I'm no expert either. I recall hearing that sometime during or after WWII, a B-25
bomber smashed into the Empire State Building, causing damage to the floors adjacent
to the impact, but leaving
the rest of the building intact. This smallish twin engine military plane was much
smaller than the Boeing 767 or 757's that smashed into the WTC towers.
The fact that both of these planes had just taken off on transcontinental flights,
means that they were heavily laden with fuel. I heard today on one of the news
reports that fuel was flowing to
lower floors, spreading the fire quickly.
Undoubtedly the tremendous heat from these fires severely weakend the steel girders in
the building, causing them to buckle. Once the top 1/3 of the buildings collapsed,
the bottom 2/3's were
unable to withstand the strain.
regards,
frank
Lasse Karlsson wrote:
> Is there anyone among you more technically (construction) egineered that to a layman
>can explain why the buildings actually collapsed. I mean constructionwise.
> Is the sheer weight, the pressure from the collapsed top floors falling down on the
>ones below, enough to cause the total collapse?
> Is there anything in the way they are constructed that would have prevented the
>buildings from falling over (like falling on surrounding areas)?
>
> (However, we can be grateful for the amount of time it actually did withstand before
>collapsing, which probably gave some thousands (?) of people the chance to get out
>alive from there alive.)
>
> Lasse
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is true." -J. Robert
Oppenheimer
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