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http://www.ny1.com/ny/WTC_Coverage/index.html?topicintid=8&s ubtopicintid=203&contentintid=29637
It’s a $7 billion question – whether the destruction of the World Trade Center was one event or two.
Engineers hired by World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein said they know the answer, and it could double his insurance payout at the World Trade Center site.
“It's clearly two events,” said Matthys Levy, a member of the team charged with investigating exactly how the twin towers collapsed. A slide show presentation Wednesday displayed the results of his six-month investigation.
“From an analytical point of view, follow the events to see exactly how these two buildings – these two extremely monumental buildings – could have collapsed and what caused them to collapse and what the sequence of the collapse was," he said.
Silverstein is embroiled in litigation with 20 insurance companies, claiming the destruction of the twin towers should count as two separate attacks. That would entitle him to double the insurance money, $7 billion instead of $3.5 billion.
Findings released by his privately hired engineers that bolstered his claim include:
-The towers were well maintained and well built;
-each collapse resulted in damage that did not spread;
-the collapse was initiated by a failure in the core columns of the structures;
-the floor truss did not contribute to the damage as once thought (the theory that floors pancaked on each other);
-Tower Two fell because it was hit eccentrically, and the building was unable to redistribute the force of the impact;
-the average temperature ranged from 400 degrees in the core area;
-damage to fire-proofing made the building more susceptible to fire;
-and the exterior of the buildings peeled off diagonally.
Silverstein's investigators concluded that the collapse of Tower Two did not cause the collapse of Tower One. They found the collapse was caused by a combination of both the impact and fire.
“The fact is that the initial impact is not was not sufficient to cause the buildings to collapse,” Levy said. “The buildings – each of the buildings – stood very well against the initial impact. They were still standing after the initial impact. And they would still be standing today if it had not been for the fact that a fire started.”
The findings have already been shared with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is conducting a three-year, $16 million probe for the federal government.
Silverstein declined to comment because the matter is tied up in litigation.
