The Great Thermite Debate...

[Ace Acme]

222. You mean, more ignorance for me to answer

At the beginning of October, the team visited the collapsed and damaged buildings at Ground Zero and over a period of six days collected a significant amount of data on building performance under extreme conditions. It is now in the process of analyzing this data to determine which parts of the buildings and, specifically, which columns were destroyed on initial impact, and how the fire grew and contributed to the collapse of the towers and the surrounding buildings.

Three weeks after the event ASCE visited the site and collected data. Does this not suggest that they were excluded from the site for those three weeks, during which time the crime scene was substantially corrupted? The statement says nothing specific about the site visit, and gives far more weight to the collection of data (apparently photographic evidence).

Team members toured what was left of the 16-acre World Trade Center Plaza, interviewed officials and eyewitnesses, and examined remnants of fallen structures at the Staten Island landfill and at salvage yards. Steel samples were cut and cataloged for further study, and some were taken back to WPI for analysis

In contrast to the ASCE tour, WPI actually collected some samples. They found steel that the NYT characterized as partially "Vaporized" and "perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation"--a mystery that has never been explained, by the way, but which has shown in empirical studies by Jonathan Cole to be consistent with a sulfidation attack by sulfur-enhanced thermite. Perhaps if ASCE had been permitted better site access, more samples that might have illuminated the mysteries would have been taken, but they were not. As a result, NIST does not have steel samples to support its claim that the fires weakened the towers' structure.

Here is some more information on these issues:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x250744

From a House Science Committee Hearing March 6, 2002

http://web.archive.org/web/20021128021952/http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/science/hsy77747.000/hsy77747_0.htm

In the month that lapsed between the terrorist attacks and the deployment of the [ASCE] BPAT team, a significant amount of steel debris—including most of the steel from the upper floors—was removed from the rubble pile, cut into smaller sections, and either melted at the recycling plant or shipped out of the U.S. Some of the critical pieces of steel—including the suspension trusses from the top of the towers and the internal support columns—were gone before the first BPAT team member ever reached the site.

Lack of authority of investigators to impound pieces of steel for examination before they were recycled led to the loss of important pieces of evidence that were destroyed early during the search and rescue effort. In addition, a delay in the deployment of FEMA's BPAT team may have compounded the lack of access to valuable data and artifacts.

STATEMENT OF DR. ABOLHASSAN ASTANEH-ASL:

The impediments to our studies were not having access to Ground Zero and surrounding damaged buildings, not having enough time to inspect the World Trade Center steel before it was recycled, not having the drawings, videotapes, photographs, and other data on the building to conduct our analysis of the collapse.

Rep. Crowley:

I do believe that conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day with this. They are going to make the Warren Commission look like a walk in the park. . . . There is so much that has been lost in these last six months that we can never go back and retrieve. And that is not only unfortunate, it is borderline criminal.