NEW YORK

Jet fuel fire melted structures – experts

Thu, 13 Sep 2001

Experts have said the collapse of the World Trade Centre

towers resulted from the intense fire that melted structural
support, not the impact of the hijacked jetliners that crashed
into each of the towers.

Engineers and architects said the huge amounts of jet fuel

caused an inferno with temperatures as high as 1 000°C,
melting the supporting steel and eventually causing the 110-
storey towers to implode.

"The fire brought it down ultimately," Henry Petroski, a civil

engineering professor at Duke University, told AFP.

"Buildings like that are built so they can withstand fire, but
not indefinitely. The idea is that the fire will either burn itself
out or cool off before there is any structural damage. In this
case, with all the jet fuel, my guess is that the fire began to
soften the steel."

Deadly impact - how the towers collapsed:

An interesting graphic from the Los Angeles Times showing

why the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed
after the planes hit.

The towers, weighing 290 000 tons each, were built for $1,5
billion in the 1970s, using a controversial innovation for the
time — a tubular construction with most of the structural
support in the exterior "skin".
New York architect John Young said the towers were a
"vainglorious project" with a number of safety shortcomings
that were overlooked because the structures were exempt
from local building codes.

"The building was built far larger than local codes would
have allowed," he told AFP. "Many city agencies protested it
would be difficult to protect people in an emergency. From
day one, it was talked about as a safety hazard."

Because of the controversy about the structures, terrorists

may have been able to obtain architectural plans to study
the weaknesses of the towers.

Young noted that the towers utilised the exterior wall

framing for lateral bracing, making more room for office
space without pillars.

"You can see the effect of that when the buildings collapsed,
with the lattice framework crumbling and the interior
imploding," he said. "The lattice works so long as it remains
intact as a system; if a part of it goes, then the whole
system goes."

But other experts said this system — also used for the Sears
Tower in Chicago and other skyscrapers — should not be
blamed for the collapse.

"This type of structure gave those precious minutes for

people to escape," said Ben Heimsath, a Texas architect who
specialised in building safety.

"If you take this amount of momentum and velocity and

mass and follow it up with a colossal inferno, that is a one-
two punch that is an impossible situation." - AFP