage in the basement of WTC 1 in its figure?

And why did NIST not embed the fire (red) on floor 22 in their figure? The figure is labelled as 'observations of damage after initial awareness and before evacuation', does this mean the fire on floor 22 started after evacuation? No it doesn't. NIST NCSTAR 1-8, p.36, states, that fire on floor 22 was messaged already on 8:47, within a minute after impact. Shouldn't one expect more accurancy from the NIST?

Remember again why this so important? Because the only shafts connecting floor 22 to the impact zone were Car 50, 6 and 7. Here the NISt-quote again (NIST fails to include 7):

It seems that this fireball on its way down exclusively selected floor 22, and then went further down. If this fireball was in the shaft of Car 50, it couldn't have been responsible for the damage in the basement levels, as we already pointed out (fireball came down after explosions in the basement, for damaging the basement the fireball had to rip through the elevator cabin). And if the fireball went down the shafts of 6 and/or 7, the fireball would have exploded on floor 22 (thus reducing pressure in the shaft), then on the Lobby level (according to Don Parente) and in Basement 1 (thus reducing pressure in the shaft) and then blow through the walls and bottom of the shaft and destroying several walls in (at least) Basement 5, 4 and 2. And leaving the cars burned, but not destroyed.

An amazing fireball!

Other effects

That this working elevator wasn't reported indicates that the OCC had also lost control of the elevator system.

That the control about the elevator system was lost is also apparent from the fact that there were people in two south-bank-elevators on the lobby level, even in view from the FDNY command post, but couldn't communicate with the operator on the elevator control panel inside the command post, who searched for people trapped inside elevators.

Nobody noticed that there were people trapped in elevators even on the lobby-level, just in sight of the command post. One elevator's door opened just five minutes before the collapse, giving one man the chance to survive. Another one opened its door earlier, which is also shown in the Naudet-brother documentary.



A direct view from the FDNY command posts elevator control panel:

(Posted Image)

(Posted Image)

The not-working elevator control panel wasn't the only problem. The elevator situation had dramatically declined when all of the 83 elevator mechanics from ACE, the company running the elevators in the WTC, left the buildings.

So after the first plane hit, all mechanics made the decision to leave the scene - on their own. Though they didn't know what actually had happened. The contradiction is obvious: did they all leave on their own, or due to emergency procedures?

The miracle becomes even more miraculously:

Again they left on their own, following procedures. So there are procedures stating: in an emergency, make decisions on your own, do what you want? Certainly not:

So why is Niederau, who was also supervisor of the WTC elevator modernization program, stating that they followed the procedures? Of course this is no accusation that he or ACE personal were part of a conspiracy, but as it highly improbable that all the workers made a decision on their own, and didn't follow orders, the question would be: who gave the order to evacuate? According to Niederau and ACE-chef Baamonde no orders were given. Does this makes sense? Or could it be that someone advised them to leave because it would be too dangerous for them? We will see later that Secret Service men advised firefighters to leave because of a second incoming plane, and later (not part of this article) advised the total evacuation of WTC 7 because of a third incoming plane. Of course the breakdown of the elevators was substantial in surpressing firefighter-efforts, and certainly, if you want to bring the towers down in secret, you would have had a great interest to not get the elevators to work again, or to even figure out, which of them would still working .


From NIST:

Therefore, firefighters didn't reach the impact zones in the towers, with one exception. Again from NIST:

This marathon runner was Chief Palmer who died in the collapse of the South Tower. "I didn't hear fear, I didn't hear panic", his wife told 'The Times' when confronted with the audio tapes including Palmers radio communication. And that's why:

Two lines to knock it down does not sound like an inferno raging on the 78th floor, the second-lowest one impacted by Flight UA 175, and therefore most of the fires were above the 78th floor. But even two lines to knock it down would have been a mission impossible, due to the explosions in the basement and 22nd floor. For this we have to look into the water supply and pump system of the WTC.

The explosions not only affected the firefighting efforts by disabling the elevators and destroying the Secure Command Center, but also by disabling the Fire Suppression Systems. How were these sytems operating?

The primary water supply for automatic fire sprinklers system consisted of a fire main that looped the WTC complex.

See here their location:
(Posted Image)

Close-up of the WTC 1 pump:

(Posted Image)

From the already examined damage, it is likely that the failure of these pumps consequently effected the pipes. (Remember that open water lines were reported at least in Basement level 4). And this is not contradicted by the statement of Pecoraro, who testified that every sprinkler head in the lobby had gone off, because of this:

In the case of the lobby, the storage tank was in the 41st floor. (Note NIST mixes this several times, according to the figure above and NIST 1-4 B, p.155, the storage tank was on the 42nd floor).

Let's go on to how the sprinkler fire suppression and standpipe system worked. Besides the two pumps in the basement,

(Posted Image)

As these pumps had to be activated manually, and as we know that the doors to the MER in floor 7+8, 41+42 and 75+76 were locked due to the explosion in the 22nd floor, none of these pumps could have been activated. Let's go on:

This means that also pump 108A (booster pump) couldn't contribute to fire-surpressing. Besides the 10,000 gal sprinkler reserve there was also a 5,000 gal standpipe reserve on the 110th floor.

As we already know, the knock-out of the SCC on 22nd floor prevented the expected operation of the fire pumps.

The mechanic Hursley Lever was in Basement 4, when he experienced an explosion.

A report states:

Interestingly, he also made this comment:

But even more interestingly, is the fact that it was Secret Service personal, who took him out of the basement. Which leads us to:

Further indications

1. Suspicious Service

Immediately after the first plane impact the Secret Service completely evacuated their station in WTC 7, its greatest field-office. And later advised the evacuation of the OEM (Office of Emergency Management) in the 23rd floor of WTC 7, and therefore caused additional confusing and hampering regarding the emergency response.

When you read the Secret Service statement above, it draws a comfortable picture of the Service. They were helping people in the towers. Or was this (also) a cover to get control over the situation and to ensure to get a grasp on the eyewitnesses, and the possibility to influence them?

First let's take Lever's account:

Firefighter Terence Rivera:

In the middle of the chaos some FBI or Secret Service man gave him that explanation? How could he be so certain about it when at that time it was unclear if this was a small plane or a jet-airliner. At that moment many thought of bombs in the basement, even the FBI. Did the Secret Service man think that this was an airplane accident and hence there could be no bombs in the basement? Certainly not, if we follow Rivera's account, who was heading to get a supply line to work:

The question then would be how the Secret Service man knew that there couldn't be bombs in the basement if they were under attack by terrorists. The experience of the WTC 93 bombing should have lead to enough caution about the possibility of bombs in the basement. Instead he was quick with an explanation, matching with the later official version, though he hardly could see a fireball travelling down the shafts.

It's also interesting to note that he knew that this was a terrorist attack before the second tower was hit. If the Secret Service knew after the first impact that this was an attack, why was President Bush not informed but instead took part in a reading lession at elementary school after he was aware of the first impact?

And as they knew this was a terrorist attack, and as they knew the terrorists failed once to bring the towers down, how could some Secret Service (or other agency) man be so specific about the situation and be so certain that the terrorists planned to attack the towers only with planes, and not with additional car-bombs in the basement, in an attempt to contribute to the plane impacts to bring the towers down? Wouldn't it be in their sense of responsibility to regard all possible kinds and methods of attacks in a moment where America was under attack?

But it get's better, again from Rivera:

They all knew ?! And nobody informed Bush when America was under attack !? Instead President Bush was not informed until the attack further succeeded with the second impact. But even then the Secret Service did not make an attempt to pull Bush out of the lesson, though he of course could be a target and they knew that more planes were in the air. Instead, Bush stayed at the school until 9.30, were he gave a scheduled press conference. No need for hurry here. It seems that Secret Service men had more interest to pull some other people out of an area.

Watch this collection of eyewitnesses, taken from the documentary "9/11 - The Explosive Reality", and how some of them were removed from the scene:
Download - 15 mb - wmv

Other basement explosion eyewitnesses received also a special treatment by authorities.

When even the President didn't know that America was under attack, Secret Service personal at the WTC knew. When everyone was speculating what kind of plane hit, this Secret Service personal not only knew that this was a hijacked jet but also that others were in the air. When the FBI was speculating that there was a bomb in the basement ,and the NYPD thought that there was a van with explosives inside WTC, this Secret Service personal knew that it was jet-fuel, spilled down elevator shafts. When President Bush wasn't aware that he was a possible target in a terrorist attack and still reading in front of children, this Secret Service personal advised firefighters during their firefighting efforts to leave the area. Now, this isn't suspicious, isn't it?

This becomes even more suspicious when we take into account other reports about vans with explosive devices. And that in one van which belongs to the Mossad front company "Urban Moving Systems" traces of explosives were found, and that the occupants of the van cheered and celebrated the attacks they were documenting. And there are eyewitnesses reporting car explosions, like EMT Patricia Ondrovic, who reported cars exploding about half an hour before the North tower collapsed:

Even when one might consider that all the reports about explosive devices in vans were wrong due to the confusion in that chaotic situation, and that car explosions were not caused by bombs but by exploding fuel-tanks, this would only be more proof that the situation was definitely too confusing to give explicit statements about the nature and scale of the attack, as been given by some anonymous Secret Service man.

And in intelligence circles there was awareness that Al-Qaida still would try to bring the towers down. A statement by John O'Neil, who was FBl leading investigator into USS Cole and Kenya Al-Qaida bombings, but quit as he found out that his investigations were hampered and was then hired for WTC security by Jerome Hauer, shows this. 9/11 was his first and last working day, he died in the attacks. Here's what he said:

So among intelligence circles there was awareness about Al-Qaida attacking the WTC.

At the time of the basement explosions and thereafter no one - no Secret Service member or any other agency member - could have known that Al-Qaida wouldn't attack the WTC also with car bombs. Instead, intelligence members should have expected from their experience that Al-Qaida could also strike with car bombs.

So no one could have known? At least no one who was not part of the plot.

And this report doesn't make the whole thing less suspicious:

Who Signed Sakher Hammad's WTC Basement Level Pass?

On 9/11 an additional one hundred Secret Service personal were working in the WTC area, in preparation for the opening of the UN General Assembly, which is a NSSE (National Special Security Event), and mandates the Secret Service with extra power and means. More on that also in Secret Controlled Demolition Part Two, coming the next weeks. An interesting thing regarding the basement, is this story by Sgt. 1st Class Stephen Atha, member of 1108th Signal Brigade.
It at least proves that there was some intelligence activity going on in the basement, scheduled before the attacks happened.

Fortunately for him, someone made the decision to start the working day with a breakfast.

But if you think this all is suspicious, there's always a way to turn such things into something positive, you just have to be able to find the right double-speech:

If they had included 'only' after 'protect', it would be more in line with the reality.

2. Jet-Fuel distribution

If we look at the floor plans and compare it with the location of the plane impact, we can conclude that there is only a low probability that large amounts of jet-fuel could have spilled down the shafts of Car 6 and 7. This results of course in a lower probability that large amounts of fuel could have contributed to the damage in the basement. The shafts were opposite to the impacted site and where in the center of the core, whereas the fuel in the plane was in the main tanks in the wings, not anymore in the auxilliary tanks in the fuselage and the adjacented area of the wings. NIST never adresses the subject of amount of jet-fuel contributing to the basement explosions.(For more see NIST reports here and here.)

(Posted Image)

To give an impression, let's make some calculations. Note first that the calculations are not exact (for example the space used by the columns is not a factor in the core space calculation), but are overestimated in favour of the official version. NIST gives the number of 66,100 lb as weight of jet-fuel, and 6.700 lb of it were placed outside the tower, and therefore have to be subtracted. So let's round up and we have a total of 60.000 lb penetrating and remaining inside the tower. This equals about 33,800 litres of jet-fuel (jet-fuel density 0,775-0,84 kg/l).

A floor has about 42,849 square-feet (207x207ft). 33,800 litres equals 1200 cubic-feet. Compared to the size of one floor, evenly distributed this would result in a height of 0,028 ft of jet-fuel covering the floor. This equals 0,34 inch.

Now let's asume that 80 percent of the fuel was in the core, which is a overestimation if we look at the NIST figures. This would be 27040 liter, or 955 cubic-feet.

The core had 11,919 square-feet (87x137ft) . So that would - evenly distributed - result in jet-fuel covering the core in a film of 0,08 ft height, or 0,96 inch. That this an overestimation not only due to the factor of 80 percent fuel inside the core, but also to the fact that the fuel was not evenly distributed, becomes apparant when looking at these NIST-figures. The right side of the red line, where the shafts of 6 and 7 were located, has an underaverage amount of jet-fuel.

(Posted Image)

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Note that these figures represent the fuel-distribution when momentum came to rest, 0.715 seconds after impact:

But beside the highly overestimated amount of fuel, of course a high amount of fuel would have ignited after impact and therefore reducing the amount of fuel which could have spilled down the shafts unignited.

Even putting this beside, we could not asume that this amount would result in more than a one-inch film covering the pit of a shaft. Enough for all the effects observed?

Another argument often made to explain how large amounts of jet-fuel could have spilled down the shafts is that underpressure, caused by falling elevator cars, sucked the jet-fuel in. But as we know the cars of 6 and 7 were in the basement, making this argument wortless.

Note also from the figures provided by NIST, that the shaft of car 50 is the most likely one distributing (higher amounts of) jet-fuel for basement explosions. But as we already know, fortunately all people inside the car of this shaft survived.

Furthermore, it's often stated that falling elevators would have produced an underpressure and therefore large amounts of fuel could have been sucked in into the shafts. Though true, this is not what happened. We immediately could rule out this explanation for two of the three possible elevators, as the Cars of 6 and 7 were parked in Basement 1. That leaves only Car 50.

If we are to believe that a significant amount of jet fuel, burned or unburned, came down shaft 50 on impact. Why is it that within Griffith’s account, it is only after Griffith is rescued, does he describe something that could be the result of jet fuel?
Griffith tells us that his car fell, stopped, he experienced 2 explosions, and then is unconscious for a couple of minutes before being rescued. Yet, in all this time, the time that was supposedly the time when significant amounts of jet fuel should have pouring down this shaft, Griffith does not experience anything like this worthy of mention. Imagine being in a lift car, and someone above you pours a mere 10L bucket of fuel onto the car. Elevators aren’t waterproof or airtight, far from it, the ceiling of an elevator is usually quite lightweight and always well ventilated. Add to that the fact that Griffith tells us the doors were blown off, therefore any significant amount of liquid poured onto the car from above would without a doubt pour into the elevator car too. As I said, I believe you would notice this with a mere 10L bucket, now what quantities of fuel are required for the official version to be true?
Take that further and assume the fuel was on fire. How could you possibly survive, let alone not notice significant amounts of burning fuel being poured all over the lift car you are within?
Based on Griffiths account and also physical evidence (the fact that Griffith survived) there can be no way for the fuel to have poured down the car 50 shaft until much later when Griffith witnessed the fireball.

Conclusions

If one concedes that the Twin Towers were demolished, than it's safe to say that it wasn't a Controlled Demolition (CD) in the common manner. It was a Secret Controlled Demolition (SCD). A SCD requires a cover legend to make it not look like a demolition. This legend is that the impact damage of the planes and the subsequent fires brought down the towers.

This legend made it necessary to bring down the building from the top (impact zone) to the bottom - unlike most other, non-secret, Controlled Demolitions. To carry out this SCD successfully, it was also necessary that the fires could not have been exstinguished. Exstinguished fires would have destroyed the cover for the Secret Controlled Demolition. The explosions in the basement levels and on floor 22 secured the cover for the whole operation. And therefore were a necessary part of the SCD.

And this answers two questions raised in relation to the basement explosions. First, it's often asked, if the basement explosions were result of devices, why should they detonate them an hour before the actual demolition? The basement and 22nd floor explosions were not part of a Controlled Demolition (if, then it would inideed make little sense), but part of a Secret Controlled Demolition.

Second, if the towers were demolished, why take additional risks with detonating devices just before/as the plane hit? Because it was done to lower the risk, as it would have been much more risky to carry out the demolition if the fire-legend would have been destroyed by the firefighters. The basement explosions secured the legend:

-the basement explosions hampered and divided the rescue and firefighting efforts in general, and specific in:

-loss of elevator-control prevented firefighters from reaching the impact zones (with the exception of a marathon runner), and produced more chaos and further splitted the rescue efforts by binding forces.

-loss of the Security Control Center confused the emergency efforts and interferred the communication, and additionally resulted in:

-loss of control over the HVAC system, resulting in smoke-spread over almost every floor, complicating the emergency efforts

-loss of control over the access to the roof and MER, preventing the operation of the water pumps

Another difficulty to carry out a SCD is of course the fact that the access to building infrastructure might be limited, at least every preparation has to be carried out in secret, with a cover. This difficulty would of course be reduced if preparations could be done unnoticed because the areas in question were closed for others, i.e. not accessible. This could be a clue:

In the year before 9/11 there was an elevator modernization program which according to NIST was still in operation on 9/11. And we know that on 9/11 at least elevators 6,7, 22 and 23 were out of service.

Though this is speculative, maybe that program served as disguise to get access to structural key elements in the core of the tower to plant explosive devices unnoticed from office workers or security guards, who would certainly not look into elevator shafts to see if the maintenance work going on there is in fact a pretext for planting devices. And the case of Sakher Hammad adds a lot of suspicion of what was going on there before 9/11. However, the Hammad-case alone is worth a full article, so I won't go more in here.

And maybe there's a deeper sense in the phrase "out of service for modernization". To demolish a building and build a new one on its ground could also be called modernization. Were elevators 6 and 7 out of service for such a modernization?

Or were they out of service to execute the basement explosions? Imagine elevators 6 and 7 were in operation on 9/11. Imagine its occupants would have survived like Arthuro Griffith and Marlene Cruz in elevator 50. What would then be the plausible explanation for all the basement damage if all the occupants using the only elevators reaching the impact zone would have survived?

Fact is that NIST didn't adress the damage in the basement in an appropriate manner. Fact is, if they would do so, the official jet-fuel/fireball theory would have been compromised as implausible and improbable.

As NIST or any other agency hasn't investigated the basement explosions in an appropiate manner, it's time for a new, independent investigation!

That's it!

Big thanks to Chopoz for his GREAT contribution to this article, now we made it!

OMG!. NK-44 you rock man! I need more time to read it. Awsomeee! :D
Sometime back I was arguing with someone about elevator shafts stuff. Thanks for sharing your research man!
As usual you provided the sources. :)

EDIT: Big Thanks to chopoz aswell!

Thanks for the acknownledgement NK-44.

I would like to add that their would be a large number of witnesses mentioned in these accounts, that could greatly help to further disprove the official version. We could only work from the limited information provided in witness statements and locations from basic floorplans.

I believe there are numbers of witnesses who accepted what they witnessed because it was later explained with the jet fuel fireball theory. For example if a witness describes seeing multiple shafts blown out, yet isn't aware that one or more of the particular shafts they witnessed damaged, didn't have continuity up to the impact zone, they may accept the fuel fireball theory and say no more.

Here is an example where someone actually considers this

http://www.engr.psu.edu/ae/WTC/AlMasetti.html

Since the only elevators that reached impact zone were 6, 7 and 50. And since 6 and 7 were out of service and 50 was a freight elevator, we can rule these elevators out as the elevator that Debbie was waiting for. So here is an example of where we have been told the fuel fireball caused the injury to someone, yet the account of what happened is not so easily explained by the official version. It is easy to see how the average person who may not be aware of the elevator layout might accept this as the explanation and say no more, in the above quote we see someone think twice about it.

It is very important that we find out the exact various witness locations, it would also be good if witnesses could be informed of things like the elevator layout.
Earlier this year I asked William Rodriguez the following questions...
http://z10.invisionfree.com/Loose_Change_F...showtopic=14648

Willie PM'd me and said the LCF was not the place to do this, he said to see him at GZ on 9/11.
Unfortunately, being in Australia this was going to be impossible for me this year.
So, another LCF member approached Willie at GZ this year, with my questions at hand.
I was told that Willie said that GZ was not the place, and that I should email him.

Now that this information is out in the public, and we have shown why it is important, I hope that William might find the time to answer these questions.

Likewise, if anyone else can help with witness locations etc. I feel it could be very significant.

That was an awesome report NK-44.

Sorry we didn't eliminate all the German-to-English typos but your detailed research more than compensated for the occasional bit of awkward presentation.

It will be very interesting to hear how the skeptics respond to your incredibly thorough coverage of what occurred at WTC 1 (North Tower) on 9/11.

MM

I doubt that the "always debunkers" will touch this. Experience.

Ok, here we go. I'm going to attempt to read this whole thing, give me about 3 hours to comprehend it. Thanks a bunch NK, your research is incredible!

This report by NK-44 explains a lot things that skeptics like to attack "troofers" about as serious inconsistencies regarding the controlled demolition of WTC1 (North Tower).

As NK-44 has duly noted, it's been problematic explaining the purpose of the early explosions which occurred well in advance of WTC1's collapse, but appeared to play little part in the reason for the collapse.

His explanation that it was meant to forestall action by the NYFD in dealing with the initial fire makes so much sense, especially given his excellent argument that shows there was no way aviation fuel from the initial aircraft impacts could have been the source of those explosions in the isolated, strategic locations (22nd floor) in which they occurred!

Certainly planting some diesel fuel in the area of the explosives was easy and would only add to the ruse that they were aircraft fuel caused. The eyewitness reports of diesel fuel odor are one of the points constantly raised by skeptics to discount alternative explanations for the explosions that because of so much eyewitness testimony were impossible to deny.

Isn't it interesting, that in WTC2 (South Tower), which only survived 56 minutes after the initial impact, that just a few minutes after firefighters reported that they had reached the 79th floor reporting they had just two easy fires to handle, and before their efforts could reach fires above that level, the building totally collapsed.

You have to think that perps monitoring the radio traffic decided they had better 'pull the plug' before there was insufficient fire to sell it as a collapse vehicle to the general public.

MM

Amazing article, but its forgetting two crucial components...

while big points goes to you guys for mentioning Sakher Hammad and the Memphis TN cell with sprinkler maintenence passes

big points for mentioning the mossad white van explosive angle

the PATH train explosions

you guys forgot about the Mororola radio scandal and Rudy Guiliani.

Why did so many firemen die? Because their communications were intentionally bunk. smoking gun proof

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StE_Xa6TiQU
http://therealrudy.org/radios

Also...

could beacons/thermite/explosives been placed on the floors where the planes hit?
A Fuji Bank employee says the room where the plane hit(right above the maintence water room) was off limits with huge black offline servers:
http://www.zeitenschrift.net/news/sne-12207-911.ihtml


Id LOVE to see you guys put together a real, solid indepth documentary going into all this stuff on this thread. Its important for people to understand what it means if there was explosives going off in the sublevels. As well as near the PATH train and near the underground mall, as weve seen interviews pointing towards

Well done, a fascinating presentation and worth reading.




Although I am sure that you have used the word "Distinguished" instead of "Extinguished" in your conclusions.

Extinguish means put out the fire, whereas Distinguish means award the fire an honour or seperate or mark it out for special comment.. ;)

Oh, yes, fixed :D

I didn't forget about it. I will go in this stuff in "SCD Part II - WTC 7 and the Emergency Situation," coming within the next weeks. It certainly won't draw a comfortable picture of Rudy and his Gang.





Thank you all for your kind words and your comments.

Though this won't be part of it, as I haven't looked deep into it yet.

But here's also something interesting to consider.

Shortly befor the 'collapse' of the South Tower, white smoke originated from the base of the tower, which has never been adressed by any official report, indicating a massive, thermite-style chemical reaction.

Now imagine there hadn't been basement explosions when (or shortly before) the plane hit. Then the whole area wouldn't have been cleared from all the workers like mechanics, etc,

This of course would have produced a lot of witnesses to what caused the white smoke emerging from the basement.

If thermite or something like that was used to weaken the columns where they were connected to the ground, then this would be additional reason for the basement explosions, occuring when the plane hit.