|
Post by turbonium on Jun 8, 2006 23:41:07 GMT -4
"I remember getting a call from the Fire Department commander, telling me they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, you know, 'We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is just pull it.'" The building hasn't been mentioned, the it cannot refer to a noun that has not been present.
So the Fire Chief called up Silverstein and said "We're not sure if we're going to be able to contain the fire."
With this being the full extent of information given to Silverstein, he automatically deduced that the Chief had to be talking about Building 7.
Is that what you are saying? Or is it more likely that before that statement, the Chief had told him where the fires actually were?
|
|
|
Post by turbonium on Jun 9, 2006 1:59:24 GMT -4
You are assuming that Silverstein's comments are based on his having a perfectly accurate understanding of events at the time, and of his perfectly remembering what he knew and said and exactly when he knew it and said it. First of all, it is perfectly possible that Silverstein misremembered what time of day the conversation occurred. Presumably you are aware that people under major stress are likely to confuse the timing, and even the order, of events.
I have allowed for the possibility of mistaking the time of the conversation - even though all the sources say the time of the call was in the afternoon. That concession still does not explain the comments to mean firefighters or the firefighting effort.
Second, you merely assume that Silverstein knew the building had been evacuated when he made the statement. Why would he necessarily have received a play-by-play on the firefighting effort? He and the FDNY leadership were all quite preoccupied with many different problems at the time. Possibly he said "maybe you'd better pull it" and misunderstood the response. Or perhaps the Fire Department commander, being in a rush to deal with some other issue, merely said "yes, Mr. Silverstein," and hung up, without bothering to explain that the building had already been evacuated. The point is, you just don't know.
Look. We do know that the Fire Chief must have considered the call important. He took his valuable time away from the unprecedented conditions of chaos, confusion, death and destruction, and made a phone call to Silverstein - at least, to inform him that the fires may be uncontrollable. Up to this point we seem to generally agree. But from that point it needs to be looked into what else may have happened, and what was actually meant....
The claim that Silverstein confessed to ordering 7 WTC demolished is clearly an extraordinary claim; the claim that he was referring to evacuating the building is not. Thus, the burden of proof is on those who claim that demolition was implied. Further, the explanation that Silverstein misremembered the time or didn't know the building had already been evacuated is by far the simpler explanation, adequately explains the observed facts, and is thus preferred.
How can we interpret the actual comments to decide which theory is more likely, and which one requires more assumptions than the other to make it feasible? Your possible theory is in black, mine is in red.
1. Silverstein erroneously believes that there are firefighters inside the building battling the fires as they speak. He is not informed by the Chief - that no firefighters are in the building, and that they haven't made any attempt to fight the fires all day..
1. Silverstein would most likely have been told by the Chief that there had been no attempt made to fight the fires all day. If he wasn't informed, it still doesn't matter. Because even if he thought they were inside, the Fire Chief is the person in the best position to decide that.
2. Silverstein suggests to the Chief that maybe the smartest plan is to "pull it". By this, he means "pull the firefighters out of the building". He is suggesting what may be the "smartest thing to do" with the firefighting operations to the Fire Chief.
2. Silverstein means pull the building.
3.(a) The Chief says "Yes, sir", without paying attention to the suggestion, to quickly end the conversation and attend to urgent matters. or (b)The Chief hears Silverstein's suggestion, and also takes it to mean "pull the firefighters out". However, he knows the suggestion isn't relevant or useful, and doesn't consider it very important to correct Silverstein. He just ends the call with a quick "Yes, sir".
3. The Chief takes this suggestion to mean pull the building.
4. Silverstein attaches great significance to the Chief's "Yes, sir". He makes a huge leap in assumptions, and takes it to mean "they made that decision to pull" the (Silverstein-imagined) firefighters out of the building.
4. Silverstein does not need to make any assumptions. The Chief, with Silverstein still on the line, confers with others and informs Silverstein that "they made that decision to pull" the building.
|
|
|
Post by PhantomWolf on Jun 9, 2006 2:11:45 GMT -4
Of course, you haven't covered why the Chief would take time out to tell Silverstein they might not be able to control the fires if no-one had actually been fighting them for the past few hours. If no one was fighting them at that point, why did he bother ringing up to say they were sure they could contain it? You can only contain a fire you are actually fighting.
|
|
|
Post by turbonium on Jun 9, 2006 2:23:55 GMT -4
Of course, you haven't covered why the Chief would take time out to tell Silverstein they might not be able to control the fires if no-one had actually been fighting them for the past few hours. If no one was fighting them at that point, why did he bother ringing up to say they were sure they could contain it? You can only contain a fire you are actually fighting
But we know that they never made an attempt to fight the fires at any time. Or do you claim they did?
When the Chief said they may not be able to control the fires, he is saying no attempt was currently being made to fight or control the fires, or ever had been made. As you said, "You can only contain a fire you are actually fighting". The Chief said they weren't likely to be able to contain it. That makes sense since they were never actually fighting it.
|
|
|
Post by PhantomWolf on Jun 9, 2006 5:41:36 GMT -4
Well then why bother ringing up at all? If you aren't doing anything, and haven't been for hours, then there's not a lot of point in telling Silverstein you aren't doing anything is there?
|
|
|
Post by gezalenko on Jun 9, 2006 10:39:11 GMT -4
I'm reluctant to step into this CT nonsense, but I dispute Turbonium's examples of the word "pull" being used to describe controlled demolition of buildings.
In most of the examples Turbonium cites, I think the word "pull" is not actually used to describe the demolition process itself, but a particular feature of the demolition process.
Quote 1 "Gradually they began to develop techniques to increase the efficiency of explosive charges, such as pre-cutting steel beams and attaching cables to certain columns to "pull" a structure in a given direction"
In this case, we can think of the motion of the collapsing building as having essentially two components - a vertical one driven by gravity, and some kind of horizontal component, driven by the pulling techniques employed - cables, precutting of selected beams, or whatever. The engineers presumably do this because, if they don't, then they only get the vertically downward component, and the building ends up somewhere where they don't want it. So they add a horizontal component, to make the building end up somewhere else, and the "pull" refers to the methods they use to add that horizontal component, not to the entire demolition process.
Quote 2 "To pull the walls in and properly direct the collapse during implosion, 98 steel cables were used." Same thing again - the word "pull" applies only to the job done by the cables to pull the walls inwards, and not to the entire demolition. They didn't pull the building, they pulled the walls.
Quote 3 "Crews said there will be cables rigged to pull the walls back into the center of the building." Same thing again - the pull refers to pulling the walls inwards, not to demolishing the whole building.
If I'm right, and if Silverstein was using the word in the context of controlled demolition (which he almost certainly was not) then IF he was using the word correctly, he must have been referring not simply to controlled demolition, but to a very precisely controlled demolition, to direct the fall of the building in a particular way (as opposed to simply blowing it up and letting it fall wherever, which would presumably have satisfied the motives ascribed by the CTers).
You can argue that all of this is trivial semantics, and you might be right, but that's what much of this debate boils down to - someone used the word "pull" in a possibly ambiguous way, therefore WTC7 was destroyed by controlled demolition.
Turbonium - your argument is nonsense.
|
|
|
Post by phunk on Jun 9, 2006 11:10:10 GMT -4
Yes, in all of his examples 'pull' is used to describe actually pulling the structure with cables.
|
|
|
Post by phunk on Jun 9, 2006 11:24:26 GMT -4
And the Fire Chief only said they weren't sure about being able to contain the fire. - he said nothing about the fires being too large to fight, or that the building was too unstable to risk taking further action. Nothing about it being too unstable eh? 911myths.com/html/wtc7_damage.html are all of these firefighters in on the conspiracy?
|
|
|
Post by twinstead on Jun 9, 2006 11:32:12 GMT -4
You can argue that all of this is trivial semantics, and you might be right, but that's what much of this debate boils down to - someone used the word "pull" in a possibly ambiguous way, therefore WTC7 was destroyed by controlled demolition.
These are indeed the kind of tenuous links and baseless conjecture that a good conspiracy theory requires. If one starts with a predisposed position, any evidence contrary to it can be waived away easily; all one has to do is come up with a scenario that would have to exist to make their theory true, no matter how far-fetched, no matter if it is backed up with facts or not, and viola!
IMO I simply can't believe that people can be accused of mass murder so cavalierly. You'd think such a serious accusation would be backed up by more than conjecture and ambiguous words.
|
|
Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
|
Post by Jason on Jun 9, 2006 12:00:06 GMT -4
So, to this point we have some evidence that people do use the term "pull" when demolishing buildings, but only in the context of using strategically-placed cables to pull down structural members (presumably with construction vehicles). There is still no demonstration that "pull it" means "set off the explosives."
|
|
|
Post by twinstead on Jun 9, 2006 12:09:45 GMT -4
So, to this point we have some evidence that people do use the term "pull" when demolishing buildings, but only in the context of using strategically-placed cables to pull down structural members (presumably with construction vehicles). There is still no demonstration that "pull it" means "set off the explosives." Turbonium has claimed that pull used to mean explosive demolition, back in the olden days.
|
|
Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
|
Post by Jason on Jun 9, 2006 12:26:35 GMT -4
So did he have some evidence to back up his claim "in the olden days?" Let's see it.
|
|
|
Post by twinstead on Jun 9, 2006 13:14:47 GMT -4
So did he have some evidence to back up his claim "in the olden days?" Let's see it. I don't recall seeing any
|
|
|
Post by phunk on Jun 9, 2006 13:53:51 GMT -4
Did they even use explosives for controlled demolition back then?
|
|
|
Post by nomuse on Jun 9, 2006 17:30:11 GMT -4
Well, that's also missing the point that controlled demolition is NOT "demolition by explosives"; it is "demolition with explosives." Big difference. Explosives are used not because they save labor, but because they are capable of applying a closely-timed and precise application of force. They are used in controlled demolitions for the same reasons they are used in, say, the bolts holding stages in multi-stage rockets.
With any technique and any material there are trade-offs. By the joule/kg, explosives are pretty weak stuff. I'd bet you could outdo most explosives in the task of dismembering a building with an equal weight of gas-powered diamond saws, or cutting torches.
A related field is military demolitions, where the objective is to destroy the thing using a minimum amount of time. Trucks full of conventional explosives and a couple of skilled engineers can get to a secured bridge or radio tower and mangle it beyond easy repair a lot faster than a bucketload of ordinary GI's with cutting torches and sledge hammers.
As far as I am aware the two fields do not meet. There is rarely a military bonus in a controlled demolition, and a controlled demolition takes place with time and access the military usually can not afford.
But in the mind of the CT, raised on Hollywood, there is a third art; one of small black boxes with blinking LED's, planted with ease in about twenty minutes by your average goon disguised in painter's coveralls and mirrored sunglasses, and capable of shattering even the largest structure while also creating a lovely gasoline-yellow fireball (and causing all the heros to mysteriously leap up in the air while running away).
For some reason, though, not even Hollywood imagines that their ninja demolitionists can somehow do this trick yet convince every observer or investigator that the result was natural.
|
|