Thanks for the thread.
More input I would add includes some thoughts on the glass in the dust, etc. Long post discourages readers, I know. Oh, well. Here's a link with more pictures and most of the same info:
http://911conspiracy.wordpress.com/2010/01/24/30/This forum got me interested, as a matter of fact.
- by metamars on Thu Jan 08, 2009 5:21 pm
"I went to the NYC Police Museum today to verify that the article and accompanying text were genuine. They are, indeed. Furthermore, there were a few shards of glass, with the following text, which I copied down:
‘Glass was a rare find at Ground Zero, where these shards were recovered. The collapse and fires pulverized and melted most of the glass from the Twin Towers 43,600 windows.’"
http://the911forum.freeforums.org/wtc-6-molten-concrete-anomaly-t113.html
“You didn't find a shard of glass – anything that looked like it would be used by a person, you just didn't see it. It was just concrete, steel, that was it – and dust.” (FDNY Engine 285 firefighter in “Collateral Damages,” E. Sauret 2003) “I never saw a file cabinet, never saw a desk, a chair, never saw a telephone, never saw any type of office furniture. There is no glass. It just disappeared and has become part of this fluffy white or gray dust.” (Assistant Chief of Department, FDNY, Harry Meyers in Dennis Smith, Report from Ground Zero, Ibid., p. 163
Glass was found mostly by mechanical means, when the Fresh Kills shaker screens separated the debris into different size classes mechanically. “Upon their collapse, the twin towers were literally pulverized. Workers at the Staten Island Landfill reported not finding glass pieces larger than three inches.” (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers website [cached])
To find the glass, one had to look in the dust.
“Small shards of glass containing mostly silica and magnesium were also found.[...]
This cloud comprised a complex mix of pollutants, among them the products of combustion of 91,000 L jet fuel, pulverized building materials, cement dust, asbestos, microscopic shards of glass, silica, heavy metals, and numerous organic compounds....”
- Maoxin Wu, et. al., “Case Report: Lung Disease in World Trade Center Responders
Exposed to Dust and Smoke: Carbon Nanotubes Found in the Lungs
of World Trade Center Patients and Dust Samples,” EHP, Dec. 2009.
The WTC dust was composed of 40 percent glass fiber, according to one of the most comprehensive studies done. (Paul J. Lioy, et. al., “Characterization of the Dust/Smoke Aerosol that Settled East of the World Trade Center (WTC) in Lower Manhattan after the Collapse of the WTC 11 September 2001,” Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 110, Number 7, July 2002.) It is important to know that windows weren't the only form of glass in the place. Not only were there light fixtures, mirrors, TVs and computer monitors, but also there was fiberglass insulation. This widely used insulation was also called slag wool or mineral wool. “These three [dust] samples were composed primarily of construction materials, soot, paint (leaded and unleaded), and glass fibers (mineral wool and fiberglass).” (Lioy, et. al.)
“The Cortlandt Street sample was mainly composed of construction debris [including vermiculite, plaster, synthetic foam, glass fragments, paint particles, glass fibers, lead (Figure 3), calcite grains, and paper fragments], quartz grains, low-temperature combustion material (including charred woody fragments), and glass shards. Chrysotile asbestos fibers were estimated to comprise < 1% of the sample by volume....”
- Lioy, et. al., Ibid.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the “dust deposits formed from the WTC collapse are heterogeneous and are composed largely of particles of glass fibers, gypsum wallboard, concrete, paper, window glass, and other miscellaneous materials commonly used in building construction....” (USGS, “Environmental Studies of the World Trade Center Area, New York City, after September 11, 2001” [emphasis added].)
“The dust also contained a large amount of an
unusual material: glass fibers. Both towers were 110 stories high and had 880 stories of windows in total since there were 110 stories with four walls times two sides of windows. These windows had been crushed by the collapse of the towers. These were different than other materials since the glass windows disintegrated into fibrous dust as well as glass chards [sic].”
- Paul J. Lioy, Dust: The Inside Story of Its Role in the September 11th Aftermath, Rowman & Littlefield, New York, 2010, p. 96.
“[O]ver 50 percent of the mass of the WTC dust was made up of the cement and carboneous materials. (Carbon is the fourth most abundant element found in inorganic and organic forms.) As part of the carboneous materials, there were significant quantities of cellulose (paper). Most of the rest of the mass was made up of the glass fiber materials. Some of the glass fibers were formed from the disintegration of glass windows. Other fibers released during the collapse would have been part of interior wall board and ceiling tiles. Some of the fibers were characterized as slag wool and would become known as a specific and identifiable component of the WTC dust.”
- Paul J. Lioy, Ibid., pp. 96-97.
“The fibrous material was composed of disintegrated material that was present in building interiors or on the exterior. As time went on, we would call a large portion of it slag wool, based on work by the United States Geological Survey. However, there were other types of fibers that became of interest, including glass. The composition of the nonfibrous portion of the dust is simple to understand....”
- Paul J. Lioy, Ibid., p. 101.
...as opposed to the abundant, microscopic, fibrous glass which is hard to understand, right?
Then there was the melted glass.
See also
Mark Basile's video at this point here, where he describes once-molten silicate spheres — with magnetic properties.
[Note much of this is copied and pasted from a longer work in progress ... I'll link to it here when I'm done some day.]
For many people working with the debris, it wasn't the construction materials so much as the personal, human things that were missing. “It was like the surface of another planet. … All there was, was - ah - powdered debris and metal. It was a - a very strange scene.” (Dan Nigro, FDNY Chief of Dept. 2001-2002, in “The Conspiracy Files: 9/11,” BBC, 2007.)
NYPD Deputy Inspector and lead investigator on-site (working with FBI), James Luongo, when asked if there were one particular artifact of interest, replied:
“I think the lack of artifacts stands out to me quite a bit. I think the fact that I haven't seen a door, I haven't seen a phone, I haven't seen a computer. I haven't seen a doorknob. I think that stands out.”
- “Relics from the Rubble” (History, 2002)
Note that there were 42,000 doorknobs used in the construction of the WTC towers. (Karl Koch III with Richard Firstman, Men of Steel: The Story of the Family that Built the World Trade Center, Crown Publishers, New York, 2002, p. 322.) Another specific comment on the missing doorknobs:
“[T]he mayor has acknowledged that specialists have told him that because of the great force of the collapse, many if not most of the bodies at Ground Zero have been disintegrated, or atomized. Certainly, every firefighter who has been at the site knows that there is not a piece of glass or marble to be seen anywhere, not a desk, a sink, or a doorknob. It is the virtually indestructible bunker clothes of the firefighters that have preserved their remains.... Of the 542 confirmed deaths at the World Trade Center, about 100 have been firefighters.”
- Dennis Smith, Report from Ground Zero, Ibid., p. 341. From his entry on November 2.
Mentioned by numerous recovery workers were the missing thousands of computers and computer monitors. Remember in 2001 the screens were cathode ray tube (CRT) boxes, with thick glass and heavy metals, weighing about 20 pounds each. The vented plastic cases were formidable during a move. And yet after the buildings fell, “There wasn't a computer screen, a laptop. There was no office- I mean it was, you know, two 110-story buildings – of office equipment. It's just incomprehensible.” (Tom McHale, PAPD/Ironworker in “Metal of Honor: The Ironworkers of 9/11” by Rachel Maguire, 2006) “You don't find a desk. You don't find a chair. You don't find a telephone, a computer.” (Joe Casaliggi, FDNY Engine 7 in “9/11: The Filmmakers' Commemorative Edition”) “All the furnishings and the fixtures inside the building – none of that existed after the collapse. There were no desks. There were no phones, no computers, no copy machines. No chairs, nothing. It had all been pulverized. [...] It was just pulverized into this dust.” (Captain Jay Jonas, FDNY Ladder 6 in “Inside the Twin Towers,” Discovery Channel, 2006)
by SanderO » Wed Dec 07, 2011 5:26 pm 
