Posted on 11/22/2004 9:04:04 AM PST by hoosierboy
South Bend firm's lab director fired after questioning federal probe.
By JOHN DOBBERSTEIN Tribune Staff Writer
SOUTH BEND -- The laboratory director from a South Bend firm has been fired for attempting to cast doubt on the federal investigation into what caused the World Trade Center's twin towers to collapse on Sept. 11, 2001.
Kevin R. Ryan was terminated Tuesday from his job at Environmental Health Laboratories Inc., a subsidiary of Underwriters Laboratories Inc., the consumer-product safety testing giant.
On Nov. 11, Ryan wrote a letter to the National Institute of Standards and Technology -- the agency probing the collapse -- challenging the common theory that burning jet fuel weakened the steel supports holding up the 110-story skyscrapers.
Underwriters Laboratories Inc., according to Ryan, "was the company that certified the steel components used in the construction of the WTC buildings."
Ryan wrote that last year, while "requesting information," UL's chief executive officer and fire protection business manager disagreed about key issues surrounding the collapse, "except for one thing -- that the samples we certified met all requirements."
UL vehemently denied last week that it ever certified the materials.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology is conducting a $16 million, two-year investigation of the collapse of the twin towers. The agency expects to issue a draft report in January, and UL has played a limited role in the investigation.
Ryan wrote that the institute's preliminary reports suggest the WTC's supports were probably exposed to fires no hotter than 500 degrees -- only half the 1,100-degree temperature needed to forge steel, Ryan said. That's also much cooler, he wrote, than the 3,000 degrees needed to melt bare steel with no fire-proofing.
"This story just does not add up," Ryan wrote in his e-mail to Frank Gayle, deputy chief of the institute's metallurgy division, who is playing a prominent role in the agency investigation. "If steel from those buildings did soften or melt, I'm sure we can all agree that this was certainly not due to jet fuel fires of any kind, let alone the briefly burning fires in those towers."
He added, "Alternatively, the contention that this steel did fail at temperatures around (500 degrees) suggests that the majority of deaths on 9/11 were due to a safety-related failure. That suggestion should be of great concern to my company."
Ryan declined to comment about his letter Thursday when reached at his South Bend home.
But his allegations drew a sharp rebuke from UL, which said Ryan wrote the letter "without UL's knowledge or authorization." The company told The Tribune "there is no evidence" that any firm tested the materials used to build the towers.
"UL does not certify structural steel, such as the beams, columns and trusses used in World Trade Center," said Paul M. Baker, the company's spokesman.
Ryan was fired, Baker said, because he "expressed his own opinions as though they were institutional opinions and beliefs of UL."
"The contents of the argument itself are spurious at best, and frankly, they're just wrong," Baker said.
Seeking to head off controversy just months before its report is released, the National Institute of Standards and Technology issued its own statement Thursday.
Some steel recovered from the WTC was exposed to fires of only 400 to 600 degrees, the institute said, but computer modeling has shown higher temperatures of 1,100 to 1,300 degrees or greater were "likely" experienced by steel in regions directly affected by the fires.
The institute believes impact from the jets dislodged fireproofing surrounding some of the steel, and the higher temperatures led to the buckling of the towers' core columns.
Wrangling on the Web
Ryan's statements have generated interest on many Web sites, including some advocating sharp scrutiny of the federal government's WTC probe.
Ryan copied his e-mail to David Ray Griffin, author of "The New Pearl Harbor," and to Catherine Austin Fitts, a board member of 911Truth.org -- a Web site organized by citizens who believe the government is covering up the true cause of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
One day later, Griffin requested and received permission to distribute Ryan's letter to other parties.
An official from 911Truth.org called Ryan to confirm his authorship. They said Ryan made it clear he is speaking for himself only, not on behalf of his laboratory or the company, but that others at UL were aware of his action.
The letter was published Nov. 11 on the Web site
septembereleventh.org, site of the 9/11 Visibility Project. On Tuesday, organizers of the 911Truth.org Web site noted Ryan had been fired.
In his letter, Ryan appeared confident in his statements about the WTC's fire protection levels.
"You may know that there are a number of current and former government employees that have risked a great deal to help us to know the truth," he told the institute's Gayle. "Please do what you can to quickly eliminate the confusion regarding the ability of jet fuel fires to soften or melt structural steel."
UL moved immediately to discredit Ryan.
The company said Ryan "was not involved in that work and was not associated in any way with UL's Fire Protection Division, which conducted testing at NIST's request."
The company said it "fully supports NIST's ongoing efforts to investigate the WTC tragedy. We regret any confusion that Mr. Ryan's letter has caused 9/11 survivors, victims' families and their friends."
"We prefer to base our conclusions, and NIST would say the same, on science rather than speculation," Baker said. "We anxiously await the outcome of the NIST investigation."
Organizers of 911Truth.org came to Ryan's defense Thursday, although they couldn't persuade him to speak publicly.
"He just saw too many contradictions, and it set off his sense of what was the right thing to do," said David Kubiak, 911Truth.org's executive director. "It's unfortunate for the country, and it's particularly tragic for him, but inspiring as hell."
"The way things are working in the country right now," Kubiak added, "it's only going to be citizens like this who take their professional knowledge and sense of personal integrity, and put it ahead of the strange status quo, that we will see truth and justice out of the system."
Staff writer John Dobberstein:
jdobberstein@sbtinfo.com
(574) 235-6187
I've heard this theory before. Why are some people confused by this? Jet fuel may have indeed started the blaze, but it was hardly the only substance burning. The buildings were full of combustibles, some of which have *much* higher burning temperatures than jet fuel. What is that so hard to understand?
Just think how many nutjobs continue to influence policy because their nutjob ideas are accepted...HHS comes to mind.
I wasn't trying to start an arguement, but articles like this always bring out the tinfoil crowd.
Maybe they should post warning labels on skyscrapers - "building may become unsafe if a jumbo jet is slammed into it at full speed".
Are you saying you're an expert on Gary Locke's backside??? Let's not go there...
I can recall hearing at least a half-dozen engineers after 9/11 claim that the building was designed specifically so that, in the event of catastrophic failure, it would collapse rather than topple and fall across however-many blocks worth of other buildings.
So at least in their view, the buildings collapsed because they were designed to collapse when all else failed.
Whether that is the fact or not, I don’t know. They sounded pretty convincing.
So, did the Joos/Mossad install the original steel or did they secretly weaken it over the summer of 2001?
I've had several people try to sell me theories on the WTC collapse, but I've been teaching my firefighters ever since it happened that the WTC was a classic pancake collapse caused by impact load. A contributing factor was that the upper floors did not have asbestos insulation (it was outlawed during the construction of the WTC), and experimental thermal insulation was used, which did not hold up as well. The fire protection systems were designed to handle small fires before they got big, not deal with thousands of gallons of jet fuel igniting simultaneously. Additionally, many of those systems were knocked out by the initial impact of the planes.
Could they have been designed better? That's a question for an engineer, and I'm no engineer. However, the towers collapsed exactly as I expected them to. I informed my cadets approximately 10 minutes prior to the first collapse that the building struck lower would be a total loss, and the other one probably would be also (I turned on the television when I heard of the first impact, thinking of the Empire State building, and planning on showing them FDNY in action).
So, this dipstick tried to make his opinion sound more valid because he works at UL, and tried to drag UL into it, apparently hoping it would give ammo and credence to the conspiracy nutters out there on the left, and he got fired.
Good riddance.
See: Chimney Effect.
All the assessments I've seen all boil down to an old fireman maxim: never trust a truss. They've all been very honest about the fact that the very design which allowed the WTC to go up so quickly is exactly what caused it to fall so fast. Trusses don't like fires, the way they expand in heat causes severe problems. Of course the good news with trusses is that when they fail it's almost always in a pancake fashion rather than a tip over which saves lives outside the building.
I'd like someone to ping a materials expert and military expert to discuss the forces placed upon both towers when a 767 hit full throttle, the explosive nature of jet fuel, and the subsequent damage. Maybe aas a sidenote, some vet from the Navy could discuss the damage a itty bitty kamakaze did to an enormous ship during WWII, carrying less fuel and less explosive power than the 767s.
Next, I'd like someone to ping a math whiz to illustrate the immense forces the top floors of the first tower generated exponetially once they collapsed upon the floors below (taking into account the force of weight of at least 10 or more floors above with roofing, equipment, antenae, normal gravity, wind velocity).
Then calculate the explosive forces generated from the first collapse upon the foundation and subfloors of the second Tower.
This guy, and those that subscribe to his idea, are certifiable STUPID and INSANE *SSWIPES.
1. The exterior lattice frame that was used in those buildings was an innovative design at the time, and was not widely used even after the WTC was built. There was a reason for this -- it was an inferior design that was used primarily for financial reasons (to maximize leasable floor space by eliminating interior columns).
2. The World Trade Center was constructed by the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, a semi-private bi-state agency that was specifically exempt from New York City building codes. I have to laugh every time I read one of these articles about the ongoing dispute over the redevelopment plans for Lower Manhattan. They may as well make the entire site a massive 9/11 memorial, since they are already saying that the Port Authority will once again be exempt from NYC building codes -- and nobody is going to pay a nickel to lease office space there under those conditions.
3. As of 9/11, nearly every tall building in the world effectively became obsolete. One of the primary flaws in the WTC design was that the stairways could not evacuate the building in a reasonable period of time -- mainly because they were designed to accommodate two lines of evacuees instead of a single line of evacuees in the same stairways that were used by fire and rescue staff to go up into the building. Before 9/11, the protocol for dealing with a fire in a tall building was that the occupants were supposed to vacate their floors via the emergency exits, and re-enter the building at least two floors below the location of the fire. After 9/11, that is no longer the case; a full-scale evacuation is now expected, and these stairways can't handle that kind of load.
4. There has been extensive documentation about the inadequacy of the fireproofing material in those towers.
5. One of the most interesting aspects of the collapse of the two towers is that they were due to completely different structural failures. One of them collapsed as a result of a failure of the exterior frame, while the other collapsed as a result of a slab joint failure (basically, the floor slab detached from the external frame, resulting in a cascading failure of floors below it, until the external frame couldn't maintain its rigidity).
Seems like a byproduct. It would be tough to design a building that tall that would topple rather than collapse through itself.
Or, you could just recall what happened to the U.S.S. Forest Fire... err I mean Forestal... The video was part of the training in USN Boot Camp.
At sea, like in a high building, there is nowhere to run to escape the flames...
When I watched the special on this on Nova, I could have sworn it was not the burning fuel that caused the problem. From what I understand of it, the fuel would have only lasted for so long. According to what I know, the burning fuel ignited other materials in the building. That allowed the long term fire that ended up weakening everything that was remaining in tact after the incidents.
A lot of that is overblown. Don't let those "experts" kid you -- a building doesn't have to be designed to collapse like that, because it's damn near impossible for a building to topple over sideways no matter how it's designed. In fact, a poorly-designed building is more likely to collapse "properly" than one that is designed specifically to collapse straight down.
The WTC towers were uniquely vulnerable to structural collapse caused by fire. There were no heavy internal supporting members, just concrete held in place by a relatively lightweight space frame. It was very strong, but lacked heavy steel members that could withstand prolonged heating.
The Oklahoma federal building also had a structural weakness. It was held together by gravity. The explosion lifted the second floor and pushed the supporting wall out from under it.
Both of these actions involved attacks on specific structural vulnerabilities, as if someone in the construction industry planned them. Someone like bin Laden.
Ping to post #33 . . . you might be particularly interested in Item #5.
I've heard that they routed all the fire control stuff through a single area. Mods to future buildings, or upgrades would be multiple discrete fire systems.
But of course a fire in a nuke plant had the same problem, so I guess we don't learn very well.
DK
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