9/11 plus Six Years

Do you live in New York? If not, you probably do not know that, last week, four fire-fighters were killed in a building that had been abandoned as too dangerous after the 9/11/200l events.

Yes, you heard aright. First the Twin Towers fell. Then WTC 7 fell – perhaps because the great Giuliani had put his emergency headquarters, complete with generator and a few thousand gallons of diesel, in it. And now we find that two airliners succeeded in destroying, not three but, four fine modern buildings.

Perhaps Giuliani could interrupt his campaigning to enlighten us ignorant tax-payers. What we saw, or were told other people saw, were two airliners full of jet fuel crashing into Towers One and Two roughly half-way up. So, of course, the sprinklers started, and drained all the water stored on top of the towers. Then, naturally, everything flammable in the top half of the buildings was burned. If so, then the weight imposed on the lower part of the building would have been greatly reduced – by the weight of the water and the weight of half the flammables. Why, we should like to know, did the buildings collapse right down to street level, instead of the lowest third remaining upright? And just how did this peculiar vulnerability infect the other two buildings?

When a privately-owned building is damaged, the insurer sends engineers to look at the damage and explain how it occurred, and why (take my word for it – I was one of ‘em.) But when buildings owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey collapse – with numerous fatalities – no-one, apparently, feels obliged to find an explanation, or even to examine the evidence. Six years later, we still have a yawning crater and, it seems, at least one building that is uninhabitable but – we presume – still paying taxes.