Structural Engineers: Why did WTC Building 7 collapse?

Question

It was too far from the Twin Towers to suffer any structural damage, the fire inside Bldg 7 was small, Bldg 7 housed important offices like the NYC mayor's emergency command center, CIA and IRS offices, and the building collapsed STRAIGHT DOWN like it was a controlled demoltion.
If debris from the Twin Towers were responsible for the collapse of WTC 7, then wouldn't it have collapsed from the BASE of the building instead of from the top falling down like in a controlled demolition?

Answer 1

Excellent question.

I am an engineer by profession and training. Therefore, I seek answers to questions and attempt to offer solutions.

The collapse of the two Twin towers is under evaluation by engineers world wide. At noon time, on 11 September, CNN had the foremost structural engineer view the tapes of the collapse the towers. His conclusion was: The aircraft's had to be loaded with explosives to cause such a dramatic collapse.

The following statement is from the document Loose Change:

*The central premise of Loose Change is that the United States Government was, at the very least, criminally negligent in allowing the attacks of September 11th, 2001 to occur.*

See the following link:

http://www.loosechange911.com/

There was NO engineering reason for Building 7 at the WTC to collapse. The reasons why Billions of dollars in Kuwaiti Gold were secretly moved, or the amount of Insurance money paid to the owner of the towers as a result of the attack will continue to flame the conspiracy theories.

Not only were 1000s of people killed that day, but as a result of that day...our personal freedoms have been compromised.

The United States of America survived world war 2, with our constitution in tact.

I have a great fear that we have lost so much personal freedom as a result of this Administartion and it will take decades to recover from the abuses of Power.

Conclusion: We may never know the real reasons for the collapse of the WTC 7, but I assure you that there are real questions as to the validity of some answers.

Thanks,

Sandy

Answer 2

I have no problem with this question, as it is important that we ask questions and that is how we learn.

However I do have problems with a few of the responses and It amazes me how people feel the need to complicate things exponentially to feel satisfied.
First of all being an "engineer" gives you very little credibility to talk about the principals of the building collapse. For all I know your an aeronitical engineer or a nuclear engineer both of which would be about as useful in this problem as sociologist.
Seconed, I don't understand why people can't understand the fact that that much material falling down causes intense underground shockwaves. And the amount of variables in a collapse of that magnitude are so great that bringing issue to "It was impossible" are rather ridiculous to me.
For anyone who has taken even a simple class in statics or dynamics it is obvious that the amount of forces and force members in these enormous buildings would require nothing less than a sophisticated computer model to recreate exactly what is happening. So for any of you "armchair engineers" to say that the collapse was impossible without the aid of explosives to me is rather ignorant.
If I ever see a detailed fact driven paper on the dynamics of the building collapse I may be inclined to look in a different direction, but until then how could anyone begin to make rash assumptions especially since we see the obvious cause?

Answer 3

It was not "too far" away from buildings 1 & 2 to suffer any damage from the debris. (2 blocks - approx 300 feet) The trade center buildings were over 1360 feet high. Note: When the EPA was analyzing debri to accertain any health risks, they collected some debri a half mile from ground zero!
The power was cut from building 7 when several fires broke out - the back up generators immediately started up -and the 12,000 gallon reservoir of diesel fuel was leaking from several damaged lines and that, too, was ignited.
The building collapsed over 6 hours after the WTC buildings came down!
Logically, if I were to collapse this building intentionally, I would not have waited over 6 hours after blgds 1 & 2 came down - this scenerio just makes it too ripe for conspiacy theorists.
It is interesting that, considering the devistation of two fully fueled commercial jets smashing into the WTC buildings, more questions aren't asked as to why there wasn't even more collateral damage - rather than asking why the buildings collapsed.

Answer 4

Exactly !
This exactly is the structure of a leading question.
And, YES, the question suffers structural damage.

But, I love conspiracies, keep them coming.

Answer 5

Maybe the shockwave of the thud from the other falling buildings, but I hear your complaint.