Chris Sarns

Editor’s note: To this day most people, including many architects and engineers, are not aware that a third skyscraper, World Trade Center Building 7, mysteriously collapsed along with the World Trade Center Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. The official report on this building’s collapse by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been challenged by many reputable and credentialed technical professionals. The NIST analysis has not undergone the rigors of scientific peer review – the typical pathway for validating significant scientific theories. Chris Sarns’ research appears in Dr. David Ray Griffin’s book titled "The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7." The studies below represent years of work by Chris in unraveling some of the most glaring inconsistencies and outright frauds in the NIST report on World Trade Center 7. He demonstrates that the NIST’s theory of the fire-induced collapse of Building 7 is faulty and misleading.

The destruction of this skyscraper on September 11 was truly unprecedented in the history of high-rise buildings. More than 1,900 architects and engineers at AE911Truth are demanding a new investigation.

Chris has also been deeply involved in the work of AE911Truth, where he provides his expertise on WTC 7.

During the next five months, we will be presenting five articles written by Chris Sarns that address the alleged fire-induced collapse of World Trade Center 7 at 5:20 PM on September 11, 2001.

Quotes from the NIST WTC 7 reports are shown in "brown"

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1. BURNED-OUT FIRE

The timing of the fire on floor 12 exposes NIST's false claim that fire led to the collapse.

 

The images shown below on the left are Sarns' approximations using the photographs as a guide of where and at what times the fire existed on floor 12. On the right is the NIST ANSYS computer model for the same times.

"Note that only window glass breaking times were prescribed in the fire model. The observed fire activity gleaned from the photographs and video were not a model input"  NCSTAR 1-9 Vol.2 p. 378 [pdf p. 40]

NIST will not release the input data because doing so might "jeopardize public safety"

Quotes and photographs from the NIST reports on the collapse of WTC 7

Fire spread:

"On those floors that were mostly subdivided into offices (such as Floors 11 and 12), the fire would have grown within a single office, reaching flashover within several minutes. After about 5 to 15 min, the ceiling tile system would have failed from the heat, and the hot air would have flowed over the office wall. Soon the hot air would fail the ceiling of an adjacent office, and eventually the thermal radiation would ignite the contents in this office. Fire spread would have been similar for offices separated by a corridor, although this would have taken longer, since the hot air would have to travel further and would be cooling along the way."  NCSTAR 1A p. 19 [pdf p. 61]

"The mass of the furnishings per office was not known"  NCSTAR 1-9 Vol.1 p. 60 [pdf p.104]

"the average combustible fuel load on the 11th and 12th floors was estimated as 32 kg/m2"  NCSTAR 1-9 Vol.2 p. 376 [pdf p.38]

All things being equal, the fire would have spread consistently. But the NIST ANSYS computer model (above) inexplicably bypassed the offices to the southwest of column 79, burns around column 79 on the east side and then burned the offices to the southwest of column 79 two hours later.

"Fires on Floors 11 to 13 persisted in any given location for approximately 20 min to 30 min."  NCSTAR 1A p. 47 [pdf p. 89]

Photos showing progression of fire:

"From 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Looking from southeast corner to the south face.

Fire on floor 12;[1] area above covered with smoke

Fire on floors 11-12[1] moved to east face and progressed to the north

[1] fires reported on floor 14, but photographs showed east face fires on floor 12."  Part IIC p. 21

Figure 5-114. Oblique view of the east face of WTC 7, taken at 2:08:28 p.m. +/- 1s	Fire was first seen on the 12th floor at 2:08 p.m. toward the south end of the east face. Further south on this face, the window glass was still intact, indicating that this fire had burned in the building interior as it turned the southeast corner."   NCSTAR 1-9 Vol.1 p. 245 [pdf p. 289]
Figure 5-117. Photograph showing fires on the east face at 2:28:43 p.m. +/- 1s [34, 37 and 40 are column numbers]	"By around 2:30 p.m., the visible flames had diminished, but the fire had spread both south into the southeast corner and north, reaching two-thirds of the way to the northeast corner."  NCSTAR 1A, p. 20 [pdf p. 62]

Fire first appears on the north face of floor 12 about 80 feet from the north-east corner:

"By 3:00 p.m., the fire had spread internally past the northeast corner and onto the north face." NCSTAR 1A p. 20 [pdf p.62]

The fire spread internally through the offices around column 79 and under the beams which allegedly underwent enough thermal expansion to push a girder off its seat and initiate the "global collapse" at 5:20 p.m.

Figure 5-119. Photograph showing the north face of WTC 7 taken from a helicopter around 2:57 p.m. +/- 5 min

Figure 5-121. Cropped photograph of the north face of WTC 7, taken from a helicopter around 3:05 p.m. +/- 5 min

“In less than 15 min, the fire simultaneously spread rapidly to the east to engulf the northeast corner of the floor and more slowly westward about one-third of the way across the north face.”  NCSTAR 1A p. 20 [pdf p. 62]

Figure 5-135. Cropped photograph showing the east edge of the north face and an oblique view of the east face. It was likely taken between 3:20 p.m. and 3:40 p.m.

"The fire continued spreading westward in starts and stops, approaching the northwest corner of the floor around 3:45 p.m."  NCSTAR 1A p. 20 [pdf p. 62]

Figure 5-136. Frame taken from a video shot from near the corner of Greenwich Street and Park Place showing the north face of WTC 7 between 3:49 p.m. and 3:54 p.m.

The photographs reveal that the fire on floor 12 had progressed from the south side of the building to the north side by 3:00 p.m. – and had engulfed the northeast corner by about 3:15 p.m. This means that the fire in the area in question (around column 79 and under the beams and girder in the northeast corner) had burned out at about 3:50, because as noted above, the fires burned for only about 20 to 30 minutes in any given location.

References:

June 2004 Progress Report on the Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster (NIST SP 1000-5)

NCSTAR 1A

Final Report on the Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7

NCSTAR 1-9 Vol.1 and 2

Structural Fire Response and Probable Collapse Sequence of World Trade Center Building 7

Part IIC

NIST Response to the World Trade Center Disaster – Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster – Part IIC – WTC 7 Collapse – April 5, 2005

 

Next month we will examine what Chris Sarns has described as "MAGICAL THERMAL EXPANSION" because NIST used numerous unscientific methods and fraudulent inputs to get the key girder that allegedly initiated the total collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 to fail in its computer simulation. Be sure to check back next month for the continuation of this exceptional analysis.