Massive fire in Changsha, China, engulfs office building

Office space inside a giant stick of oil. What could go wrong?

God help the poor folks inside that building.

Maybe it got out of control because of draught affecting their ability to pump water from the Xiangjiang River...

Not sure whether it is connected to the almost dried-up Yangzte...

IAC, isn’t this near to where the Chicoms developed the virus they attacked us with?

Yangzte ==> Yangtze

That smoke there has chemicals in it that are known to cause cancer in the state of California (Prop 65 warning).

The fire proofing put on buildings in NYC is meant to last for two hours. Both building lasted just under that notably the South Tower which collapsed first because it was struck at and angle.

What do you mean by ‘’hollow beams’’?

That’s actually from a 2021 video

[What do you mean by ‘’hollow beams’’? ]

Mea culpa. I meant hollow tube design. There are people, including a Berkeley structural engineering professor, who contend a more conventional structure would have prevented their collapse:

https://www.chron.com/news/nation-world/article/Engineers-society-accused-of-disaster-probe-1775659.php
[Astaneh-Asl, who received money from the National Science Foundation to investigate the collapse, insisted most New York skyscrapers built with traditional designs would survive such an impact and prevent the kind of fires that brought down the twin towers.

He also questioned the makeup of the society’s investigation team. On the team were the wife of the trade center’s structural engineer and a representative of the buildings’ original design team.

Gene Corley, a forensics expert and team leader on the society’s report, said employing people with ties to the original builders was necessary because they had access to information that was difficult to get any other way.

Corley said the society’s study was peer-reviewed and its credibility was upheld by follow-up studies, including one by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.]

Re the lack of asbestos cladding:

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/18/science/nation-challenged-haunting-question-did-ban-asbestos-lead-loss-life.html
[As the World Trade Center was being built in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, scientists were learning that asbestos fibers in materials commonly used to fireproof steel beams could cause cancer in workers and bystanders who were intensively exposed to the fibers, especially around mines and manufacturing plants dealing with asbestos.

Anticipating a ban, the builders stopped using the materials by the time they reached the 40th floor of the north tower, the first one to go up.

Now some engineers and scientists — including at least one whose research supported an asbestos ban in New York City — are haunted by a troubling question: were the substitute materials as effective in protecting against fire as the asbestos-containing materials they replaced?]

You mean to tell me that after the 40th. floor and no more fire proofing building inspectors in NYC allowed construction to continue?

[You mean to tell me that after the 40th. floor and no more fire proofing building inspectors in NYC allowed construction to continue?]

The Port Authority of NY & NJ, which built and owned the World Trade Center, is like a state within a state - raw power without accountability. They get all kinds of special dispensations. All of these claims about whether it would have made a difference are debatable, of course, but you gotta wonder.

true. State governments and the Feds don’t hold themselves to the same standards they set for others.

I the late ‘70’s I worked for a ceiling contractor who was doing drop ceilings in a VA hospital in the Bronx. Some how or another the VA was not required to have sprinkler systems in it’s VA hospitals.

Can you imagine that?

My boss however was made to fireproof light fixtures in the patient rooms and what he had me do was cut ceiling tiles into strips about four long by six inches wide and I’d box them around each light fixture and push four penny steel nails to secure all the pieces around each light.

What a bitch that was but I was young, made good money at it.

[I the late ‘70’s I worked for a ceiling contractor who was doing drop ceilings in a VA hospital in the Bronx. Some how or another the VA was not required to have sprinkler systems in it’s VA hospitals.

Can you imagine that?

My boss however was made to fireproof light fixtures in the patient rooms and what he had me do was cut ceiling tiles into strips about four long by six inches wide and I’d box them around each light fixture and push four penny steel nails to secure all the pieces around each light.

What a bitch that was but I was young, made good money at it.]

That’s an interesting and creative kludge. And you made a few bucks doing it. Still, it’s good to know they’re not completely asleep at the wheel re fire safety.

This being NYC, I expect there’s a ton of redundancy re fire department coverage, given that many firehouses are less than a mile apart. And maybe that’s what they were counting on for the VA building.

But given the specific technical characteristics of the WTC building from a fire safety standpoint, it’s astonishing that they did not overdesign it the way they did the Brooklyn bridge. They are said to have estimated the biggest stresses possible on the bridge, then multiplied by 6x to get the specs for the structure they wanted built.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn_Bridge
[This is because John Roebling designed the Brooklyn Bridge’s truss system to be six to eight times as strong as he thought it needed to be.[19][20] However, due to a supplier’s fraudulent substitution of inferior-quality cable in the initial construction, the bridge was reappraised at the time as being only four times as strong as necessary.[19][21]]