[giotto]

So you're saying that the men who built the WTC knew that the ground on which they were about to erect two 114 story buildings was landfill?!! WTF? In San Francisco, in the Loma Prieta quake of 1989, the only part of town where buildings collapsed was the Marina district, which was built on landfill.

Maybe this is why the towers fell.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the Financial District of SF where the skyscrapers are are also built on landfill.

[al baby]

Oh Please

[Tigerized]

“So you’re saying that the men who built the WTC knew that the ground on which they were about to erect two 114 story buildings was landfill?!! WTF?”

Ah, but all landfill is not the same. First of all, NYC isn’t known for earthquakes. I think it’s extremely fitting that the twin World Trade Center towers were built upon centuries old artifacts that exemplified our country’s first forays into commerce.

Second, the Marina District was built upon haphazard rubble tossed from the 1906 earthquake without any forethought to its suitability as substructure.

Dollars and donuts.

[Talisker]

So you're saying that the men who built the WTC knew that the ground on which they were about to erect two 114 story buildings was landfill?!! Maybe this is why the towers fell.

Well yeah, of course.

I mean, other than the fireball explosions and the top-down collapse floor by floor all the way to the ground...

It was the landfill.

[Pharmboy]

This is the best pic I could find to illustrate the point I wanted to make re your comment. Focus on the grayed skyline in the background, and not the foreground that is well-lit. This is the NYC skyline...notice that the downtown area (to the left) has many skyscrapers, then there's a fall-off in building height, then the Empire State Building on 34th St., and then more tall buildings in the 40s and 50s.

The skyline height follows the outline of the bedrock and its proximity to the surface...except for the Empire State Building. The reason for this is that for the ESB they had to go deeper and were able to get into bedrock. The landfill for the WTC was jsut a surface phenomenon and pushed the Hudson River back...they went into bedrock for the foundations for those buildings.

[getmeouttaPalmBeachCounty_FL]

For the sake of argument, let’s just say that you have a point. However - and a big however at that — these buildings which fell were erected decades upon decades ago.

My point is, we know so much more today than we did half a century ago when it comes to building tall structures. And given the structural collapse of the Twin Towers (top to bottom), how are you connecting this to a failure of the foundation?

I think that many of us aren’t clear about where you see a connection.