About Charles Pegelow: he's an oil rig engineer who Fetzer trotted out on his radio show in August. We didn't hear from him since then, but
he recently appeared on the list of the screwball "National 9/11
Debate" members. I hope he's learned something since the radio show,
since it was clear he didn't even know NIST's conclusions about the
tower collapses. All he had were generalizations, guesses, and
arguments from ignorance.
http://www.muckrakerreport.com/id251.html (Pegelow bio)
Charles N. Pegelow Civil Engineer California Works mainly on oil rigs
ON FETZER'S RADIO SHOW 8/24/06
http://www.911podcasts.com/display.php?vid=108
Fetzer: "As well-positioned to address the issues related to the Twin
Towers as anyone." [bwah!]
P: "Looked like a lot of mushrooming clouds coming up from the bottom.
When you look at it you can see it in there, that this dust is getting
thrown out. That it's not a conventional demolition. As the building
gets about halfway down, you see a bunch of stuff - cloud moving up
and over parabolically, throwing out beams and everything else.
Normal demolition: you get big chunks of concrete. Apparently there
wasn't any concrete. It looked to me like it was blasted into dust.
It looked to me...of course I heard on the AP wire that morning that
there was bombs in there, so I figured, well, 19 Arabs must have snuck
in there and put bombs. That was the only thing I could think of that
would bring the building down so rapidly.
Fetzer mentions that pancake collapse not possible with this type of
structure.
P; Jet fuel burns off. What you're left with is just an office fire.
It has to be over quite a bit of time that you heat steel up and
weaken it. The pancake theory is not even applicable to steel
structures. Seems like NIST is sort of backing away from that theory
now.
Fully welded structure. You may get deflections and settlement, but
you wouldn't get an immediate collapse of a floor unless you took out
all the columns at the same time. Once the thing started initiating,
progressing down, well, you could say anything about it, I guess, once
the velocity started taking it down.
I don't believe fires initiated the collapse, or, like I said, melted
the steel or weakened the steel. If you go to the NIST report, they
say the exterior columns didn't get hotter than 250 degrees, and as
far as the interior columns, not more than 500 or 525 degrees F.
These buildings have got huge safety factors in 'em. When you get into
real tall structures, the design isn't based so much on the live load
of the structure. What it's based on is the environmental criteria.
Designed to withstand hurricane. The wind load dominates. Sitting
there that morning in 15 mph winds, the thing is 9 times stronger than
it needs to be.
You could knock out some columns and stuff like that, but these steel
structures are redundant. This thing wasn't like, right at that stage
where you put one more straw on the camel and you break a camel's
back. This thing had tremendous reserve strength.
To say that an airplane took out some columns, and then there was some
fire, those two things in combination weren't enough to take it down.
It had to be a third source of destruction in there. Which it seems
like the AP wire was right. That's the only thing I can think of.
Fetzer mentions explosions in lower level when planes hit. [MR: caused
by jet fuel in elevator shafts] F. says he thinks these were
explosions meant to dislodge the 47 core columns. Mentions William
Rodriguez. F. says couldn't possibly have come from jet fuel having
come through the elevator shafts. Says no continuous elevator shaft!
Says fuel wouldn't have caused the massive explosions.
P: Mentions "fire stops" in the shafts.
Mentions man walking down from the 92nd floor: why wasn't he burned
alive?
Fetzer canard: people looking out of impact holes. Obviously fires not hot.
P: That's right.
P: I haven't looked at it, but if you have a fireman, and he comes up
to your house and all the windows are breaking out, that's a real
important piece of information for him. That means the fire has
reached somewhere between 4-600 degrees. Now, these things, they
probably had at least 1/2 inch plate glass, and they're good enough
for 8 or 900 degrees. So if there was all this fire raging on 20
floors like some people think, the windows would have exploded
outward. [they did. NIST report details the hundreds of broken windows
over time, most not in areas with survivors.]
Fetzer agrees and says this indicates cool temps.
Fetzer: so official version impossible, preposterous, incompatible
with principles of engineering, correct?
P: Um, yeah.
P: Claims Leslie Robertson said that you could cut all the exterior
columns on one side and a few of the columns going up the other side,
and the structure would withstand a 100 mile an hour wind.
Fetzer: it would have to be a massive source of energy to take down
this well-constructed building. [just shot himself in the foot there]
P: describes conventional demo prep. Here, you had to start weakening
the structure initially, and that appears what might be Jones noticed
what was going on, with the appearance of thermite coming out of the
corner of the building. [ST] So i think that's what happened. Then you
had to have a third thing. I think there had to be a tremendous shock
wave, because of the concrete busting up, each floor had 4" of
concrete. Floors had rebar in 'em. [Wrong] So that is a strong slab,
with rebar. Somehow for all if it to turn into powder, it just doesn't
make sense. There oughta be some chunks.
Caller: mentions Silverstein "asbestos" issue. Got 3.5
billion in insurance money!
Fetzer claims he was awarded twice that amount. Fetzer mentions insurance fraud possiblilty.
Caller mentions Silverstein "pull" quote. Fetzer agrees. Pull=controlled demolition. If explosives were in building 7, why not in one and two?
P: "Exactly."
Caller asks about strength of floors. Doesn't NYC code require that
each floor be able to hold 5x its weight?
P: Not sure.
Caller mentions aluminum burning and that plane had 110 tons of
aluminum. Aluminum ignites at 1180 F [wrong. It melts then.]
Fetzer answers: If the structure had weakened it would have been a
completely different style of collapse. It would not have been
complete, abrupt, and sudden. Towers came down faster than freefall
with air resistance, which would take at least 12!
[BTW Fetzer didn't know there was aluminum cladding over the exterior columns.]
Caller brings up pancake theory. Fetzer doesn't mention that that
isn't NIST's conclusion.
P: Mentions disinformation about this theory. Says all joints were
welded (not true). Mentions Cardington tests. [not applicable] False
statement that NIST tests show that floors should have survived
whatever temps were in towers. "Pancake theory doesn't hold up."
Fetzer mentions pancake collapse would leave stack of floors on on top
of another.
P: That's right. They're all busted up but they don't turn to dust.
Mentions "1949 B-29" Empire State Building.
Fetzer says other engineers know the truth but are too cowardly to speak out.
Pegelow mentions "evidence of thermite" on a corner of a building.
NOT ONCE WERE NIST'S CONCLUSIONS ABOUT THE CAUSE OF THE TOWER COLLAPSES DISCUSSED.
