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Republic

Current Issue • April 24 2008 to May 10 2008   •  No 187

9/11

Architects and engineers consider the physics of collapsing buildings

And find the official causes attributed to the World Trade Center collapse wholly inadequate for the sake of science and building technology

By Kevin Potvin

I pointed out to one of the frenzied organizers of the 9-11 Truth meeting in the Alice McKay room at the Vancouver Public Library on Saturday night April 19 that the completely full room looked like an impressive turn out. He replied that the crowd of 350 was only half what the last meeting drew and would have been bigger if not for the limited capacity of the venue.

There are a great many shows, well-produced plays, lectures, screenings and real estate opportunity presentations galore, all of whom would be bowled over by the size of crowd the 9-11 Truth people pull nowadays.

They had gathered this time to hear Richard Gage, an architect from San Francisco and a member of the American Institute of Architecture who, with about 300 other professionally credentialed architects and engineers forming Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth (ae911truth.org), has called for a serious investigation into the causes of collapse of World Trade Center buildings 1, 2 and 7.

There has been a lot of discussion, many books, plenty of videos and endless speculation in the nearly seven years since that fateful day, and certainly enough of it to convince anyone who peers in that there’s good reason to investigate further, and to turn off completely anyone not already inclined to do so. But serious research and focused compilation of evidence, even in the midst of clouds of sometimes furious speculation, has lead to the inescapable conclusion—palatable or not, leading to striking implications or otherwise—that something other than crash impact forces and jet fuel brought those buildings down. This is really the only question Gage is interested in.

His discussion underlined with informed emphasis the insurmountable problems with the official investigative conclusions that point to impact forces and jet fuel. His detailed analysis of original blueprints of the buildings, his examination of the spacing and thicknesses of the support columns, the design of the floors and their bracings, and the weights and distribution of forces in the designs, lead him to conclude impact forces and jet fuel fires could not possibly have caused total building failure. Since we know the buildings did in fact collapse, the only other plausible cause would have to be sabotage. And, indeed, Gage reviewed evidence of explosive devises typically used in controlled building demolitions and points to that cause as the more likely.

There is no question the buildings were destroyed by sabotage. Who might have done it and for what venal reasons were questions beyond Gage’s concern at this presentation.

It’s certainly true that if only to correctly modify building standards in light of so catastrophic a failure to prevent a recurrence, a serious investigation into the building’s collapses is required. The only reason for any thinking person to reject such an investigation is for fear of what might be revealed by it and what implications would arise from it and would need to be dealt with.

One thing is certain: terrorists of one kind or another brought those buildings down, but it wasn’t any who were riding airplanes that day. These terrorists were in the buildings themselves weeks or months prior, planting devices used to crash the buildings. And they remain at large today without even a manhunt on to find them.

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The Republic of East Vancouver masthead

The Republic of East Vancouver supports no party, advocates for no cause, represents no group, serves no master, and considers problems with no preconceived notions. We hope to afflict the comfortable, both materially and intellectually, and comfort the afflicted—of both kinds as well, and we are trying to do both things at the same time.

Publisher, Editor

Kevin Potvin

Advertising

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Support

Dan Crawford, John Daigle, Jack Etkin, Janis Harper, Carl Johnson, Hilary Jones, Chris King, James Mecham, Albrecht Meyers, Peter Miller, James Pope

Contributors in this and recent issues

Bruce Alexander, Dan Adleman, Toby Alford, Kevin Annett, Santo Barbieri, Bob Broughton, Mike Bryan, Stephen Buckley, Matthew Burrows, Maria Calleja, Ron Carton, Chad Christie, Joshua Corber, Dan Crawford, Gail Davidson, Eric Doherty, Joe Donaldson, Lorena Jara Patty Ducharme, Shadia Drury, Taivo Evard, Reed Eurchuk, Farnaz Fassihi, Thomas Feakins, Anthony Fenton, Reza Fiyouyzat, Andrew Gordon Fleming, Ryan Fugger, Sasha Gagic, Matt Goody, Guy Hawkins, Spencer Herbert, John Irwin, Nick Istvaniffy, Junius, William Kay, Mike Keep, Kate Kennedy, Donald Kropp, Chris LaVigne, James Lindfield, Brian Lindgreen, Karen Litzke, Keith MacKenzie, Michael McLaughlin, Sonya McRae, Rafe Mair, Sonia Marino, Jennifer Matsui, Michael Millard, Isaebel Minty, Michael Nenonen, Wendy Nylund, Derrick O’Keefe, Stephen Osborne, Sean Orr, Evan Augustine Pederson III, Stephen Peplow, Kim Peterson, Kevin Potvin, Mary Rawson, Andrea Reimer, Erin Riley, Phil Rockstroh, Becky Scott, Jason Scott, Chris Shaw, Jeff Steudel, Alex Tegart, Scott Turner, Elbio Grosso Trentini, Patrick Vert, Chris Walker, Sean Wilkinson, Brad Zembic

 

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