No One Blaming Architects For 9/11?

Question

It seems like everyone was blaming Bush for 9/11. I saw a documentary on the World Trade Center last night. The people who worked on the buildings made sure they were protective against everything but fuel. They totally forgot about fuel aka fire. So, isn't it part of the workers' faults too? If they would've fixed that problem, the World Trade Center would never have came down.

Answer 1

Jet fuel does not burn hot enough to even weaken the strength of steal unless it is atomized and mixed with oxygen like in an oxyacetylene setup or run through turbine. So the architects and the workers have no blame in the towers coming down.

Answer 2

The Architects and Engineers did design the building to withstand an impact from an aircraft. When designing the building, they used the standard aircraft of the time, and designed the buildings for an incidental impact. What they did not (really could not) predict is a massive jet liner with full fuel tanks being flown into the structures at a high speed. Malicious intent of that sort simply wasn't foreseen when the twin towers were designed.

One aspect they did fall short on is fire protection. They designed the building adequately for the day, but there were two aspects of this they overlooked. First, the fire rise that operated the emergency sprinklers was located in a single general location, which means if this riser were compromised there would be no water for heat suppression. Whether or not having sprinklers would have helped any at all is up for debate since so much aviation fuel was involved.

Second, and probably more serious, was the method of fire proofing the steel structure. Contrary to common belief (and what many conspiracy theorists like to advertise), steel is among the worst materials when it comes to heat resistance and structural strength. Heated steel becomes very elastic, and will fail at relatively low temperatures (those you can find in a standard fire, let along a fuel fed fire). Since steel has elastic properties, heat will reduce its effectiveness even before it fails completely. In the case of the WTC, one floor collapsed and had the floor below not been heated previously, it might have withstood the weight (and the top floors would have likely toppled over the side). Since the structure was heated the additional weight and sudden impact made it as if the steel structure wasn't even there. The design of the building to use as thin profile steel as possible meant the heat from the fire was weakening the perimeter steel several floors above and below the floors that were actually burning.

Adding to that problem was the fire-proofing used for the floor slabs and the central core. Applied fire protection for steel buildings (true at the time the WTC was created, and true now) is a cementious foam that is spray applied to the steel after the structure is erected. Some reports have hinted that the impact of the aircraft into the structure could have simple shaken the fire protection right off of the steel, exposing it to direct heat, which as mentioned previously, will fail quickly and spectacularly in such high-heat conditions.

The problem is that both sprinklers and fire protection are in place to slow a fire down, and allow the occupants to evacuate the building prior to its failure. Neither element (independently or together) will extinguish a large fire, particularly one fed by an atypical fuel source, nor will they protect a structure indefinitely in the face of such a fire.

Knowing what we know now, and accounting for the goals of the design at the time, we can design structures to survive similar impacts. The buildings were constructed to the requirements of the day, and included several elective elements to prevent the foreseeable disasters, just not this one. But even so, it wasn't the fault of the architects and engineers that the building collapsed. That fault lies exclusively with the pilots of the two aircraft.

Answer 3

Planning for something requires that you think of it first - it never occurred to anyone that the buildings would be the target of such an event.

So no, the architects aren't at fault. Nor are the workers. It is the fault of the men who flew the planes and the people who funded, set up and encouraged them to do it.

The building were designed in the early 60s - I assure you the planners tried to cover every base imaginable. The buildings survived the bombing in 1993 - which left a crater 22 ft wide and five stories deep.

Answer 4

Blame will poked from many angles for a long, long time
to come....it doesn't matter now, it can't be brought back.
We must work together and learn from it all so we can
prevent another such thing...just this morning another
victim is added to the list of lost lives because of this and
we must stop bickering so we can do something constructive.

We must open our eyes and realize we are at war with
an enemy that does not value life and dying is an honor
to them.....(as long as they kill infidels in doing so)!

President Bush just happened to be the sitting president
when the World Trade Center was destoyed...(the jihadists
tried destroying it when President Clinton was in office
and learned it would take more than mere car bombs to
do the job....so the airplane idea was born...Bin Laden
is well educated in the building trades and his jihad
followers will willingly myrtar themselves to reach their
objectives....Yes, we are at war with enemy like we have
never had to face before and even your next door neighbor
could be one of their soldiers.....so blame President Bush,
the builders or anyone you see fit to blame....but until
the people of the free world realize what's going on, we
will be killed at the hands and will of a determined enemy!

Answer 5

The Twin Towers (and WTC 7, which wasn't even mentioned in the official report) were brought down by PLANNED IMPLOSION. You can see evidence of it on the videos. Security cameras all over the buildings were disabled (by Marvin Bush's company) for two weeks before the alleged "attacks" as workmen worked around-the-clock "to replace cabling":
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/911security.html

Several requests for PERMITS to DEMOLISH the buildings in the months prior to 9/11 were DENIED due to the amount of asbestos in the buildings. The owner WANTED them to come down, because upgrading them was too expensive:

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/silverstein.html

Answer 6

The Towers had the latest technology in fire control. But this fire control was not designed to extinguish several floors suddenly consumed by burning jet fuel, which burns much hotter than a building fire. The architects did nothing wrong.

Answer 7

The pancake collapse would slow down as it proceeded because of inertia. The NOVA animation is bad science since it violates the laws of physics first described by Newton.

No one is blaming the architects for 9/11 because it is a well-designed building. Jet fuel does not explain the simultaneous failure of 80 floors of supports, nor does it explain the collapse of WTC7. The flawed 9/11 Commission report erroneously reported a pancake collapse. Even if it had pancaked, it would have fallen much slower than free fall speed because of friction and inertia. (According Newton's laws, a pancake collapse of WTC1 and WTC2 would have taken about 47 seconds even if all supports were extremely weak due to jet fuel. This assumes no friction!) Note: There was no jet fuel burning in WTC7. The NOVA report was just bad physics to repeat the flawed theory of a pancake collapse.

It also takes energy to pulverize the concrete and contents of the building. This requires additional energy which would have slowed the collapse as well. All three buildings, however, collapsed at near free-fall speed into their foot print. Also, a pancake collapse is likely to go sideways (path of least resistance).

According to some very reputable physicists and engineers, the most likely explaination for the collapse of the three buildings WTC1, WTC2, and WTC7, was planned demolition.

Professor Steven Jones of BYU published a credible explaination of why a planned demolition caused the collapse of these buildings at near free fall speed.

Answer 8

Why are we blaming anyone? It happened. It may happen again. Planes flying into a building are not exactly considered when building a sky scrapper in a location where there are hundreds of sky scrappers. It was an attack. It worked. All I can say is don't forget. To forget is to be foolish.

Answer 9

One small problem... Passenger airplanes the size of the ones used on 911 did not exist when the WTC was built. It was actually designed to handle the impact of a smaller plane, but no one could imagine that jumbo jets would get as big as they did (and could hold as much fuel).

Answer 10

The engineers designed the building to withstand known and reasonable threats. At the time of building, it's unlikely anyone envisioned a jumbo jet being used as a missile.