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ENDNOTES [1] Both lectures are also available on DVDs edited by Ken Jenkins (kenjenkins@aol.com). See also Griffin, 2005c. [2] Bush’s more complete statement was: “We must speak the truth about terror. Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of 11 September---malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists themselves, away from the guilty.” Excellent advice. [3] This report was carried out by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) on behalf of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The public was exposed to this theory early on, with CNN saying shortly after 9/11: “The collapse, when it came, was caused by fire. . . . The fire weakened that portion of the structure which remained after the impact. . . to the point where it could no longer sustain the load” (CNN, September 24, 2001). [4] NIST describes the collapses of the towers as instances of “progressive collapse,” which happens when "a building or portion of a building collapses due to disproportionate spread of an initial local failure" (NIST Report, p. 200). NIST thereby falsely implies that the total collapses of the three WTC buildings were specific instances of a general category with other instances. NIST even claims that the collapses were “inevitable.” [5] The chief structural engineer, Leslie Robertson, said that the Twin Towers were designed to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707, at that time (1966) the largest airliner. See “The Fall of the World Trade Center,” BBC 2, March 7, 2002 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2001/worldtradecentertrans.shtml ). For a comparison of the 707 and the 767, see “Boeing 707-767 Comparison,” What Really Happened (http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/boeing_707_767.html). Also relevant is the fact that in 1945, a B-25 bomber struck the Empire State Building at the 79th floor, creating a hole 20 feet high. But there was never the slightest indication that this accident would cause the building to collapse (see Glover, 2002). [6] The NIST Report (2005, pp. xliii and 171) says: “the towers withstood the impacts and would have remained standing were it not for the dislodged insulation (fireproofing) and the subsequent multifloor fires.” [7] Supported by these authorities, the show went on to claim that “as fires raged in the towers, driven by aviation fuel, the steel cores in each building would have eventually reached 800°C [1472°F]---hot enough to start buckling and collapsing.” [8]In Griffin, 2004, pp. 12-13, I cite Professor Thomas Eagar’s acknowledgment of this fact. [9] Given the fact that the claim that the fires in the towers melted its steel is about as absurd, from a scientific point of view, as a claim could be, it is amazing to see that some scientific journals seemed eager to rush into print with this claim. On the day after 9/11, for example, New Scientist published an article that said: “Each tower [after it was struck] remained upright for nearly an hour. Eventually raging fires melted the supporting steel struts” (Samuel and Carrington, 2001). The article’s title, “Design Choice for Towers Saved Lives”, reflects the equally absurd claim---attributed to “John Hooper, principal engineer in the company that provided engineering advice when the World Trade Center was designed”---that “[m]ost buildings would have come down immediately.” [10] Stating this obvious point could, however, be costly to employees of companies with close ties to the government. On November 11, 2004, Kevin Ryan, the Site Manager of the Environmental Health Laboratories, which is a division of Underwriters Laboratories, wrote an e-mail letter to Dr. Frank Gayle, Deputy Chief of the Metallurgy Division, Material Science and Engineering Laboratory, at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In this letter, Ryan stated: “We know that the steel components were certified to ASTM E119. The time temperature curves for this standard require the samples to be exposed to temperatures around 2000°F for several hours. And as we all agree, the steel applied met those specifications. Additionally, I think we can all agree that even un-fireproofed steel will not melt until reaching red-hot temperatures of nearly 3000°F. Why Dr. Brown would imply that 2000°F would melt the high-grade steel used in those buildings makes no sense at all.” After Ryan allowed his letter to become public, he was fired. His letter is available at http://www.septembereleventh.org/newsarchive/2004-11-11-ryan.php . [11] One well-known attempt to defend the official account has tried to use the absurdity of the steel-melting claim against those who reject the official account. In its March issue of 2005, Popular Mechanics magazine published a piece entitled “9/11: Debunking the Myths” (http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html?page=1&c=y). This article sets out to debunk what it alleges to be “16 of the most prevalent claims made by conspiracy theorists.” One of these “poisonous claims,” according to Popular Mechanics, results from the fact that that these “conspiracy theorists” have created a straw-man argument---pretending that the official theory claims that the buildings came down because their steel melted---which the conspiracy theorists could then knock down. Popular Mechanics “refutes” this straw-man argument by instructing us that “[j]et fuel burns at 800° to 1500°F, not hot enough to melt steel (2750°F). However, experts agree that for the towers to collapse, their steel frames didn't need to melt, they just had to lose some of their structural strength.” As we have seen, however, the idea that the towers collapsed because their steel melted was put into the public consciousness by some early defenders of the official theory. For critics of this theory to show the absurdity of this claim is not, therefore, to attack a straw man. The idea that the official theory is based on this absurd claim is, in any case, not one of “the most prevalent claims” of those who reject the official theory. [12] Even Shyam Sunder, the lead investigator for the NIST study, said: “The jet fuel probably burned out in less than 10 minutes” (Field, 2004). The NIST Report itself says (p. 179): “The initial jet fuel fires themselves lasted at most a few minutes.” [13] The NIST Report (2005, p. 68), trying to argue that steel is very vulnerable unless it is protected by insulation, says: “Bare structural steel components can heat quickly when exposed to a fire of even moderate intensity. Therefore, some sort of thermal protection, or insulation, is necessary”. As Hoffman (2005) points out, however: “These statements are meaningless, because they ignore the effect of steel’s thermal conductivity, which draws away heat, and the considerable thermal mass of the 90,000 tons of steel in each Tower.” Also, I can only wonder if the authors of the NIST Report reflected on the implications of their theory for the iron or steel grating in their fireplaces. Do they spray on new fireproofing after enjoying a blazing hot fire for a few hours? [14]Quoted in “WTC 2: There Was No Inferno,” What Really Happened (http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/wtc2_fire.html). [15] Quoted in “Tape Sheds Light on WTC Rescuers,” CNN, August 4, 2002 (http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/08/04/wtc.firefighters/ ). The voices of the firefighters reportedly “showed no panic, no sense that events were racing beyond their control.” (Dwyer and Fessenden, 2002) [16] As Eric Hufschmid (2002, p. 33) says: “A fire will not affect steel unless the steel is exposed to it for a long . . . period of time”. [17] CNN, September 24, 2001. [18] Kevin Ryan, in his letter to Frank Gayle (see note 10, above), wrote in criticism of NIST’s preliminary report: “This story just does not add up. If steel from those buildings did soften or melt, I’m sure we can all agree that this was certainly not due to jet fuel fires of any kind, let alone the briefly burning fires in those towers. . . . Please do what you can to quickly eliminate the confusion regarding the ability of jet fuel fires to soften or melt structural steel.” [19] See, for example, Eric Hufschmid’s “Painful Deceptions” (available at www.EricHufschmid.Net); Jim Hoffman’s website (http://911research.wtc7.net/index.html); and Jeff King’s website (http://home.comcast.net/~jeffrey.king2/wsb/html/view.cgi-home.html-.html ), especially “The World Trade Center Collapse: How Strong is the Evidence for a Controlled Demolition?” [20] Incredibly, after explaining how precisely explosives must be set to ensure that a building comes straight down, Loizeaux said that upon seeing the fires in the Twin Towers, he knew that the towers were “going to pancake down, almost vertically. It was the only way they could fail. It was inevitable.” Given the fact that fire had never before caused steel-frame buildings to collapse, let alone in a way that perfectly mimicked controlled demolition, Loizeaux’s statement is a cause for wonder. His company, incidentally, was hired to remove the steel from the WTC site after 9/11. [21] The fire theory is rendered even more unlikely if the first two characteristics are taken together. For fire to have induced a collapse that began suddenly and was entirely symmetrical, so that it went straight down, the fires would have needed to cause all the crucial parts of the building to fail simultaneously, even though the fires were not spread evenly throughout the buildings. As Jim Hoffman has written: “All 287 columns would have to have weakened to the point of collapse at the same instant” (“The Twin Towers Demolition,” 9-11 Research.wtc7.net, n.d., http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/towers/slides.html ). [22] That statement is probably a slight exaggeration, as the videos, according to most students, seem to suggest that the collapses took somewhere between 11 and 16 seconds. But this would still be close to free-fall speed through the air. [23] As physicist Steven Jones puts it, “the Towers fall very rapidly to the ground, with the upper part falling nearly as rapidly as ejected debris which provide free-fall references . . . . Where is the delay that must be expected due to conservation of momentum---one of the foundational Laws of Physics? That is, as upper-falling floors strike lower floors---and intact steel support columns---the fall must be significantly impeded by the impacted mass. . . . [B]ut this is not the case. . . . How do the upper floors fall so quickly, then, and still conserve momentum in the collapsing buildings? The contradiction is ignored by FEMA, NIST and 9/11 Commission reports where conservation of momentum and the fall times were not analyzed” (Jones, 2006; until then available at http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html). [24] Each box column, besides being at least 36 by 16 inches, had walls that were at least 4 inches thick at the base, then tapered off in the upper floors, which had less weight to support. Pictures of columns can be seen on page 23 of Hufschmid, 2002. The reason for the qualification “at least” in these statements is that Jim Hoffman has recently concluded that some of them were even bigger. With reference to his article “The Core Structures: The Structural System of the Twin Towers,” 9-11 Research.wtc7.net, n.d. [http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/arch/core.html], he has written (e-mail letter of October 26, 2005): “Previously I've been saying that the core columns had outside dimensions of 36" X 16", but I now think that at least 1/3 of them had dimensions of 54" X 22", based on early articles in the Engineering News Record and photographs I took of close-up construction photos on display at the Skyscraper Museum in Manhattan. . . . Also, according to the illustration in the Engineering News Record, the thickness of the steel at the bases was 5", not 4".” [25] And, as Hoffman (2005) says, NIST’s claim about these tremendously hot fires in the core is especially absurd given the fact that the core “had very little fuel; was far from any source of fresh air; had huge steel columns to wick away the heat; [and] does not show evidence of fires in any of the photographs or videos.” All the evidence, in other words, suggests that none of the core columns would have (from the fire) reached the highest temperatures reached by some of the perimeter columns. [26] NIST rests its theory largely on the idea that collapse began with the failure of the trusses. Being much smaller and also less interconnected, trusses would have been much easier to heat up, so it is not surprising that the NIST Report focuses on them. To try to make its theory work, however, NIST claims that the trusses became hotter than their own evidence supports. That is, although NIST found no evidence that any of the steel had gotten hotter than 1112°F (600°C), it claims that some of the steel trusses were heated up to 1,292°F (700°C) (2005, pp. 96, 176-77). A supposedly scientific argument cannot arbitrarily add 180°F just because it happens to need it. In any case, besides the fact that this figure is entirely unsupported by any evidence, NIST’s theory finally depends on the claim that the core columns failed as “a result of both splice connection failures and fracture of the columns themselves,” because they were “weakened significantly by . . . thermal effects” (2005, pp. 88, 180). But there is no explanation of how these massive columns would have been caused to “fracture,” even if the temperatures had gotten to those heights. As a study issued in the UK put it: “Thermal expansion and the response of the whole frame to this effect has not been described [by NIST] as yet” (Lane and Lamont, 2005). [27] The RDX quotation is in Tom Held, 'Hoan Bridge Blast Set Back to Friday,' www.jsonline.com (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), Updated Dec. 19, 2000 (http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/dec00/hoan20121900a.asp ). The DREXS quotation is in Hufschmid’s video, “Painful Deceptions” (www.EricHufschmid.Net). [28] In that statement, Hoffman said that most of the sections seemed to be no more than 30-feet long. He later revised this, saying that, judging from an aerial image taken 12 days after the attacks, most of the pieces seemed to be between 24 and 48 feet long, with only a few over 50 feet. He also noted that “the lengths of the pieces bears little resemblance to the lengths of the steel parts known to have gone into the construction,” which means that one could not reasonably infer that the pieces simply broke at their joints (e-mail letter, September 27, 2005). [29] The available evidence, says Hoffman (2003), suggests that the dust particles were very small indeed---on the order of 10 microns. [30] Hoffman (“The Twin Towers Demolition”) says that the clouds expanded to five times the diameter of the towers in the first ten seconds. The Demolition of the Kingdome can be viewed at the website of Controlled Demolition, Inc. (http://www.controlled-demolition.com/default.asp?reqLocId=7&reqItemId=20030317140323). The demolition of the Reading Grain Facility can be seen at ImplosionWorld.com (http://implosionworld.com/reading.html). [31]Jim Hoffman, “The Twin Towers Demolition.” [32]For visual evidence of this and the preceding characteristics (except sliced steel), see Hufschmid’s Painful Questions; Hufschmid’s video “Painful Deceptions” (available at www.EricHufschmid.Net); Jim Hoffman’s website (http://911research.wtc7.net/index.html); and Jeff King’s website (http://home.comcast.net/~jeffrey.king2/wsb/html/view.cgi-home.html-.html), especially “The World Trade Center Collapse: How Strong is the Evidence for a Controlled Demolition?” [33] Bollyn says (e-mail letter of October 27, 2005) that these statements were made to him personally during telephone interviews with Tully and Loizeaux, probably in the summer of 2002. Bollyn added that although he is not positive about the date of the telephone interviews, he is always “very precise about quotes” (http://www.americanfreepress.net/09_03_02/NEW_SEISMIC_/new_seismic_.html). [34]Professor Allison Geyh (2001) of Johns Hopkins, who was part of a team of public health investigators who visited the site shortly after 9/11, wrote: "In some pockets now being uncovered they are finding molten steel”. Dr. Keith Eaton, who somewhat later toured the site with an engineer, said that he was shown slides of “molten metal, which was still red hot weeks after the event” (Structural Engineer, 2002, p. 6). Herb Trimpe (2002), an Episcopalian deacon who served as a chaplain at Ground Zero, said: "[I]t was actually warmer on site. The fires burned, up to 2,000 degrees, underground for quite a while. . . . I talked to many contractors and they said . . . beams had just totally had been melted because of the heat." [35] This article in Popular Mechanics is, to be blunt, spectacularly bad. Besides the problems pointed out here and in note 11, above, and note 39, below, the article makes this amazing claim: “In the decade before 9/11, NORAD intercepted only one civilian plane over North America: golfer Payne Stewart's Learjet, in October 1999.” In reality, as genuine 9/11 researchers know, the FAA reported in a news release on Aug. 9, 2002, that it had scrambled fighters 67 times between September 2000 and June 2001, and the Calgary Herald (Oct. 13, 2001) reported that NORAD scrambled fighters 129 times in 2000. By extrapolation, we can infer that NORAD had scrambled fighters over 1000 times in the decade prior to 9/11. The claim by Popular Mechanics could be true only if in all of these cases, except for the Payne Stewart incident, the fighters were called back to base before they actually intercepted the aircraft in question. This is a most unlikely possibility, especially in light of the fact that Major Mike Snyder, a NORAD spokesperson, reportedly told the Boston Globe a few days after 9/11 that “[NORAD’S] fighters routinely intercept aircraft” (Johnson, 2001). As to why Popular Mechanics would have published such a bad article, one clue is perhaps provided by the fact that the article’s “senior researcher” was 25-year old Benjamin Chertoff, cousin of Michael Chertoff, the new head of the Department of Homeland Security (see Bollyn, 2005a). Another relevant fact is that this article was published shortly after a coup at this Hearst-owned magazine, in which the editor-in-chief was replaced (see Bollyn, 2005b). Young Chertoff’s debunking article has itself been effectively debunked by many genuine 9/11 researchers, such as Jim Hoffman, “Popular Mechanics' Assault on 9/11 Truth,” Global Outlook 10 (Spring-Summer 2005), 21-42 (which was based on Hoffman, “Popular Mechanics’ Deceptive Smear Against 9/11 Truth,” 911Review.com, February 15, 2005 [http://911review.com/pm/markup/index.html]), and Peter Meyer, “Reply to Popular Mechanics re 9/11,” http://www.serendipity.li/wot/pop_mech/reply_to_popular_mechanics.htm. To be sure, these articles by Hoffman and Meyer, while agreeing on many points, take different approaches in response to some of the issues raised. But both articles demonstrate that Popular Mechanics owes its readers an apology for publishing such a massively flawed article on such an important subject. [36] NBC’s Pat Dawson reported from the WTC on the morning of 9/11 that he had been told by Albert Turi, the Fire Department’s Deputy Assistant Chief of Safety, that “another explosion . . . took place . . . an hour after the first crash . . . in one of the towers here. So obviously . . . he thinks that there were actually devices that were planted in the building” (Watson and Perez, 2004). A Wall Street Journal reporter said: “I heard this metallic roar, looked up and saw what I thought was just a peculiar site of individual floors, one after the other exploding outward. I thought to myself, “My God, they’re going to bring the building down.” And they, whoever they are, HAD SET CHARGES . . . . I saw the explosions” (Shepard and Trost, 2002). BBC reporter Steve Evans said: “I was at the base of the second tower . . . that was hit. . . . There was an explosion. . . . [T]he base of the building shook. . . . [T]hen when we were outside, the second explosion happened and then there was a series of explosions” (BBC, Sept. 11, 2001; quoted in Bollyn, 2002). [37] In June of 2002, NBC television played a segment from tapes recorded on 9/11 that contained the following exchange involving firefighters in the south tower: Official: Battalion 3 to dispatch, we've just had another explosion. Official: Battalion 3 to dispatch, we've had additional explosion. Dispatcher: Received battalion command. Additional explosion (“911 Tapes Tell Horror Of 9/11,” Part 2, "Tapes Released For First Time", NBC, June 17, 2002 [www.wnbc.com/news/1315651/detail.html ]). Firefighter Louie Cacchioli reported that upon entering the north tower’s lobby, he saw elevator doors completely blown out and people being hit with debris. “I remember thinking . . . how could this be happening so quickly if a plane hit way above?” When he reached the 24th floor, he encountered heavy dust and smoke, which he found puzzling in light of the fact that the plane had struck the building over 50 stories higher. Shortly thereafter, he and another fireman “heard this huge explosion that sounded like a bomb. It was such a loud noise, it knocked off the lights and stalled the elevator.” After they pried themselves out of the elevator, he reported, “another huge explosion like the first one hits. This one hits about two minutes later . . . [and] I’m thinking, ‘Oh. My God, these bastards put bombs in here like they did in 1993!’ . . . Then as soon as we get in the stairwell, I hear another huge explosion like the other two. Then I heard bang, bang, bang---huge bangs” (Szymanski, 2005a). A briefer account of Cacchioli’s testimony was made available in the Sept. 24, 2001, issue of People magazine, some of which is quoted in Griffin, 2004, Ch. 1, note 74. [38] Terri Tobin, a lieutenant with the NYPD public information office, said that during or just after the collapse of the south tower, "all I heard were extremely loud explosions. I thought we were being bombed” (Fink and Mathias, 2002, p. 82). A story in the Guardian said: “In New York, police and fire officials were carrying out the first wave of evacuations when the first of the World Trade Centre towers collapsed. Some eyewitnesses reported hearing another explosion just before the structure crumbled. Police said that it looked almost like a ‘planned implosion’” (Borger, Campbell, Porter, and Millar, 2001). [39] Teresa Veliz, who worked for a software development company, was on the 47th floor of the north tower when suddenly “the whole building shook. . . . [Shortly thereafter] the building shook again, this time even more violently." Veliz then made it downstairs and outside. During this period, she says: “There were explosions going off everywhere. I was convinced that there were bombs planted all over the place and someone was sitting at a control panel pushing detonator buttons” (Murphy, 2002). William Rodriguez worked as a janitor in the north tower. While he was checking in for work in the office on sub-level 1 at 9:00 AM, he reports, he and the other 14 people in the office heard and felt a massive explosion below them. "When I heard the sound of the explosion,” he says, “the floor beneath my feet vibrated, the walls started cracking and everything started shaking. . . . Seconds [later], I hear another explosion from way above. . . . Although I was unaware at the time, this was the airplane hitting the tower.” Then co-worker Felipe David, who had been in front of a nearby freight elevator, came into the office with severe burns on his face and arms yelling "explosion! explosion! explosion!" According to Rodriguez: “He was burned terribly. The skin was hanging off his hands and arms. His injuries couldn’t have come from the airplane above, but only from a massive explosion below” (Szymanski, 2005b). Stationary engineer Mike Pecoraro, who was working in the north tower’s sixth sub-basement, stated that after his co-worker reported seeing lights flicker, they called upstairs to find out what happened. They were told that there had been a loud explosion and the whole building seemed to shake. Pecoraro and Chino then went up to the C level, where there was a small machine shop, but it was gone. "There was nothing there but rubble,” said Pecoraro. "We're talking about a 50 ton hydraulic press--gone!” They then went to the parking garage, but found that it, too, was gone. "There were no walls.” Then on the B Level, they found that a steel-and-concrete fire door, which weighed about 300 pounds, was wrinkled up "like a piece of aluminum foil." Finally, when they went up to the ground floor: “The whole lobby was soot and black, elevator doors were missing. The marble was missing off some of the walls” (Chief Engineer, 2002). One of the “prevalent claims” of 9/11 skeptics that Popular Mechanics tries to debunk (see note 11, above) is the claim that explosives were detonated in the lower levels of the tower. The magazine, however, conveniently ignores the testimonies of Veliz, Rodriguez, and Pecoraro. [40] This expert is Van Romero, vice president for research at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. Romero had previously been the director of this institute’s Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center, which studies the effects of explosions on buildings. [41] Romero, it is true, changed his public stance 10 days later, as announced in Fleck, 2001. But this is not a convincing retraction. “Subsequent conversations with structural engineers and more detailed looks at the tape,” according to this article, led Romero to conclude that “the intense heat of the jet fuel fires weakened the skyscrapers' steel structural beams to the point that they gave way under the weight of the floors above.” But there is no indication as to what any structural engineer said, or what Romero saw in his “more detailed looks at the tape,” that led him to change his earlier view that the collapses were “too methodical” to have been produced by anything except explosives. There is no suggestion as to how weakened beams would have led to a total collapse that began suddenly and occurred at virtually free-fall speed. Romero has subsequently claimed that he did not change his stance. Rather, he claimed that he had been misquoted in the first story. “I was misquoted in saying that I thought it was explosives that brought down the building. I only said that that's what it looked like” (Popular Mechanics, 2005). But if that is the truth, it is strange that the second story, written by Fleck, did not say this but instead said that Romero had changed his mind. Romero clearly did change his mind---or, to be more precise, his public stance. A clue to the reason for this change may be provided by another statement in the original article, which said that when the Pentagon was struck, “[Romero] and Denny Peterson, vice president for administration and finance [at New Mexico Tech], were en route to an office building near the Pentagon to discuss defense-funded research programs at Tech” (Uyttebrouck, 2001). Indeed, as pointed out in a later story on the New Mexico Tech website (“Tech Receives $15 M for Anti-Terrorism Program” [http://infohost.nmt.edu/mainpage/news/2002/25sept03.html ]), the December 2003 issue of Influence magazine named Romero one of “six lobbyists who made an impact in 2003,” adding that “[a] major chunk of [Romero’s] job involves lobbying for federal government funding, and if the 2003 fiscal year was any indication, Romero was a superstar,” having obtained about $56 million for New Mexico Tech in that year alone. In light of the fact that Romero gave no scientific reasons for his change of stance, it does not seem unwarranted to infer that the real reason was his realization, perhaps forced upon him by government officials, that unless he publicly retracted his initial statements, his effectiveness in lobbying the federal government for funds would be greatly reduced. Romero, to be sure, denies this, saying: “Conspiracy theorists came out saying that the government got to me. That is the farthest thing from the truth” (Popular Mechanics, 2005). But that, of course, is what we would expect Romero to say in either case. He could have avoided the charge only by giving a persuasive account of how the buildings could have come down, in the manner they did, without explosives. [42] As Dwyer explained, the oral histories “were originally gathered on the order of Thomas Von Essen, who was the city fire commissioner on Sept. 11, who said he wanted to preserve those accounts before they became reshaped by a collective memory.” [43] The 9/11 oral histories are available at a New York Times website (http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/ met_WTC_histories_full_01.html). I am heavily indebted to Matthew Everett, who located and passed on to me virtually all the statements I have quoted from these oral histories. [44] Like many others, Dixon indicated that he later came to accept the official interpretation, adding: “Then I guess in some sense of time we looked at it and realized, no, actually it just collapsed. That's what blew out the windows, not that there was an explosion there but that windows blew out.” I have here, however, focused on what the witnesses said they first experienced and thought, as distinct from any interpretation they may have later accepted. [45] Some of the testimonies also mentioned the creation of a dust cloud after the explosions. One firefighter said: “You heard like loud booms . . . and then we got covered with rubble and dust” (NYT, Viola, p. 3). Another said: “That's when hell came down. It was like a huge, enormous explosion. . . . The wind rushed. . . , all the dust. . . and everything went dark” (NYT, Rivera, p. 7). Lieutenant William Wall said: “[W]e heard an explosion. We looked up and the building was coming down . . . . We ran a little bit and then we were overtaken by the cloud” (NYT, Wall, p. 9). Paramedic Louis Cook, having said that there was “an incredible amount of dust and smoke,” added that there was, “without exaggerating, a foot and a half of dust on my car” (NYT, Cook, pp. 8, 35).