Posted on 06/18/2004 4:38:49 PM PDT by nuconvert
Report: Trade Center Towers May Have Been Structurally Weaker Based on Faulty Wind Tests
Michael Weissenstein/Associated Press
Jun 18, 2004
NEW YORK (AP) - The World Trade Center's designers may have severely underestimated the forces that wind exerted on the twin towers, leading them to design skyscrapers less able to handle the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal report says. Wind tunnel tests conducted as part of litigation over the buildings' collapse found wind loads 20 to 60 percent higher than those found in tests performed during the towers' design in the 1960s, according to the report released Friday by a federal institute examining the collapse.
The buildings would have been stronger and might have performed better during the 2001 attacks by terrorists in hijacked jetliners if the higher wind load numbers had been used, said Shyam Sunder, the lead investigator for the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
"It is relevant to evaluating the buildings' capacity to withstand an unanticipated event," he said.
A spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, said he could not comment on the NIST findings. He repeated earlier statements that the towers were built according to building standards.
The report also provided the first official estimate of the number of people in the twin towers on the morning the planes struck.
The agency estimated that between 16,200 and 18,600 people were in the mammoth buildings, based on interviews with more than 1,000 of the occupants and with first responders.
The estimate does not vary greatly from newspaper estimates and statements by officials such as former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who had said rescuers saved 25,000 people that day. The NIST number does not include people who may have escaped surrounding buildings.
About 2,800 people were killed in the attack.
The institute's investigation began two years ago as an effort to determine why the buildings collapsed and apply the lessons to possible improvements in building codes and other standards. Its final report is due in December.
Investigators have found that north tower structural components that had been coated with thicker fireproofing during a 1990s upgrade had more than three times the ability to withstand fire than original components in the south tower.
The institute is examining whether fireproofing was a factor in the north tower's ability to stand twice as long as the south tower after it was hit.
The report also details the collapse of 7 World Trade Center, a 47-story building that was not hit by a plane but burned for hours before collapsing that afternoon.
The city's emergency operations center was located in the building, which housed diesel fuel to power the center and generators for other tenants. The NIST found that the collapse most likely originated around the fifth floor, near a distribution system for the fuel.
No one was killed in the collapse of 7 World Trade Center, but the Giuliani administration has been criticized for locating the city's emergency center in a building containing thousands of gallons of diesel fuel.
Jesus. Won't they ever stop trying to find an ounce of blame for somebody other than Al Qaeda? Here's a hit for them: Two planes slammed into the WTC. THAT is what caused them to fall.
Agreed. The 9-11 Commission was more useless than teats on a boar. This is like a liberal judge trying to excuse a murderer because "the victim would've eventually died anyway."
That sleazy Giuliani. He moved the emergency center into that building when he took office, KNOWING it was full of fuel.
I'm sure the mayor before him wouldn't have done that...
Farkin' idiots at AP. Most of the diesel fuel above ground was for the backup generator for the emergency command center, You know, in case there was an EMERGENCY like a blackout.
I suppose they should have used the Magic Generator, the one that runs on wishes...
Even worse, the KNEW it contain the fuel, because it was for emergency generators. This commission is a total waste.
Is it me or were those airplanes and not 'wind' that knocked down the Twin Towers? :o
Another target for predatory lawyers and professional victims.
Is there no end to this.........
Must be you cause from what I've been hearing from the commission and it's victim families the buildings had some nerve getting in the way of those planes. It's Bush's fault because he positioned those buildings in the way.
Right. They just blew over. AQ was actually trying to rescue the people in them.
In a word, no. Never.
Here's another one that I have thought about: suppose during the first World Trade Center trial -- which, of course, Clinton, et al., treated as a CRIMINAL case -- I'll bet you that during the discovery phase of the trial the prosecution just may have turned over the specs that the terrorists needed to know just how much fuel, etc., they would need. Hell, for all we know, they gave them the damn architectual drawings.
And you know what -- the weirdest thing of all that you won't read anywhere else -- one thing that would have kept those buildings from burning was ASBESTOS!
But, of course, they couldn't use that during construction, could they?
I'm just as sick of this as you are.
Give the liberals some time to rewrite history, and it will be the wind.
For those still feigning puzzlement (and you know who you are), two LARGE planes, loaded with fuel, going FAST.
No sh*t, Shyam.
And the Hindenberg wouldn't have crashed and burned if it had been designed using 21st Century engineering data also.
Yep.....the NEA will make sure that!!!
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