The Bow Ramp

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Gosh, I love the Internet

My previous post had a comment from a self-proclaimed 9/11 Truther who happens to be a blogger in my own hometown. He seems to have been watching The View for his source information as he claims:

WTC 1, 2 and 7 are the ONLY steel structures in history to have collapsed supposedly due to fire.

This guy blogs, but apparantly isn't up to speed on what you can do with search engines (or doesn't want to be bothered with conflicting information.) As an Old Salt, I've got more than a little experience with fighting shipboard fires and know how a fire can weaken steel, so I did a little Googling and came up with this picture in about five minutes. Now, mind you, this does NOT show anything as striking as a building collapsing, but it does illustrate how steel can become seriously weakened by fire, such that it can no longer hold up the tremendous weight of the upper stories as was the case with the WTC fires.



The above picture shows the USS Ophir in Gibralter after a fire, sinking, and subsequent raising. Note how the heat from the fire caused the ship's bridge to slump (click here for larger image.) The Ophir was a Dutch cargo vessel that had been seized by the U.S. Government, commissioned, and placed in service to transport war materiels to France. She caught fire enroute to Marseilles and sank three days later on Armistance Day, November 11, 1918, in Gibralter. She was raised the following year, brought back to the U.S., and decommissioned in 1920.

Tim, if you see this, you might hopefully re-examine your views about the WTC disaster by seeking out the opinions of people such as Structural Engineers rather than "what everybody knows."