Trade towers and katrina under new investigation

[War-Horse]

 




Engineer Society Accused of Cover-Ups
Mar 25, 2008 (4:48p CDT)
By CAIN BURDEAU  (Associated Press Writer)

NEW ORLEANS -  The professional organization for engineers who build the nation's roads, dams and bridges has been accused by fellow engineers of covering up catastrophic design flaws while investigating national disasters.

After the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and the levee failures caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the federal government paid the American Society of Civil Engineers to investigate what went wrong.

Critics now accuse the group of covering up engineering mistakes, downplaying the need to alter building standards, and using the investigations to protect engineers and government agencies from lawsuits.

Similar accusations arose after both disasters, but the most recent allegations have pressured the organization to convene an independent panel to investigate.

"They want to make sure that they do things the right way and that they learn lessons from the studies they do," said Sherwood Boelhert, a retired Republican congressman from New York who heads the panel. He led the House Science Committee for six years.

The panel is expected to issue a report by the end of April and may recommend that the society stop taking money from government agencies for disaster investigations.

The engineering group says it takes the allegations seriously, but it has declined to comment until completion of the panel's report and an internal ethics review.

In the World Trade Center case, critics contend the engineering society wrongly concluded skyscrapers cannot withstand getting hit by airplanes. In the hurricane investigation, it was accused of suggesting that the power of the storm was as big a problem as the poorly designed levees.

The group has about 140,000 members and is based in Reston, Va. It sets engineering standards and codes and publishes technical books and a glossy magazine. Members testify regularly before Congress and issue an annual report on the state of the nation's public-works projects.

The society got a $1.1 million grant from the Army Corps of Engineers to study the levee failures. Similarly, the Federal Emergency Management Agency paid the group about $257,000 to investigate the World Trade Center collapse.

The engineers were not involved in investigating last year's bridge collapse in Minneapolis.

The society issued a report last year that blamed the levee failures on poor design and the Corps' use of incorrect engineering data.

Raymond Seed, a levee expert at the University of California, Berkeley, was among the first to question the society's involvement. He was on a team funded by the National Science Foundation to study the New Orleans flood.

Seed accused the engineering society and the Army Corps of collusion, writing an Oct. 20 letter alleging that the two organizations worked together "to promulgate misleading studies and statements, to subvert appropriate independent investigations ... to literally attempt to change some of the critical apparent answers regarding lessons to be learned."

Maj. Gen. Don Riley, the corps' director of civil works, disputed Seed's allegations at a December meeting in New Orleans.

"He talks about the supposed cover-up," Riley said. "Well, our people live here in New Orleans ... We don't stand behind our work. We live behind our work."

In 2002, the society's report on the World Trade Center praised the buildings for remaining standing long enough to allow tens thousands of people to flee.

But, the report said, skyscrapers are not typically designed to withstand airplane impacts. Instead of hardening buildings against such impacts, it recommended improving aviation security and fire protection.

Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl, a structural engineer and forensics expert, contends his computer simulations disprove the society's findings that skyscrapers could not be designed to withstand the impact of a jetliner.

Astaneh-Asl, who received money from the National Science Foundation to investigate the collapse, insisted most New York skyscrapers built with traditional designs would survive such an impact and prevent the kind of fires that brought down the twin towers.

He also questioned the makeup of the society's investigation team. On the team were the wife of the trade center's structural engineer and a representative of the buildings' original design team.

"I call this moral corruption," said Astaneh-Asl, who is on the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley.

Gene Corley, a forensics expert and team leader on the society's report, said employing people with ties to the original builders was necessary because they had access to information that was difficult to get any other way.

Corley said the society's study was peer-reviewed and its credibility was upheld by follow-up studies, including one by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

"I hope someone looks into the people making the accusations," Corley said. "That's a sordid tale."

___

On the Web:

The American Society of Civil Engineers: http://www.asce.org

Raymond Seed's letter: http://levees.org/WFMarcusonIII.pdf

Executive summary of the ASCE and FEMA study of the World Trade Center: http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_execsum.pdf

ASCE study of New Orleans' levees: http://www.asce.org/files/pdf/i_33.pdf

[War-Horse]

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[headhuntersix]

I don't think u could expect that the Towers would be built with major plane impacts in mind. The levee's are another issue.

[240 is Back]

I don't think u could expect that the Towers would be built with major plane impacts in mind.

The Emprire State building was hit with a B-52 in 1948 on accident.
When they designed the Towers in 1973/5, they specifically designed it to absorb multiple plane hits, like a mesh net being stabbed with a pencil.  There's a clip of the engineer who built it, talking about plane hits, a year before the attacks.  He said it was strong enough to absorb several hits, and that while there'd be major damage and pieces would fall, the 47 central columns would remain standing.  You could hit it with ten planes and let fires burn for days, and those 47 columns would remain standing.

On 911, the floors fell sequentially at a speed slightly faster than freefall - meaning all oxygen was removed from the situation.  There's only one event which removes floor supports in perfect timing sequentially and removes oxygen from the situation, creating a perfect collapse of 110 stories (87 below point of impact) in 9 seconds.  Yep.  Explosives.

And since Bush himself said "The terrorists placed explosives in the middle of the building, so they could bring down the buildings and trap people above"...

Youtube it.  He said it.

[headhuntersix]

I don't think that they ever thought a massive airliner could or would strike it.....

At 9:49 a.m., the ten-ton, B-25 bomber smashed into the north side of the Empire State Building. The majority of the plane hit the 79th floor, creating a hole in the building eighteen feet wide and twenty feet high. The plane's high-octane fuel exploded, hurtling flames down the side of the building and inside through hallways and stairwells all the way down to the 75th floor.

World War II had caused many to shift to a six-day work week; thus there were many people at work in the Empire State Building that Saturday. The plane crashed into the offices of the War Relief Services of the National Catholic Welfare Conference. Catherine O'Connor described the crash:

The plane exploded within the building. There were five or six seconds - I was tottering on my feet trying to keep my balance - and three-quarters of the office was instantaneously consumed in this sheet of flame. One man was standing inside the flame. I could see him. It was a co-worker, Joe Fountain. His whole body was on fire. I kept calling to him, "Come on, Joe; come on, Joe." He walked out of it.2

[240 is Back]

Good info.  They designed the twin towers to withstand the largest plane of the day - which at the time was a b52 or a b2?  (You'd know which # better than me and I don't feel like researching for the exact model) whichever was the biggest plane of the day in 1973.

Regardless, the fact that both towers collapsed in identical fashion after minimal fire damage and absolutely no core column damage...

Coupled with the fact the entire 911 commission reason for collapse was a "HOLLOW central shaft" - which was later proven false when a whistleblower leaked the blueprints which showed the 47 steel/concrete central columns - a "spine" - as video of the construction showed too.

At that point, the 911 commission decided it was a pancake collapse, and ignored the fact that pancake collapses take about 1 second per floor, even with progressive weight loads, and the pile of debris would have been 40 stories tall (not 5 stories of molten metal and thousands of tons of powdered concrete).

I could go on, but it's pointless.  Any engineer or phycisist who looks at the collapse will have one of two responses:  1) Admit some force other than fire and gravity was at work - like explosives, or 2) Not comment at all.   They no longer repeat the official story - it's been debunked by so many groups that it's not even debated anymore.

[kh300]

[240 is Back]

Bill Maher said some nice things about the 19 terrorists heroes on 9/11, didn't he?  Got him fired from ABC?

He then was a truther, then stopped being one when offered his own cable show, right?
He has truthers in his audience and wants to fight them, right?
Are you sure he's the source you want to use here? 

Anyway, look at the bottom of this 757, kh300.  What do you see?

[kh300]

Bill Maher said some nice things about the 19 terrorists heroes on 9/11, didn't he?  Got him fired from ABC?

He then was a truther, then stopped being one when offered his own cable show, right?
He has truthers in his audience and wants to fight them, right?
Are you sure he's the source you want to use here? 

Anyway, look at the bottom of this 757, kh300.  What do you see?

how does saying nice things about the hijackers make him a truther?

when did he ever believe in a conspericy?

i dont give a shit whats on the bottom of that 757. even if there was a visible missile on the bottom of that it only raises more questions.
first off how do you know that video isnt altered? i could show you 10 videos that clearly shows nothing on the bottom, but you will still argue.
and if they did get a missile on that plane, how the fuck would they do it? o yeah i remember your story. they crashed it in the ocean and switched planes, used a military one.

like maher said. i guess im crazy to think 2 jumbo jets filled with jet fuel that caused a fire to burn for 2 hours were the cause

[240 is Back]

i dont give a shit whats on the bottom of that 757. even if there was a visible missile on the bottom of that it only raises more questions.
first off how do you know that video isnt altered? i could show you 10 videos that clearly shows nothing on the bottom, but you will still argue.
and if they did get a missile on that plane, how the fuck would they do it? o yeah i remember your story. they crashed it in the ocean and switched planes, used a military one.
like maher said. i guess im crazy to think 2 jumbo jets filled with jet fuel that caused a fire to burn for 2 hours were the cause

Okay, I was way off in la-la land before, I'm the first to admit it - throwing around crazy theories.  I apologize for playing the fool. 

The video above is from CNN.  You cannot produce any close-up videos of the second plane hitting that do not show that object on the bottom.  Youtube it yourself and look for clips - you can't find them.  The plane pics with that object was printed on many magazines, including newsweek and Time.  Boeing admits there's an object there, and their literature details there are no attachments for the 757.  Boeing refers all Qs to the 911 commission as to the object.

Because of this CNN video (ABC clip from diff angle shows the same thing - I can show you a 4 split screen video if you want - all show the object there)....

Because of this video, many military folks have come fwd and called for a new investigation.  They don't know what is there - but they clearly see SOMETHING, and since NOTHING can be fitted on a 757 (certainly not by the 5 guys with boxcutters) it opens up a lot of questions, doesn't it?


Ignore my asinine theories of the past.  All I'm saying today is what the miliitary folks have said - something is on that plane which should not be.  You can try to find 10 clips which don't show it, but you won't find them.  Sorry dude.

[kh300]

i respect that you can admit that.

but i dont want to go back and forth for 4 pages. this is all i will say.

if you think there should be another investigation, by all means keep putting on the pressure. your just going to get the same answers.

just look at what goes on in the federal government everyday. nonstop leaks and info comming out. secretes are impossible to keep, and the federal government is a giant clusterfuck that cant even keep cia agents from opening their mouths.

how can you argue why there hasnt been one word, not one piece of evidence that has come out in 7+ years? in an operation that had to use hundreds of people.

[240 is Back]

I've long given up on another investigation.  If it happens, I doubt it'll happen here in the USA.  Maybe another country will make a big deal about it, maybe we'll have ons here in 5-10 years, who knows.  I only mention it now because others bring it up.