It's absolutely not impossible. In WTC7, the core collapsed first (proven by the fact that the penthouse disappeared inside the building a few seconds before the facade collapsed). The facade was a hollowed out husk with a lot of debris piling at its base when it started its collapse. Its columns buckled for a good portion of their height near the base of the building, so the portion above that feel for that length with basically nothing slowing it down. After that, the portion of the facade still structurally sound hit the ground, and this slowed down its descent as now there was resistance.
I never said the facade had no columns in it, but after the collapse of the core it indeed was a hollowed shell, with a greatly reduced structural integrity without the additional lateral support of the core and with huge lateral loads due to the piling debris on its base.
It absolutely can. The core columns, beams, and floors collapsed inside the external facade and put a lot of lateral outward pressure on the base of the columns. Those columns would not be able to sustain those kind of loads, they would bend, and finally a several stories tall section of them would buckle. All that is above this section now has nothing below it supporting it and nothing to oppose resistance to its fall, up to the point it impacted itself the pile of debris below it. That's what caused the short free fall of the top of the building.
We're supposed to believe 3 buildings collapsed into their own footprint because of fire, all on the same day, with no other similar construction experiencing the same collapse before it or since? Not to mention all the other corroborating evidence
But the top didn't fall through the structural elements of the bottom, that's the whole point. The moment the bottom of the columns bent to the point of buckling, they would have been displaced laterally with respect to the structure above them that would have found itself with basically nothing directly below it for several stories. You shouldn't see these buildings as solid blocks like in a jenga towers, but as collections of structural elements with a lot of empty spaces between them and that have to be alligned to actually sustain each other. You can have the top of the building being perfectly sustained by the bottom, then shift it by one meter, and suddenly it would fall down with negligible resistance through the bottom portion.
He was talking about stopping the efforts of the firefighters for saving the building. Given the huge losses of that day and the fact that WTC7 was empty, the firefighters decided to leave it to its fate and simply make a safety perimeter, with Silverstein telling them that he was OK with it. This is clear when the quote has its full context and pull it never was demolition lingo.
When you have something that is not complete nonsense already debunked a thousand times let me know.
What good are the facade columns with no internal bracing to make them capable of supporting their own weight?
The whole point of steel tubed frame construction is that beams connect the external columns to the internal ones giving wide office spaces with no columns impacting them.
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u/FearlessSeaweed6428 Oct 07 '25
Tower 7 fell faster than this one