Reply #29: Well, I've heard it both ways [View All]

[localroger]

I've heard this argument, and also that the salvagers found pools of molten steel in the wreckage as an argument that explosives must have been used.

Actually, both no hot steel and molten steel are consistent with the standard story. Given that the structural failure probably began with the clips that secured the perimeter of a floor to the outer columns, the amount of steel heated to softening is likely to be small compared with the mass of the entire building, making finding such evidence a needle in a haystack proposition. And the collapse itself released a tremendous amount of energy, more than capable of not just snapping but squeezing and even melting steel at the bottom of the pileup. The chaos of the collapse would make the collection of forensically useful evidence iffy in the best of situations.