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:

"Given the quantities of jet fuel involved (10,000 gallons) it is reasonable to expect that large quantities of it, even if vaporized, would not be instantly ignited by the crash because it would be above the mixture's upper explosive limit (ie: too rich to burn). Thus fuel could have spilled down elevator shafts, and ignited only once it had mixed with enough air and encountered a source of ignition at ground level."

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.

There were 99 passenger elevators in each tower, arranged in three vertical zones to move occupants in stages to skylobbies on the 44th and 78th floors. These were arranged as express (generally larger cars that moved at higher speeds) and local elevators in an innovative system first introduced in WTC 1 and WTC 2. There were 8 express elevators from the concourse to the 44th floor and 10 express elevators from the concourse to the 78th floor as well as 24 local elevators per zone, which served groups of floors in those zones. There were seven freight elevators, only one of which served all floors. All elevators had been upgraded to incorporate firefighter emergency operation per American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) A17.1 and Local Law 5 (1973)(NIST NCSTAR 1-1, p.50 - PDF)

In addition to normal freight service one freight elevator in each of the towers will serve a total of 112 stops from the fifth basement to the 108th floor. It will rise 1,387 feet (422.8 meters) – 400 feet (122 meters) more than the former record rise in the Empire State Building. (Source)

Getting thousands of people from the ground level to the offices, observation levels, and restaurants, some as high as a quarter-mile was no small task. Thus, elevators were the primary mode of movement between floors of the World Trade Center. The World Trade Center complex contained more than 240 elevators, with 99 elevators serving the above-ground levels in each of the two main towers and an additional 7 elevators serving primarily the sub-grade basement levels. In the towers, the elevators were arranged to serve the buildings in three sections divided by skylobbies, which served to distribute passengers among express and local elevators. Figure 2-14 shows an elevator riser diagram for WTC 1 and WTC 2 for passenger elevators.

* People traveling to floors 9 through 40 entered a bank of 24 elevators at the Concourse Level. These were divided into four groups, with each stopping at a different set of eight or nine floors (9 through 16, 17 through 24, 25 through 31, and 32 through 40).

* Those going to floors 44 through 74 took one of eight express elevators to the 44th floor skylobby before transferring to one of 24 local elevators, These 24 were stacked on top of the of the lower bank of 24, providing additional transport without increasing the occupied floor space.

* Those going to floors 78 through 107 took one of 10 express elevators from the Concourse Level to the 78th floor before transferring to one of 24 local elevators. These were also stacked on the lower banks of 24.


An occupant traveling to the 91st floor, for example, would have taken an express elevator from the lobby to the 78th floor and then would have had to transfer to another elevator to arrive at the 91st floor. While providing an acceptable rate of people movement, this three tier system also used less of the building footprint than the usual systems in which all elevators run from the entrance to the top of the building. Further, leasable floor space was reclaimed near the top of a given zone. At the top of each elevator bank, the machinery to lift the cabs occupied the next higher floor. From the next higher floor up to the bottom of the next elevator bank, there was no need for an elevator shaft. The concrete floor was extended into this space, providing additional rentable floor are for offices, conference rooms, storage, etc. Fig 2-14, for example, shows that the space taken by Elevator Bank A (Elevators 24 - 29) in order to serve floor 9 to floor 16, was reclaimed for tenant use on floors 19 to 42.


In addition to the passenger elevators, there were seven freight elevators in each tower, most served a particular 'zone', while Car 50 served every floor.

* Car # 5: B1-5, 7, 9-40, 44

* Car #6: B1-5, 44, 75, 77-107 (Dual-use express)

* Car #17: B1-1, 41, 43-78

* Car #48: B1-7, 9-40

* Car #49: B1-5, 41-74

* Car # 50: B6 - 108

* Car # 99: 107-116

There were two express elevators (#6 and #7) to Windows on the World (and related conference rooms and banquet facilities) in WTC 1 and two to the observation deck in WTC 2.  There were five local elevators in each building: three that brought people from the subterranean levels to the lobby, one that ran between floors 106 and 110, and one that ran between floors 43 and 44, serving the cafeteria from the skylobby.  All elevators had been upgraded to incorporate firefighter emergency operation requirements.
(NIST NCSTAR 1-7, p.32 - PDF)

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):

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)).


Above Car 50 in sublevel 5 (B6), and 4 (B5):



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


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:

* Those going to floors 44 through 74 took one of eight express elevators to the 44th floor skylobby before transferring to one of 24 local elevators, These 24 were stacked on top of the of the lower bank of 24, providing additional transport without increasing the occupied floor space.

* Those going to floors 78 through 107 took one of 10 express elevators from the Concourse Level to the 78th floor before transferring to one of 24 local elevators. These were also stacked on the lower banks of 24.

And here are more:

In order to minimize the total floor space needed for elevators, each tower was divided vertically into three zones by skylobbies, which served to distribute passengers among express and local elevators. In this way, the local elevators within a zone were placed on top of one another within a common shaft. (NIST NCSTAR1-1, Executive Summary XXXVII - PDF)
In order to minimize the total floor space needed for elevators, each tower was divided vertically into three zones by skylobbies, which served to distribute passengers among express and local elevators. In this way, the local elevators within a zone were placed on top of one another within a common shaft. (NIST NCSTAR1-1, p.8 - PDF)

The concept of multiple elevators within a common shaft was first used in the WTC towers and has since become the norm for buildings taller than about 50 stories.
(NIST NCSTAR1-1, p.9 - PDF)

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.

All four banks occupying floor space.

Bank A terminates, giving these levels more floor space.

Bank B terminates, giving these levels more floor space.

Bank C terminates, giving these levels more floor space.

Here is the 42nd floor upper mechanical room, bank D terminates to allow for the motor to be intalled over the shaft.

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.

Here we have the 43rd floor showing the postion of the toilets and the new zone 2 elevator shaft pits.

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:

For an elevator’s cables to be cut and result in dropping the car to the bottom of the shaft, the cables would need to have been in the aircraft impact debris path, floors 93 through 98 in WTC 1 or floors 78 through 83 in WTC 2. Inspection of the elevator riser diagram and architectural floor plans for WTC 1 shows that the following elevators met these criteria: cars 81 through 86 ( Bank B ) and 87 through 92 (Bank C), local cars in Zone III; car 50, the freight elevator, and car 6, the Zone III shuttle. …Cars 6 and 50 could have fallen all the way to the pit in the sub-basement level, and car 50 in WTC 1 was reported to have done so.(NIST NCSTAR1-7, p.160 - PDF)

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:

Two of the interviewee's associates were injured by flying concrete block on the B2 and/or B4 levels when the 50 Car elevator crashed to the bottom of WTC 1. (NIST NCSTAR1-8, p.80 - PDF)

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:

[The Griffiths] were both operating elevators in the north tower on Sept. 11. Arturo was running 50A, the big freight car going from the six-level basement to the 108th floor. When American Airlines Flight 11 struck at 8:46 a.m., Arturo and a co-worker were heading from the second-level basement to the 49th floor.   

Like his wife, who had just closed the doors on a passenger elevator leaving the 78th floor, Arturo heard a sudden whistling sound and the impact. Cables were severed and Arturo's car plunged into free fall. 

"The only thing I remember saying was 'Oh, God, Oh, God, I'm going to die,' " he says, recalling how he tried to protect his head as the car plummeted. 

The emergency brakes caught after 15 or 16 floors. The imploding elevator door crushed Arturo's right knee and broke the tibia below it. His passenger escaped injury. (USA Today)

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:

ARTURO GRIFFITH, WTC SURVIVOR: I was running 58 cars -- the elevators that going to 86 to 108th floor.

KING: Where were you when it happened?

A. GRIFFITH: Well, I was on my way from B-2 to 49th floor. And as I took off, it was amount it was a matter of seconds -- five, six, seven seconds, I don't know. And there was a loud explosion and the elevator dropped. And when the elevator dropped there was a lot of debris and cables falling on top of the elevator. And I just -- I just put my hand over my head and I said, oh God I'm going to die. But I didn't know what was happening.

When the elevator finally stopped, they had an explosion that bring the doors inside the elevator, and I think I'm sure that that was what broke my leg. And then they had another explosion and the panel that threw me, you know, against the wall, and I guess I was unconscious for a couple of minutes because somebody else was in the elevator with me, and they say that they was trying to get my attention and they didn't get no response from me. (CNN Transcript)

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:

Arturo Griffith was in a freight elevator when the building was attacked. The elevator dropped to B1 (the basement level), fell below the landing. He was trapped in the elevator beneath debris and unconscious. He remembers seeing a beam of light. He called out. The smoke was so thick; Arturo could not see his own hand. So his rescuers had to follow his voice to find him.

'I don't know who saved me. It was so black and smoky. I couldn't see nothin',' Arturo said. 'When they got me out, I told them there was someone else down there, a woman. They went back to get her. Seconds after they pulled her out, a ball of fire came down the shaft. They almost got killed.' (Source)

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:

Elevators 6A and 7A were out of service for modernization. (NIST NCSTAR 1-8, p.43)

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 doors were blown off by the fireball that came down the elevator shaft and the elevators cars were burned. (Basement level of WTC 1)." (NIST NCSTAR 1-8, p.43)

The damage in the basement

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

transcript 37
page 6

WTCCH. 09 - POLICE DESK - 3541 CENTER
SEPTEMBER 11,2001
WORLD TRADE CENTER - CH. 09
POLICE DESK - 3541 - CENTER
DURATION: 1.25 HOURS

PAPD OFFICER MAGGETT: Port Authority Police, Officer Maggett.
ED CALDERONE - OCC: Maggett, this is Ed at the OCC. I got word that there's an
explosion down on B-4. We got people hurt down there, B-4.
PAPD OFFICER MAGGETT: B-4?


transcript 36
page 4

WTC - CH. 08 - POLICE DESK - 3541 LEFT
SEPTEMBER 1 1,2001
WORLD TRADE CENTER - CH. 08
POLICE DESK - 3541 LEFT
DURATION: 1:12:58

PAPD OFFICER BRADY: Port Authority Police, Officer Brady.
MALE CALLER - B-4 LEVEL: Officer, help. We're down in the B-4 level. This is
Turner's field office. There's been a big explosion. We've got water lines open. There
seems to be steam and smoke in the area.
PAPD OFFICER BRADY: Okay. Where ... where exactly on B-4?
MALE CALLER - B-4 LEVEL: Turner Construction, right outside the 50-Car. We're
across the hall from the 50-Car.
PAPD OFFICER BRADY: Is there any smoke condition there?
MALE CALLER - B-4 LEVEL: It's ... yeah, we got smoke. I don't how whether it's
from fire, or just dust. We got broken water lines, water all over.

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.

transcript 10
pg 9
SEPTEMBER 11,2001
PATH - CHANNEL 021
RADIO TRAINMASTER (R2)
DURATION: 3.33 HOURS

PAPD OFFICER DESK: Police desk to 800.
PAPD OFFICER 800: (Inaudible)
PAPD OFFICER DESK: Eight hundred (Inaudible) three nine.
PAPD OFFICER 33: Three-three, desk.
PAPD OFFICER DESK: Go, thirty-three.
PAPD OFFICER 33: Myself and (Inaudible) to the Trade Center responding with scott
packs to the B-4 level. There's a report of a cave-in, and people trapped.
PAPD OFFICER DESK: Roger, three-three and eight-two Houston, World Trade
responding B-4 level on a report of a cave-in.
PAPD OFFICER: ESU units, do you copy?
PAPD OFFICER 33 : Three-three, desk.
PAPD OFFICER DESK: Go, three-three.
PAPD OFFICER 33: There's also been a cave-in at the platform of the PATH plaza ...there's a live electrical, and water running. Turn off the power in that area.
PAPD OFFICER DESK: Roger.
PAPD OFFICER TRUCK ONE: Truck one, desk.
PAPD OFFICER: Truck one, go.
PAPD OFFICER DESK: Three-three is reporting that there is a cave-in, B-4 level, at
the World Trade, copy? A possibility of people trapped.

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:




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:

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.

B5 Level
Male: yeah, we need the electrician down to the B-5 plant. We also have a smoke condition down here. PA Transcript, WTC channel 25 Radio Channel B – Maintenance and Electric

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:

"I go downstairs, the foreman tells me to go to remove the containers, as I’m walking by the main freight car of the building, in the corridor, that’s when I got blown.  I mean, the impact of the explosion, or whatever happened, it threw me to the floor, and that’s when everything started happening…   

It knocked me right to the floor.  You didn’t know what it was.  Of course you’re assuming something just fell over in the loading dock, something very heavy, something very big, you don’t know what happened, and all of a sudden you just felt the floor moving and you get up and the walls… And then you know, I mean now I’m hearing that the main freight car, the elevators fell down, so I was right near the main freight car so I assume what that was. 

[Note that "now I'm hearing..." is a misinterpretation made afterwards by others of the events, Morelli experienced. The main freight elevator did not crash down, it was caught by its brakes and therefore could not have caused floor and walls to move.]

Then, I mean you heard that coming towards you.  I was racing, I was going towards the bathroom.  All of a sudden, I opened the door, I didn’t know it was the bathroom, and all of a sudden the big impact happened again, and all of the ceiling tiles was falling down, the light fixtures were falling, swinging out of the ceiling, and I come running out the door, and everything, the walls were down, and I started running towards the parking lots. 

I just thought something… because I know that the loading dock is on B1, that’s three floors above me, I just assumed that a car or something exploded on B1 or something got delivered and something big and heavy fell over.  You just knew it was something big…

(...)

As I ran to the parking lots, you know, I mean, everybody screaming ... There was a lot of smoke down there. ... You gotta go clear across the whole -- from One to Two World Trade Center. That's the way you gotta run.

And then all of a sudden it happened all over again.  Building Two got hit. I don't know that. I just know something else hit us to the floor.  Right in the basement you felt it. The walls were caving in.  Everything that was going on.  I know of people that got killed in the basement.  I know of people that got broken legs in the basement.  People got reconstructive surgery because the walls hit them in the face." (Watch Morellis testimony here)

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:

“Sanchez recalls, being in a small sub-level 4 workshop with another man who he only knew by the name of Chino when, out of nowhere, the blast sounded as the two men were cutting a piece of metal: ‘It sounded like a bomb and the lights went on and off. We started to walk to the exit and a huge ball of fire went through the freight elevator. The hot air from the ball of fire dropped Chino to the floor and my hair got burned. The room then got full of smoke and I remember saying out loud ‘I believe it was a bomb that blew up inside the building.’” Jose Sanchez, WTC maintenance worker (Source)

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:

Edward McCabe, building engineer

I was in the refrigeration plant in tower 1 sub basement 4. I was passing through when I felt a slight shifting of the building. I froze right where I stood and listened....nothing.. about 30 seconds past and to my left about 30 feet from me was a stairway leading up to a door. this door explodes off its hinges and white smoke came into the plant. (...)

When we got to the PATH platform i layed the woman down, she thanked me, and i returned to the blown door to see if i could find anyone else. Sure enough there were more, the smoke was being sucked up the shaft now and i can see there were no longer any walls just rubble. A woman was under her desk refusing to come out. after a little coaxing she came and at this point a few of my colleagues, were sifting through the rubble, trying to find anybody. we did about 3 trips. Everyone was out. (Source)

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.

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:

Deep below the tower, Mike Pecoraro was suddenly interrupted in his grinding task by a shake on his shoulder from his co-worker. “Did you see that?” he was asked. Mike told him that he had seen nothing. “You didn’t see the lights flicker?”, his co-worker asked again. “No,” Mike responded, but he knew immediately that if the lights had flickered, it could spell trouble. A power surge or interruption could play havoc with the building’s equipment. If all the pumps trip out or pulse meters trip, it could make for a very long day bringing the entire center’s equipment back on-line.   

Mike told his co-worker to call upstairs to their Assistant Chief Engineer and find out if everything was all right. His co-worker made the call and reported back to Mike that he was told that the Assistant Chief did not know what happened but that the whole building seemed to shake and there was a loud explosion. They had been told to stay where they were and “sit tight” until the Assistant Chief got back to them. By this time, however, the room they were working in began to fill with a white smoke. “We smelled kerosene,” Mike recalled, “I was thinking maybe a car fire was upstairs”, referring to the parking garage located below grade in the tower but above the deep space where they were working. 

The two decided to ascend the stairs to the C level, to a small machine shop where Vito Deleo and David Williams were supposed to be working. When the two arrived at the C level, they found the machine shop gone. 

“There was nothing there but rubble, “Mike said. “We’re talking about a 50 ton hydraulic press – gone!” The two began yelling for their co-workers, but there was no answer. They saw a perfect line of smoke streaming through the air. “You could stand here,” he said, “and two inches over you couldn’t breathe. We couldn’t see through the smoke so we started screaming.” But there was still no answer. 

The two made their way to the parking garage, but found that it, too, was gone. “There were no walls, there was rubble on the floor, and you can’t see anything,” he said. 

They decided to ascend two more levels to the building’s lobby. As they ascended to the B Level, one floor above, they were astonished to see a steel and concrete fire door that weighed about 300 pounds, wrinkled up “like a piece of aluminum foil” and lying on the floor. “They got us again,” Mike told his co-worker, referring to the terrorist attack at the center in 1993. Having been through that bombing, Mike recalled seeing similar things happen to the building’s structure. He was convinced a bomb had gone off in the building.

Mike walked through the open doorway and found two people lying on the floor. One was a female Carpenter and the other an Elevator Operator. They were both badly burned and injured. Realizing he had to get help, Mike ascended to the Lobby Level. (Source)

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):

Bobby Hall, of Staten Island, was near a mechanical room floor 50 feet underground when the impact of a falling elevator threw him against a steel door. He struggled to his feet, and assisted two other injured men. Outside, he borrowed a cell phone from a man on the plaza to call his wife. Moments later, the man was killed by falling debris, Hall said. (Source)
“We were going to our shop to make a call and find out what the first explosion was and the place just came apart on us,” Bobby said. “What we found out later was the hot wind was the number 50 freight car falling from the 88th floor and it just came into the area where we were and just blew us back out into the parking lot.” (Source)

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:

Rodriguez:  I worked in the building for 20 years.  I was the person in charge of all the stairwells in the building.  I had the only master key that opened all the doors in the building, and I went floor by floor opening the doors.   

On 9/11, on 8:46, I was at the basement of the North Tower, the first tower to be impacted, the second one to fall.  While I was there, a second or two before the plane hit, there was a huge explosion on the sublevel B2 to sublevel B3. 

Charles:  So there was an explosion from below you? 

Rodriguez:  Correct.  And that was, you know, a second or two before the impact of the plane. 

Charles:  But it was clear and it was distinct that the explosion was before the plane hit the top of the building? 

Rodriguez:  Oh, yes, definitely, definitely.  As a matter of fact, it was so hard that I thought it was an electrical generator that just blew up on the sublevels, because the support of the building, the electrical pumps and generators, was located by the mechanical room on that floor. 

And when I went to verbalize it, we heard the impact of the plane, very far away, coming from the top.  So there was a big difference of something coming from the top and something coming from the basement.  I mean I worked there for 20 years, I could tell the difference of one thing coming from each side. 

And at that moment a person comes running into the office saying, “Explosion, explosion!”, with his hands extended, all his skin was off from under his armpits like he was a piece of cloth, and was hanging off both hands.  It was his actual skin. (Source)

Arriving at 8:30 on the morning of 9-11 he went to the maintenance office located on the first sublevel, one of six sub-basements beneath ground level. There were a total of fourteen people in the office at this time. As he was talking with others, there was a very loud massive explosion which seemed to emanate from between sub-basement B2 and B3. There were twenty-two people on B2 sub-basement who also felt and heard that first explosion.

At first he thought it was a generator that had exploded. But the cement walls in the office cracked from the explosion. "When I heard the sound of the explosion, the floor beneath my feet vibrated, the walls started cracking and everything started shaking." said Rodriguez, who was crowded together with fourteen other people in the office including Anthony Saltamachia, supervisor for the American Maintenance Company.  (Source)

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:

"That day I was in the basement in sub-level 1 sometime after 8:30am. Everything happened so fast, everything moved so fast. The building started shaking after I heard the explosion below, dust was flying everywhere and all of a sudden it got real hot.

"I threw myself onto the floor, covered my face because I felt like I was burned. I sat there for a couple of seconds on the floor and felt like I was going to die, saying to myself 'God, please give me strength.'"

Although severely burned on his face, arms and hands with skin hanging from his body like pieces of cloth, David picked himself up, running for help to the office were Rodriguez and others were gathered.

"When I went in, I told them it was an explosion," said David, who was then helped out of the WTC by Rodriguez and eventually taken by ambulance to New York Hospital. "When people looked at me with my skin hanging, they started crying but I heard others say 'OK, good, good, you made it alive."  (Source)

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:

Reflecting back on his 9/11 near death experience, he added: "I remember riding in the ambulance that morning and looking back, thinking it had to be a bomb."

"Later they told me it was an airplane that hit the towers, but how could it just be an airplane? I know all the newspapers were saying that, but it was just too incredible to believe if you heard and experienced what I did. It had to be a bomb." (Source)

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:


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

[Lt. Walsh:]  What I observed as I was going through these doors and I got into the lobby of the World Trade Center was that the lobby of the Trade Center didn't appear as though it had any lights.   

All of the glass on the first floor that abuts West Street was blown out.  The glass in the revolving doors was blown out.  All of the glass in the lobby was blown out. 

The wall panels on the wall are made of marble.  It's about two or three inches thick.  They're about ten feet high by ten feet wide.  A lot of those were hanging off the wall. 

[B.C. Congiusta:] Wait a second. (Interruption.) 

[Walsh:]  What else I observed in the lobby was that -- there's basically two areas of elevators.  There's elevators off to the left-hand side which are really the express elevators.  That would be the elevators that's facing north.  Then on the right-hand side there's also elevators that are express elevators, and that would be facing south.  In the center of these two elevator shafts would be elevators that go to the lower floors.  They were blown off the hinges.  That's where the service elevator was also.

[B.C. Congiusta:] Were these elevators that went to the upper floors?  They weren't side lobby elevators? 

[Walsh:]  No, no, I'd say that they went through floors 30 and below. 

[B.C. Congiusta:] And they were blown off? 

[Walsh:]  They were blown off the hinges, and you could see the shafts.  The elevators on the extreme north side and the other express elevator on the extreme south side, they looked intact to me from what I could see, the doors anyway.
(Source - PDF)

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:


Blown out windows in the lobby on 9/11:


This picture shows a blown out window from the west front of the building.


Again we see blown out windows of the west front, from the view of the fire command post.


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.




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.


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:




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.



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



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:


(
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:

The maximum deflection at the top of the tower was estimated to be more than 1/3 of the drift resulting from original design wind loads (about 45 inch in the N-S direction). Since the lateral stiffness of the building before and after impact was essentially the same, it can be concluded that the additional stresses in the columns due to this oscillation were roughly 1/3 of the column stresses resulting from the original design wind loads. The building demonstrated an ability to carry this additional load and therefore, still had reserve capacity.

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:

Earlyne Johnson: The communications specialist had just missed the elevator up to her 65th-floor office when she felt an explosion, followed by a hail of shattering glass. She covered her head with her arms, dashed for the exit, then set out to find her 51-year-old, asthmatic mother, who worked on the 73rd floor. She searched for twelve hours, before finding her safe at home in Newark late that night. (Source)

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:

He walked out into the main lobby of the building, seeing it for the first time.

"When I walked out into the lobby, it was incredible," he recalled. "The whole lobby was soot and black, elevator doors were missing. The marble was missing off some of the walls. 20-foot section of marble, 20 by 10 foot sections of marble, gone from the walls". The west windows were all gone. They were missing. These are tremendous windows. They were just gone. Broken glass everywhere, the revolving doors were all broken and their glass was gone. Every sprinkler head was going off. I am thinking to myself, how are these sprinkler heads going off? It takes a lot of heat to set off a sprinkler head. It never dawned on me that there was a giant fireball that came through the air of the lobby. I never knew that until later on. The jet fuel actually came down the elevator shaft, blew off all the (elevator) doors and flames rolled through the lobby. That explained all the burnt people and why everything was sooted in the lobby. (Source)

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:


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:

A van containing explosives was parked on the B-2 level of the underground parking garage in a position adjacent to one of the towers and under the Vista Hotel. At 12:18 p.m., the explosives were detonated causing varying degrees of physical damage on all six basement levels. In the immediate area of the explosion, the floor slabs for two basement levels collapsed onto vital electrical, communications, and domestic water systems equipment for the complex. Further, masonry fire walls and fire doors separating the buildings within the complex were voided by the force of the explosion. The explosion also penetrated vertically into a first-floor public assembly area of the Vista Hotel and shattered several glass partitions that separated the hotel from the lobby area of one of the Center's towers. This penetration of the structures enabled dense, black, super-heated smoke from the explosive materials and the ensuing fire to quickly fill the lobby area and move into numerous elevator shafts. (NFPA Fire investigation report, 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:

Quickly returning to the B ramp, I ordered that a 2 1/2-inch hoseline be hand-stretched. The firefighters, meanwhile, had rescued two civilians from the collapsed rubble. Both were severly burned, had suffered lacerations, and were in shock. (p.25)

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).

Tom Canavan:
"We got down to the first floor, and where the steps led out was in between the elevator banks in the lobby, of one world trade, on the concourse. Big security guard just standing there pointing, pointing east, saying just go.
And i remember looking around and all the elevator doors were almost knocked off, they were all crooked. So we made the turn, we went through the turnstyle, at that point we could see the concourse level, through the doors. All the lights were out, but the sprinklers were on. All of the glass in all of the windows and doors were shattered."

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.

Dave Bobbitt, Port Authority Operations
"It was quite hectic, and we did what we could to stay in contact with the elevator passengers while helping to direct other people out of the building and direct firemen to the stairs and the elevators," Bobbitt remarked. "When entering the North Tower, we saw the marble on the walls was severely cracked, and Riccardelli told everyone to stay back from the walls. Don (Parente) noticed that the doors of elevators number 6 and 7 had been blown out."
(From "Courage Above and Beyond the Call of Duty: A Report of the September 11")

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 :

Firefighter John Moribito: I noticed that some of the elevators had been blown out of their shafts. They came down and crashed out of the shaft. They were buckled, and I had noticed that there were people still in the elevators. I believe that they were at that point deceased. Then I saw the lights in both buildings went out, and I heard the rumble. At that point, I didn’t know what was happening, but 2 World Trade Center was collapsing. (Source - PDF)

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 Peter Blaich
The same thing happened to the elevators in the main lobby. They were basically blown out. I don't recall if I actually saw people in there. What got me initially in the lobby was that as soon as we went in, all the windows were blown out, and there were one or two burning cars outside. And there were burn victims on the street there, walking around. We walked through this giant blown-out window into the lobby. (Source)

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.

Firefighter Peter Fallucca: Before we got in, all the elevators were crashed down in the lobby, and we were going to the stairwell. See all the elevators were crashed down, big slabs of marble on the floor, all the ceiling tiles of the dropped ceiling was falling down, wires hanging. You see wires and stuff hanging inside the elevator shafts, because the doors were blown right off the elevators. (...) There was one body inside the lobby. Looked like his legs were chopped off. I don't know where he came from, but he had already had a triage tag on him. It was a civilian. I don't know where he came from, how he died. Looked like his clothes were a little burnt up on him, but his legs were chopped off.“ (Source)

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).

"After about an hour of maneuvering the stairwells, Forney and his group reached the lobby, but the unnerving sight of the outside world brought no reassurance. “On the ground you saw black, some metal objects, but a lot of stuff was smoldering,” Forney said. “I remember seeing a leg, but I didn’t see the body.” (Source)

“Sean, you gotta be careful,” Morabito said. “This is a bad situation.”
They boarded the rig. Morabito was the chauffeur, a job for experienced firefighters with additional training. His officer, Lt. Harrell, sat next to him. Four on-duty and three off-duty firefighters climbed on.
Morabito drove only a few yards. Bodies on Liberty Street blocked his path.
“I stop the rig, and I look at my officer and say, ‘It’s a body,’ and he says, ‘You gotta go. They’re dead, you gotta go.’ So we rolled over them, pulled down the street.”
Turning left on Liberty, they were blocked again by a Lincoln Town Car, a taxi. The woman inside couldn’t get it moving. The siren was on, lights flashing, firefighters yelling from the rear of the truck. A police officer jumped in the Lincoln but couldn’t engage the shifter.
“So I had to ram the car,” Morabito said. “I push the car, it goes up on the sidewalk.”
They turned right onto West Street, nearing the entrance to the north tower. A man — in shock, his clothes on fire — crossed in front of them.
“He’s completely engulfed in flames, and he’s looking at me because now he thinks I’m going to run him over,” Morabito says.
Morabito skidded the truck sideways to stop the man from running and got out as another man came charging off the sidewalk and tackled the burning man, damping out the flames with a jacket. They were 100 feet from the tower entrance.(...) Just inside the front entrance, Morabito found two victims of the fireball. A man, already dead, was pushed against a wall, his clothes gone, his eyeglasses blackened, his tongue lying on the floor next to him. The other was a woman, with no clothes, her hair burned off, her eyes sealed.

“The woman, she sat up. I’m yelling to her, ‘Don’t worry, we’re going to help you,’” Morabito said. “She sat up and was trying to talk, but her throat had closed up. She died right there.” (Source)

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).

Firefighter William Green: We entered in through the front doors of the lobby. The lobby was screwed. All the windows were already broken. Marble walls that surrounded the elevator shaft, they were cracked and broken. I’m still thinking a bomb went off.

We headed for the B staircase. It was pretty much in the center of the core. We had to go through these turnstiles. I remember there was a lot of rubble on the floor there. There was elevator doors ajar. There were elevator doors missing. I could see an elevator car twisted in the shaft.
I remember I looked up at the ceiling because I thought maybe the ceiling got charred because there was a bunch of rubble on the floor. It was about three feet high in the middle. The ceiling wasn’t charred. So I had thought the floor blew up.

I was telling guys afterwards the floor must have blown up. Maybe there was a bomb downstairs or something. But I came to learn that that was bodies. We had to climb over and around this pile.
Q. A pile of bodies, in the lobby?
A. I didn’t recognize it as bodies. I don’t know if my mind didn’t see it.
Q. Burned?
A. Burned.
Q. Near the elevators?
A. It looked like rubble to me.
Q. Right.
A. Right outside the elevators, in the core. We had to climb up and around it—it was like three feet high in the middle—to enter the B staircase. (Source - PDF)

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:

Ronnie Clifford and Jennianne Maffeo
At around 8.45am, Ronnie walked into the lobby of the Marriott, which was connected to the lobby of the north tower by a revolving door. As he was checking his yellow tie in a mirror, he felt a massive explosion, followed several seconds later by a reverberation, a warping effect that he describes as the "harmonic tolerance of a building that's shaking like a tuning fork". He peered through the revolving door into the lobby of the north tower. It was filling with haze. People were scurrying to escape what had become a "hurricane of flying debris".

Yet Ronnie remained untouched. It was as though the revolving door were a glass portal to another realm, a world of chaos and soot just inches away. The Marriott lobby was calm, the marble surfaces polished and antiseptic. For a few seconds, the two adjacent worlds did not meet.

Then the revolving door turned with a suctioning sound followed by a hot burst of wind, and in came a mannequin of the future. A woman, naked, dazed, her arms outstretched. She was so badly burned that Ronnie had no idea what race she was or how old she might be. She clawed the air with fingernails turned porcelain-white. The zipper of what had once been a sweater had melted into her chest, as if it were the zipper to her own body. Her hair had been singed to a crisp steel wool. With her, in the gust of the door, came a pungent odour, the smell of kerosene or paraffin, Ronnie thought. (Source)

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'.




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

Although dramatic, these fireballs did not explode or generate a shock wave. If an explosion or detonation had occurred, the expansion of the burning gasses would have taken place in microseconds, not the 2 seconds observed. Therefore, although there were some overpressures, it is unlikely that the fireballs, being external to the buildings, would have resulted in significant structural damage. It is not known whether the windows that were broken shortly after impact were broken by these external overpressures, overpressures internal to the building, the heat of the fire, or flying debris. (FEMA WTC report, chapter 2)

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:

Fifty-five gallon, open top, steel drums are used extensively worldwide for waste storage, transport, and disposal. Biological, chemical, and radiological processes operating on waste drum contents may lead to an internal drum atmosphere that provides a potentially “explosive” air/fuel mixture. Given an ignition source, this mixture could subsequently result in a drum explosion or fire, most commonly referred to as drum deflagration. (Source)

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:

"The doors were blown off by the fireball that came down the elevator shaft and the elevators cars were burned. (Basement level of WTC 1)." (NIST NCSTAR 1-8, p.43)

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:



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:

Kerosene is NOT like gasoline: it is a lubricant, not corrosive, not volatile, and extremely stable in storage. The specific gravity of kerosene is about 0.8, and its ignition point is more than 104 F. If you throw a match into a pool of kerosene it will put out the match. You can hold a match right up to the edge of a teaspoon half full of kerosene and it will not ignite (try that with gasoline and you will need to grow new eyebrows).

The cleanest burning, lowest odor fuel for any wicked appliance is Low Odor Mineral Spirits. Jet A fuel is extremely close to kerosene and burns well in kerosene heaters, and therefore is the fuel of choice for those who heat with kerosene heaters in many remote areas of Canada and Alaska. (Source)

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:

Vulnerability of Buildings to
Blast Damage and Blast-Induced Fire Damage
by Ronald J. Massa
The popular conception of an explosion, as depicted in TV action movies, generally is more dramatic
than accurate. The big fireball, resulting fire, and apparent chaos at the blast scene do not accurately characterize the high-explosive detonations of materials such as TNT or C-4.
First, building fires usually are not a dominant effect of high-explosive detonations. If the detonation
occurs outdoors, in a well-ventilated area, the hot gases from the initial detonation rarely ignite anything, although they can cause charring of nearby materials. If an explosive is detonated outside but in a car (i.e., a car bomb), the result will depend on the size of the explosive. The expanding hot gases from smaller (lower charge weight) explosive detonations will ignite flammable materials in the car, such as upholstery, fuel, and tires. The smaller explosive charges will do less mechanical damage to the car and often will result in a concentrated fire within the confines of the vehicle. As the charge becomes larger, more mechanical damage will be done to the car, and fire effects will be less concentrated. For example, expanding gas pressure will propel the engine and transaxle apart from the rear axle and wheels, and relatively small fires will appear as a number of the car’s components
come to rest at (perhaps) widely separated locations.
Unless the detonation is specifically designed to be incendiary, only locally available combustible materials will be ignited. The particular difficulty with explosion-induced fires is that ignition can occur at almost the same time at widely separated locations because the hot gas cloud expands and propels ignited or ignitable objects away from the center of the blast.
Building fires generally are not an issue when explosive detonations occur outside of buildings. And except in cases where detonations are incendiary in nature, building fires generally are not a major issue when detonations occur inside of buildings. Interior explosion-induced fires generally are caused when something within the building is ignited by the explosion. The problem is like the ignition of gas lines in an earthquake — the earthquake’s mechanical effects themselves do not directly cause fires.
When the detonation occurs inside a building and in a confined and fuel-rich space, such as in a parking
garage, the hot gases from the detonation cannot expand freely to mix with an ever-increasing volume of cooler air. The shock effects and mechanical damage from the explosion will overturn vehicles, fracture gas tanks, break pipes, and breach walls, exposing a variety of materials to the hot gas cloud. Many of these will ignite, generally on the periphery of the affected space, where the expanding gas causes the least local oxygen deprivation.1 Thus, suddenly the detonation will spawn many separate fires. From that point on, the building will respond as it would had each of the fires been set with a match. However, if the building were severely damaged by the blast, life safety systems may be incapacitated, gas lines severed, and electrical systems disturbed, all of which will increase the fire vulnerability of the building.
All things considered, while severe explosion-induced fires are unlikely from exterior detonations, interior detonations, particularly those in confined, fuel-rich spaces, frequently result in fires that are exacerbated by damaged building systems. Whether inside or outside, blast effects such as shock waves, expanding gas, and heat frequently dissipate within a second.2 Discreet fires ignited in this interval generally will require a much longer period (typically several minutes) to become serious building fires.
Unfortunately, there are other adverse factors to consider. Ignition at many locations simultaneously and damaged life safety systems already have been mentioned. But the blast also may blow out windows, providing undesirable venting to the fire. If the detonation is a “dirty” one, using a low explosive or smoke-producing components, toxic smoke can be rapidly propelled throughout the structure, creating an instant, additional hazard to building occupants at locations where they are safe from the direct effects of the blast.

(Ronald J. Mmassa has been president and technical director of security technology development activities for Lorron Corporation since 1984. For the past eight years, he has been involved in blast postincident analysis, blast modeling field test programs, and bomb defense. He holds several electronic security systems patents, has published extensively on security topics, and has designed and planned a major blast test program for security glazing. Massa, who has several engineering degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, previously served as president and CEO of Dynatrend, an engineering consulting firm he founded in 1971.)
USFA-TR-076/February 1993 107

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:

"The Twin Towers and WTC 7 are the only known cases of total structural collapse where fires played a significant role." (Source)

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:

A jet fuel fireball erupted upon impact and shot down at least one bank of elevators. The fireball exploded onto numerous floors, including the 77th and 22nd; the West Street lobby level; and the B4 level, four stories below ground. (ch.9, p.285)

From the NIST:

* Unfortunately, the individual was unaware of the condition of the 22nd floor, where critical communications hardware in the hidden security command center lay in ruins, likely preventing any building-wide public address announcements from reaching the occupants. (...) After the fact, a person familiar with the operation of the building suggested that the fire alarm closet on floor 22 destroyed the riser. (NIST NCSTAR 1-7, Chapter 6)


* When I got to the 22nd floor there was a lot of debris, everything was pushed to the center of the building. The windows were knocked out and I could feel the wind. I could not see. I got a radio transmission that everyone in Tower 1, get out.
(NIST NCSTAR1-8, p.106)


* 8.47 a.m. WTC security radio report, PA Channel X - "...?...There is a fire on 22."

8.47 a.m. WTC security radio report, PA Channel X- "....?...on the 22nd floor a lot of debris." (NIST NCSTAR1-8, p.194)


* 9..57 a.m. WTC security radio repot, PA ChannelX-"...FS2 to (90Mike?)" "If you can copy this, I'm responding to over to A Tower Fire Command.""We are trying to get in touch with them from the 22nd floor command center, but we don't know how to operate the other set of equipment.""S2 to 77....Try to get up to the 22nd floor. A Tower command center."
(NIST NCSTAR1-8, p.222)


* 9.54 a.m. WTC Vertical Transportation message indicates that an officer is located on floor 22, fire command center and that there is heavy traffic in the B stairway. The person indicates that they cannot release any emergency locked door due to fire and the loss of electrical power. (Note: Communication appears to originate from WTC 1.)(PA/WTC Vertical Transportation Radio CHannel Z) (NIST-Progress Report June 04 -Appendix P, p.35)


* 8.47 a.m. WTC security reports that there is fire on floor 22 of WTC1 (PA/WTC Security Radio CHannel X)

8.49 a.m. WTC Security reports that there is damage and a lot of debris on floor 22 of WTC1 (PA/WTC Security Radio Channel X) (NIST-Progress Report June 04 -Appendix P, p.36)


* 9.57 a.m. WTC Security: a report is received that an officer is responding to WTC 1 Fire Command and that he had been trying to contact the Command Center on floor 22, but they didn't know how to operate the other set of communication equipment. (PA/WTC Security Radio Channel X). (NIST-Progress Report June 04 -Appendix P, p.148)

From Port Authority Transcripts:

–(Female trapped): There’s a fire outside of 22! There’s a fire on 22!
–(Male responding): Fire on 22, where? A or B tower?
–(Female trapped): This is the SCC, A tower, the 22nd floor. We see a lot of debris. We are stuck on 22…the door is blocked. There is a fire.  (Port Authority Transcript,  WTC Ch. 27: Security, p. 1)


pg5

MALE : I have a ambulance (inaudible) ... where's that guard?
MALE: Eighth floor, S2, to OSCC.
MALE : Three-thirty, fire command!
MALE : S2 to SCC!
FEMALE 77 TRAPPED ON 22ND FLOOR: Go!
MALE : (AUDIO BREAKING UP) (Inaudible) conditions there?
FEMALE TRAPPED ON 22ND FLOOR: Can you repeat that again, please?
MALE : Josie, what's the condition on twenty-two?
FEMALE TRAPPED ON 22ND FLOOR: Twenty-two is we cannot leave the area.
There is a lot of smoke outside, we are stuck inside.


pg 15

FEMALE TRAPPED ON 22ND FLOOR: SCC, S4. (ALARMS IN BACKGROUND)
MALE : Six-three, Evelyn(?) ...
GENE RAGGIO: Go for the S4, go for the S4.
FEMALE TRAPPED ON 22ND FLOOR: (ALARMS IN BACKGROUND) S4, this is
the SCC, we have (inaudible) running ... the air is clearing up just a little bit but we still
can't get out, and we are losing power, we don't have as much power.
GENE RAGGIO: Josie, okay, they are aware that you can't open that door, and they will be up there, and get that debris out of the way
FEMALE TRAPPED ON 22ND FLOOR: That's a big ten-four, thank you.

pg 24

FEMALE: Um, we're okay. I've blocked the doors with some wet tissue. And that
sucks up some of the smoke. But we still can't get out.
(ALARMS HEARD IN BACKGROUND)
GENE RAGGIO: Okay, and (Inaudible)? (AUDIO IN AND OUT)
FEMALE: We have, uh, the cameras running on all the perimeter outside. (PAUSE)
GENE RAGGIO: Repeat?
FEMALE TRAPPED ON 22ND FLOOR: We have all the cameras up on the outside
perimeter. When ... when the, uh, smoke detectors set off, that means the smoke subsided
a little bit. We have the doors blocked with wet tissue.
(ALARM HEARD IN BACKGROUND)
GENE RAGGIO: Okay, we are working our way up to 22.
FEMALE TRAPPED ON 22ND FLOOR: That's a copy, thank you.

pg 31
MALE S2: How are you doing up there?
FEMALE TRAPPED ON 22ND FLOOR: S2,. urn, we're hanging in there. Everything
is OK okay for now. (ALARMS CAN BE HEARD IN BACKGROUND)
WTC Ch. 27 - RADIO CHANNEL X - SECURITY
MALE: We're on 16 right now.
FEMALE TRAPPED ON 22ND FLOOR: That's a copy. We can't use the software
right now to try to release the doors. But it can't ...
MALE: There's a (Overlap)
FEMALE TRAPPED ON 22ND FLOOR: There's no power for the doors. (PAUSE)
MALE: Did you copy that, S2?
MALE: I said we're on 16, working our way up.
FEMALE TRAPPED ON 22ND FLOOR: That's a big ten-four, thank you.
(9/11 Transcripts and Police Reports, Transcript 48)

"First plane hit our building at 8:45. We decided to evacuate from the 22nd floor after 15 minutes. The delay was because we did not know the extent of the damage; part of the 22nd floor was sheared away and the corridor was blocked by fallen debris. Four of us decided it was better to try to get out than stay and wait to be rescued (in hindsight a good decision). We had to crawl for ten to fifteen feet under debris to get to the fire stairs...." (Source)

From the EMS log
09:04:24,""SUPPLEMENT-PD (T69) ----ANOTHER CALL---ANON MC STS TRAPPED ON FLR 22--- HOLE IN HALLWAY----SMOKE COMING IN-----UNABLE TO BREATHE-----MC STS WILL BREAK WINDOW ---- OPR 2235 CP 69+

[Firefighter LONG] on 22FLNT
We made it up to the 22nd floor. We stood there for a couple minutes. I believe Andy Desperito talked to the battalion through the fire warden phones. We did locate somebody at the end of the hall, but everything was blown out. The ceiling had fallen. The drop ceiling had blown to the floor. Some of the walls were blown out. So Andy and I had crawled down the hallway to get to the Port Authority command post. (Source)

The 22nd floor was also affected by fire: On September 12, 2001, NY News Day reported that officials had recently taken steps to secure the  towers against aerial attacks by installing bulletproof windows and fireproof doors in the 22nd-floor  computer command center. "When the fire started, the room was sealed," said [Hermina] Jones, who  was in the command center when explosions rocked the building. "Flames were shooting off the  walls....We started putting wet towels under the doors. The Fire Department unsealed the door and grabbed us by the hand and said, 'Run!' " (Source)

The elevators on the 22nd floor

Firefighter Paul Bessler: On the 22nd floor, some of the elevator shafts were actually open. (Source - PDF)

Firefighter Craig Dunne: The elevator shafts were blown out, so they had to make their way around -- the fire came down the elevator shafts. (Source)

Firefighter Michael Yarembinsky:

When we got to 22, we heard there was a Port Authority command post on 22. So we were stopped there. My officer wanted to find out some information, my officer Lieutenant Andy Desperito. He went over to the command post. We noticed in the hallway that the elevator shaft had been blown out. There was nothing there, no doors, no framing, nothing. When you looked down, all you saw was the cables for the elevator and the brick work that was surrounding.
Q. Was it burning?
A. No burning, no smoke coming out of it. (Source - PDF)

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:

Firefighter W.Mera: So we got up to the 22nd, threw our gear down, dropped back down to the 21st and forced the door.
Q. It was clear?
Firefighter W.Mera: Clear as day. We started to search. We searched every room in there. I remember forcing one door, beautiful mahogany doors, beautiful trim, taking off the little trim between the doors and I'm thinking to myself, wow, this is a beautiful door, because you can do some damage to this, you know. The search was negative. There was nobody anywhere.

At about the 22nd floor, we came across the first firemen. It was a relief to see these men. They assured us we were going to be ok, and that everything below us was ok. I recall one fireman saying "It’s smooth sailing from here on end, so walk quickly, but safely." That was a very reassuring moment.

Many of these firefighters were out of breath. They were tired, drenched in sweat and some were even on the floor resting. Image running up 20 flights of stairs with an oxygen tank on the shoulders, an axe, a metal rod, a hose, and all their protective clothing. That must be over a hundred pounds of gear.

The rest of the way down was truly fast; it was even unexpected. (Source)

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

Firefighter M. Brodbeck:
We went up to the mezzanine, and we took an elevator. The chief said that these elevators were all right. We took the elevator which I believe goes up to eight. We got off at eight and proceeded to walk up to 23. We stopped on 23, and then we went up to 25. Then we made our way back down. So we were either on 23 or 21. I don't know. I don't remember that. I think it was 23. The lieutenant gave us instructions to make a thorough search, pop all the doors, make sure everybody is out of the building. Me and the irons man went. I left my can and I took the Halligan. He had the router tool. We probably popped at least 10 or 15 doors making a search.
Q. On what floor?
A. On 23 or 21. I'm still confused about that. I believe it was 23.
At this point after we made a thorough search, we located together via the stairwell.

[...]

Q. When you were on the 23rd floor doing a search, what were the conditions?
A. Fine. Nothing up there.
Q. No smoke? No sign of water flowing anywhere?
Q. The stairwell dry?
A. The stairwell was dry. No water.
Q. Do you remember what stairwell you were in?
A. I believe B.
Q. B?
A. We came down B. From what I understand, it was the only one that was not obstructed. It was a good thing we were going down B. When we were going up, there didn't seem to be that many firemen. I believe we were probably one of the first 15 units on the scene. We got there pretty quick. I happened to see that thing on CNN from 7 Engine. They were on 21. I didn't see them. I'm pretty sure it was 23 that we were on. There's a lot of doors. We popped a ton of doors, looking for people. To be honest with you, I remember looking out the window and seeing that command post on West Street, thinking it wasn't a good idea to be there. I've been on six years. When I looked down, it didn't seem like a real bright place to have one. Little things like that stuck out in my mind. When I looked out on that, I felt uncomfortable about that.

But there's a contraditing account:

FDNY Lieutenant Mickey Kross: When I got up to 23, it was kind of quiet on the floor–very dark. I saw some firefighters moving around, but not any command posts or chiefs. The hallway was full of debris where I was walking, debris about three feet high covering a whole section of the hallway. I was puzzled as to what that was, because I knew that the plane had hit way above us. So as I got there I realized it was the elevator shafts. The doors or the walls had probably blown out, and I had to climb over the debris to get the other side of the hallway. Here, I was a little concerned about falling into the pit, the elevator shaft. (Smith, Dennis: Report From Ground Zero. New York: Viking Press, 2002. Pp. 72-73)

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

The lobby of the North Tower, where the on-site fire command station was, was full of officials from all the local agencies as well as a number of firefighters who were already staged there, waiting to receive their orders.  My unit was instructed to team up with another engine company and ascend the B stairway to a command post on the 23rd floor. (Source)

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:

Survivors in both towers tried to make it to the roof but nobody did. The roof was locked by a thick, gray metal door. To open it, you needed a security card and to be buzzed in by a guard at a 22nd floor security command post. The TV and phone technicians on the upper floors had these security cards. However, the communications system between the 22nd floor and the top of the building was knocked out on impact in both towers. (Source)

"On Sept. 11, falling debris knocked out the 22nd-floor security center's equipment just after the plane hit, says Mr. Reiss, who is still with the Port Authority and was helping with the transition to new management that took over the complex in July. The guards, who had to be rescued themselves, couldn't have buzzed anyone through to the roof. Even after the building's electricity was cut off, internal batteries in the electromagnetic locks would have kept the doors closed for several hours, Mr. Reiss says. (Source)

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

The reported difficulty unlocking doors did not appear to directly prevent any occupants from successfully evacuating, however, as every fourth door was always open and the doors were only locked from the stairwell side. Further, only the mechanical rooms and roof were controlled electronically. The communication does reflect the condition of the SCC and the difficulty the conditions posed for operations originating fromt that office. (NIST NCSTAR 1-7, p.112)

On September 11th, the WTC 1 Security Control Center (SCC) attempted to release all locks controlled by the computerized access system but was unable to do so because of aircraft damage to the system. (NIST NCSTAR1-8, p.48)

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

A new operations center will contain backup for the security command center, and the security command center will contain backup for operations center functions, including alarms, intercoms and elevator controls.

Remote processors for access control and alarms at the parking garages, and workstations at the guard booths, parking office, visitor centers and security command center and other areas, are connected to a main, redundant file server. (Source)

Security Command Center was built on the 22 and floor of 1 WTC, backed up by a new Operations Control Center on the subgrade B1 level at 2 World Trade Center.  (Source - PDF)

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:

WTCCH. 09 - POLICE DESK - 3541 CENTER
SEPTEMBER 11,2001
WORLD TRADE CENTER - CH. 09
POLICE DESK - 3541 - CENTER
DURATION: 1.25 HOURS

PAPD OFFICER MAGGETT: Port Authority Police, Officer Maggett.
ED CALDERONE - OCC: Maggett, this is Ed at the OCC. I got word that there's an
explosion down on B-4. We got people hurt down there, B-4.
PAPD OFFICER MAGGETT: B-4?

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:

When the first plane hit, Compas was in his office on the basement level of the hotel. "It sounded to me as if there were three loud bangs and then the building shook," he says.

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:

I find water all over, run straight to the south tower where they have the OCC (operation control center) that was created after 1993.  They spent $155 million to retrofit the building, and to supposedly straighten it out after the 1993 bombing, and to set up a whole security system, the control center.  When I got there and started hitting the window there was nobody there.  There was nobody there—the control center, where they have all the cameras, and the recordings. (Source)

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:

* A building Fire Safety Director spoke with one of the FDNY Chiefs about the possibility of using elevator phones for communication with the building's Operation Command Center (OCC). This person and a FDNY Battakion Chief were dispatched to go and check it out. These men were never seen again. (NIST NCSTAR1-8, p.46)

* 8:58:04 WTC Security radio report, PA Channel X- "What elevators are running in Building number One?"...(?)...OCC...(?)... "S2 to all security guards, hold your posts. Don't allow people in...(?).... Do not allow anyone into the courtyard of any ...(?).... leading into the.....(?)...copy?" (NIST NCSTAR1-8, p.200)

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

The first door to access the stairwell to the roof was protected by an acess card reader. Upon opening the first door, the individual would enter a vestibule where, upon showing ID to a closed-circuit television monitored at the Operations Control Center (OCC), the door would be electronically unlocked from the OCC. (NIST NCSTAR 1-7, p.41)

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.



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

HVAC systems that are not shot down during a fire, or are set in a mode that re-circulates air through the building, may directly cause smoke spread through the building. (NIST NCSTAR1-4 ,p.70)

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:

The scenes passed in surreal succession. Michael Zhu, a 33-year-old resident of South Plainfield, descended 51 stories of the North Tower and escaped before it collapsed, alongside fellow workers bearing burn victims in their arms. In the lobby, he smelled gasoline as the overhead sprinklers soaked his dusty clothing. "I feel like I am going to die," he said. (Source)

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):

For an elevator’s cables to be cut and result in dropping the car to the bottom of the shaft, the cables would need to have been in the aircraft impact debris path, floors 93 through 98 in WTC 1 or floors 78 through 83 in WTC 2. Inspection of the elevator riser diagram and architectural floor plans for WTC 1 shows that the following elevators met these criteria: cars 81 through 86 ( Bank B ) and 87 through 92 (Bank C), local cars in Zone III; car 50, the freight elevator, and car 6, the Zone III shuttle. Bank A local elevators could have fallen a maximum of 6 floors, Bank B cars 16 floors, and Bank C cars 23 floors. Cars 6 and 50 could have fallen all the way to the pit in the sub-basement level, and car 50 in WTC 1 was reported to have done so.

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

Port Authority vertical transportation personnel began an evaluation of elevator operations immediately after the aircraft hit the towers. This was done by checking the elevator operations panels at the Fire Command Desk and calling the elevators using the elevator intercom phones. Their initial analysis indicated that no elevators were operating in either building, and this was reported to the FDNY Chiefs running the building Operations Posts in the lobbies. Therefore, the fire department did not direct any personnel to use any elevators for operations inside of WTC 1. Some FDNY personnel went to the elevator banks in the building and personally checked the elevators. Out of the 99 elevators that were located inside each of the two buildings, FDNY personnel found that only one elevator in WTC 1 and one elevator in WTC 2appeared to be working. The Porth Authority vertical transportation personnel and FDNY Command Post staff were unaware of the elevator that was operating inside WTC 1. This elevator was staffed by a WTC building Elevator Starter. The Elevator Starter took a small number of FDNY personnel up to the 16th floor using this elevator. It does not appear that information about this operating elevator was ever reported to the FDNY Operations Post or the PA vertical transportation personnel that were operating in the lobby. (NIST NCSTAR 1-8, p.79)

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

Initial report of an elevator emergency will be made to the Operations Control Center Supervisor, identifying the affected elevator zone and associated conditions. All notifications thereafter are to be made by the Operations Control Center Supervisor as indicated in Exihibit 6A. (NIST NCSTAR 1-8, App.A LFinal, p.351)

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:





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.

When the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993, Otis Elevator's mechanics led the rescue of 500 people trapped in elevators. Some mechanics were dropped onto the roofs of the twin towers by helicopter. Others, carrying 50-pound oxygen tanks on their backs, climbed through smoke to machine rooms high in the towers. On Sept. 11, the elevator mechanics — many of the same men involved in the rescues in 1993 — left the buildings after the second jet struck, nearly an hour before the first building collapsed.

The 83-person elevator crew worked for ACE Elevator, a small Palisades Park, N.J., company that won the maintenance contract from Otis in 1994.

At the time the elevator mechanics left, dozens of people were trapped in stuck elevators. Other people lost their lives trying to rescue those trapped in elevators, including a mechanic from another company who rushed to the Trade Center from down the street.

The departure of elevator mechanics from a disaster site is unusual. The industry takes pride in rescues. In the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, elevator mechanics worked closely with the firefighters making rescues.

"Nobody knows the insides of a high-rise like an elevator mechanic. They act as guides for firefighters, in addition to working on elevators," says Robert Caporale, editor of Elevator World, a trade magazine.

In an interview, ACE Elevator President Ron Baamonde says the crewmembers left on their own because they were in danger. He says ACE followed the Trade Center's emergency plan. After a jet hit the north tower, 81 crewmembers reported to the fire command station in the south tower lobby. Two reported by radio.

"We did a head count and were ready to deploy for rescue. The second plane hit. It was chaotic, people screaming and yelling," Baamonde says. "You couldn't get out the front door because debris was falling. There was a mass exodus through the underground of the complex." (Source)

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?

"Our people miraculously left when the second plane hit, and it saved our lives," Baamonde says.

The miracle becomes even more miraculously:

Following the Port Authority's emergency plan, after the first jet hit the north tower, elevator mechanics from both towers reported to the fire safety desk in the south tower lobby for instructions from police or firefighters. About 60 mechanics had arrived in the south tower lobby and others were in radio contact when the second jet struck that building.

"We were standing there trying to count heads when the second plane hit (the south tower)," said Peter Niederau, ACE Elevator's supervisor of the modernization project. "Parts of the lobby and glass were coming down around us, so we all got out of the lobby as fast as we could."

They left in different directions. Some went through the underground shopping mall. Others went out onto Liberty Street. Had they stayed, they would have been about 30 yards from the two express elevators where firefighters tried unsuccessfully to save people. Another mechanic was in the north tower's 78th floor elevator lobby — where Savas and other people were trapped — when the first jet hit. The mechanic was knocked across the lobby, then evacuated safely, the ACE Elevator supervisors say.

"(We) went out to the street to assess the damage and come back in as needed," says James O'Neill, ACE Elevator's supervisor of maintenance. The plan was to return to the building later in the day to help with rescues. The strategy had worked after the 1993 terrorist bombing, when many of the same mechanics — working for Otis Elevator, which had the contract then — were hailed as heroes.

On Sept. 11, the mechanics left on their own, without instructions from police or fire officials. ACE Elevator supervisors say this was consistent with the emergency plan. All the mechanics survived. "We had a procedure. We had a procedure to follow, and they (the mechanics) followed it," Niederau says. (Source)

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:

But the Port Authority says the emergency plan called for mechanics to stay and help with rescues. "The manuals consider many emergency scenarios and describe the role of the mechanics in detail in responding to them," Port Authority spokesman Allen Morrison says. "There was no situation in which the mechanics were advised or instructed to leave on their own. They were, depending on the situation, to be dispatched to various emergency posts or to respond to various passenger entrapments and to assist police, fire and other rescue personnel." (...)

A supervisor from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owned the World Trade Center, radioed the mechanics about 45 minutes later to say firefighters needed their help.

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:

A basic rule of high-rise firefighting mentioned by emergency responders during the investigation indicates that, a fully equipped firefighter can climb approximately one floor per minute. this means that it would take a firefighter approximately one hour to climb to the 60th floor. However, some firefighters estimated that it would have taken them as long as two hours to climb to the 70th floor where FDNY was planning to establish an Operations Post. Some FDNY personnel that were interviewed by NIST and were inside WTC 1 had heared that a small number of FDNY rescue personnel had climbed to about the 50th floor in WTC1 before WTC 2 collapsed. (...)

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

Inside WTC 2 a FDNY Chief Officer reached the 78th floor just before the building collapsed. This climb included a trip on an elevator up to the 40th floor before the FDNY Chief began to climb the remaining 38 floors using the stairs. This officer was noted to be a marathon runner, and during his climb up the stairs he was likely wearing an SCBA breathing apparatus but was not carrying extra firefighting equipment.

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:

Ladder 15, we've got two isolated pockets of fire. "

" We should be able to knock it down with two lines. Radio that, 78th floor numerous 10-45 Code Ones."

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.

The 12 in. diameter main was supplied directly from the municipal water supply by two redundant 16 in. diameter connections. Operating pressures were maintained by two 750 gpm high-pressures electric pumps that supplied the sub-grade loops and were located beneath the towers on the B1 level of the complex. (NIST NCSTAR 1-4, p.14)

See here their location:


Close-up of the WTC 1 pump:



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:

The primary water supply for the standpipe systems was initially gravity fed from reserve water storage tanks located above the standpipe system zone. (NIST NCSTAR 1-4, p.14 ).

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).

The 5,000 gal water storage tanks located in the 41st floor level mechanical rooms were arranged to provide the primary water supply for the low zone sprinkler systems and the standpipe system zone serving floors 8 through 31. (NIST NCSTAR 1-4B)

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

Each tower had three 750 gpm manually initiated electrical fire pumps, located on the 7th, 41st, and 75th floors to supplement standpipe pressures. Each pump provided sufficent pressure for the standpipes to skip the next sequential pump above it if any failed to operate. (NIST NCSTAR 1-4, p.14)

The standpipe system reserve storage tanks located in the 75th and 41st floor level mechanical rooms were configured to serve as secondary manual water supplies for the high and mid-level zone automatic sprinkler systems (PANYNJ 1987, 1972). The use of these storage tanks required the manual starting of the fire pumps to lift the water to the 110th floor level (PANYNJ 1987, 1972). Any two manual fire pumps operating in series were capable of providing adequate capacity and pressure to supply the fire protection (suppression) systems within the high or mid-level sprinkler or standpipe systems (PANYNJ 1987, 1972).(NIST NCSTAR 1-4, p.18)

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:

In addition to the pumps, a single 500 gpm automatic fire pump was provided in each tower on the 108th floor for the sprinkler systems located on the 99th through 107th floor and the hose stations in the mechanical rooms on the 108th through 110th floors.(NIST NCSTAR 1-4, p.14)

A single fire (booster) pump was provided in each tower at the 108th floor level for the high zone sprinkler systems, and the hose racks were located on the 110th floor level (PANYNJ 1987, 1972). (NIST NCSTAR 1-4, p.18)

Damage sustained to the sprinkler systems on the 94th, 95th, and 96th floors caused the 10,000 gal of sprinkler reserve to drain from the tanks, reducing the effectiveness of the sprinkler systems on the 32nd through 107th floors. Damage to the booster pump would have occured after the water tanks were drained, resulting in failure of the pump. (NIST NCSTAR1-4 B, p.155)

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.

A single 5,000 gal water storage tank, FSP 110A, located on the 110th floor, was the primary water supply for the high zone standpipe system in WTC 1. The tank was equipped with an automatic re-fill connection, which was controlled by a float valve and supplied by the domestic water system. The domestic water supply was provided with a separate water service connection to the NYC water distribution system. Other than supplying the water storage tanks, the domestic water storage tanks were intended to allow manual fire suppression efforts to begin before the manual fire pumps were turned on. The tanks were capable of supplying 500 gpm for 10 min without any additional water supply from the domestic water supply system. During this period, it was expected that the manual fire pumps would be placed into operation.

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:

The Brooklyn mechanic survived a fireball that blasted down the elevator shaft of the first tower that was hit, roared along a hallway, and slammed Lever across the floor of a sheet metal shop.

That the fireball blasted down the elevator shaft is not what he witnesses, but, like so often, a conclusion made afterwards. Here's his descitption of the events:

When Lever heard a ''poof'' from that crash, he thought that a transformer had blown again.

''I'm still doing what I'm doing,'' Lever recalled of his reaction. ''Then I walk toward the door and heard a big explosion. And when I look, I see a ball of fire coming toward the door.''

After being knocked across the room, with the lights out and black smoke everywhere, Lever heard a co-worker calling him by his nickname from across the shop. ''`Chino, Chino, are you all right?''' Lever recalled.

Interestingly, he also made this comment:

If he had been working next door in the small pump room, Lever said, he would have been killed by the rushing ball of flame.

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

"Following the attacks, Secret Service employees were some of the first to
respond with first aid trauma kits. Special agents assisted local fire and police rescue in
establishing triage areas and helping evacuate people from the Towers." (Source - PDF)

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:

When they emerged from the World Trade Center, Lever recalled, a police officer shouted at them to hit the ground. The pair made their way to a Secret Service-owned Bronco, where Lever was placed on his back.

A two-way radio in the vehicle delivered even more unbelievable news: A second plane was about to strike the World Trade Center. On his back, Lever could only watch as the warning became reality. Several people left the Bronco and fled for their lives, Lever said, as flame, smoke, and debris rained around them.

Somehow, Lever said, he was transported to Bellevue Hospital Center in midtown Manhattan, where he joined 287 other people for treatment. There he entered the limbo of the missing, as disabled telephone lines prevented him from contacting his wife and two daughters for two days.

Firefighter Terence Rivera:

As I got off the back -- the back step, there were a few individuals that were civilians that were outside that were burnt. There was a -- he wasn't a regular security guard. He had a weapon on him. I don't know if he was FBI or Secret Service and he was trying to put the pants out on one individual that was conscious. His pants were still smoldering. I took the can, fire extinguisher off the truck and then sprayed down the pants on the person that was still conscious.

At that time, I had asked him where did this individual come from. He told me when the plane had hit, a fire ball had shot down the elevator shaft and had blown people out of the lobby. (Source)

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:

„Sometime while we were doing that, that same individual that was -- when we first got there, that was trying to put the pants out, he came over and he is saying to us that it's a terrorist attack. You guys are too close. It's a terrorist attack.“

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:

At some point close to that, they were saying they had too much pressure, so I don't know if they were getting water or they were doing some type of -- 55 Engine chauffeur told Engine 10 that he was getting too much pressure. Then I went -- that same individual, the security or -- he told me to go over to the command post and let them know it's a terrorist
attack. There are more planes in the air. So I went across the street where they were starting to set up. I told them. They said we know.

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:

“As I was running up Vesey, the first car blew up on me on the corner of Vessey and the West Side Highway. That set my turnout coat on fire, that set my hair on fire, and that set my feet on fire. I kept running. I got news for you, those turn out coats need to be called burn out coats, cause this thing caught up in flames. They cut two inches off my hair in less that two minutes, my coat was completely engulfed, and that was the only way I could see where I was running at that point, because I had a glow from my coat.”

“There’s hundreds of cops all running up there, and I ended up running through this park, and I couldn’t even see where I was running anymore. I kept running North.”

Q: “Through North Park?”

A: “I guess that’s North Park. It’s a big green, grassy area, and there’s nothing there. As I was running up here, two or three more cars exploded on me. They weren’t near any buildings at that point, they were just parked on the street.” (Source - PDF)

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:

O'Neill had told one friend, "They'll never stop trying to take down those two buildings." (Source)

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.

Although Atha's workday would normally start at 7 a.m., putting him in the basement of Tower One by 8 a.m. Sept. 11, his team's decision to have breakfast to kick off the first of 25 days in the Big Apple had him and another non-military team member firmly stuck in traffic in the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel at 8 a.m.

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:

Though the Secret Service's primary mission is to protect the President and Vice President, and the Nation's financial system, on September 11, 2001, these men and women placed themselves in harm's way to protect the ordinary citizen.
(Source)

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.)



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.





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

At the termination of the global impact analysis, the residual momentum of the jet-fuel in the impact direction was less than one percent of the initial momentum, indicating that the fuel cloud was nearly at rest at 0.715 seconds. (NIST NCSTAR 1-2B)

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:

Elevators 6A and 7A were out of service for modernization. (NIST NCSTAR 1-8, p.43)

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

According to  the accounts I have heard, Debbie was in the lobby waiting for an elevator  when AA Flight 11 hit on 93. The jet fuel from the plane poured  down the elevator shafts. Owing to the way the elevators are laid  out,I don't understand how the fuel got into the elevator that she  was waiting for. There are / (were) "Sky Lobbies" on 44 and on 78. So  to go above those floors, you took an express elevator to the appropriate  sky lobby and then transferred to a local elevator. The elevator  machinery was located on the floors above the sky lobbies; only  a very few shafts continued all the way up. Anyway, apparently she was  in the lobby, the elevator shaftway doors opened and a fireball  hit her with full force. She survived and was taken to a hospital  with 90% burns. After lingering for about 50 days she died.

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_Chang ... opic=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.. ;)

UKperspective @ Nov 3 2007, 12:41 PM wrote: 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

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

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.

Also...

could beacons/thermite/explosives been placed on the floors where the planes hit?

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.