A couple of weeks ago I
posted some images and footage of what appeared to be a long
straight gash in the south face of Building 7. It's visible from
the roofline down to about the 20th floor. This footage was discovered
in the 9/11 archive that was released by archive.org. The footage
can be verified here.
A question that remained was why NIST has not shown any photographs
of this gash.
Different theories were proposed to explain how this damage occured
and why NIST hadn't reproduced these images in their report. The
figure below indicates that they were aware of it. Don't forget
that NIST is still withholding thousands of photographs and videos
from the public. The footage of the gash is no secret, it was broadcast
live on September 11th by ABC News. There's no reason to assume
that NIST did not know about the gash.
The only photograph they show of this "roof and upper level debris
damage" is this image:
Now why would NIST do that? Why would they not show the total extend
of the "roof and upper level debris damage"? Surely they would like
to present as much evidence of debris damage as possible. Was it
to hide the fact that this gash was created when the controlled
demolition failed? Most likely not. As can be seen in the video
below, WTC7 was indeed hit by falling debris from the collapse of
the North Tower.
The gash is right between two outer columns (as in the NIST figure)
and might have simply been caused by falling debris that took out
part of the floors between these columns, leading to to a small
and localized 'progressive collapse' such as was observed in the
Ronan
Point apartment building in 1968.
So why did NIST not reproduce any photograph that showed the gash?
According to Fellini’s testimony, there was a four-floor hole
between the third and sixth floors. In the telling of Captain Chris
Boyle, however, the hole was “20 stories tall” (2002). It would
appear that Shyam Sunder, the lead investigator for NIST, settled
on somewhat of a compromise between these two views, telling
Popular Mechanics that, “On about a third of the face to the center
and to the bottom--approximately 10 stories--about 25 percent of
the depth of the building was scooped out” (Popular Mechanics, March
2005).
In other words; had NIST reproduced photographs of the gash, it
would be obvious to anyone that Captain Boyle was referring to this
long, straight (and apparently superficial) gash instead of the
hole. A "compromise" between the testimonies about the damage with
Boyle's description attributed to the gash (and not to the hole),
would leave NIST with a substantially smaller hole. This would make
the 'fire and damage' theory even less credible then it is now.
I'm very curious if NIST will incorporate images of the gash in
their final report, but i'm not counting on it. The testimony of
Captain Boyle is just too convenient for them.
