Conspiracy Theorists ALWAYS claim fires in 7 were "small" or "limited to a few floors", because they copied it off some conspiracy web site without doing any fact-checking of their own. The rest of us know better because there are so many much better resources for information out there.
The radio recordings of the firefighters that morning for example are full of examples of men who were standing right there in front of 7 talking about how it was "fully engulfed", how the building was "sagging and creaking" under the strain and how a "bulge had developed in the southwest corner". This is why firefighting efforts were abandoned and rescue workers "pulled" away. To further back that up we have interviews that were published with senior FDNY officials in the aftermath, including in Firehouse magazine which re-affirm those on-scene observations. Conspiracy websites keep this information from the public because it does not fit their personal brand of reality-distortion.
We also know from these same sources who were there at the scene that 7 had suffered severe structural damage to its south face due to the collapse of 1 World Trade Center (North Tower). I have included links to a collection of these quotes - universally ignored by conspiracy theorists - below.
Originally, Conspiracy Theorists made the completely fallacious statement that "no steel framed building has collapsed from fire alone." After it was pointed out to them that many steel framed buildings have collapsed due to fire, they added the specious qualifier "high rise" or "skyscraper", but that qualifier is completely invalid, from a mechanical or structural engineering perspective. Fire doesn't care how tall the building is. Stresses are calculated the same way no matter how tall a building is. Such a statement also assumes that because something has never happened means it can not happen - which is complete nonsense. As you have already figured out, open any history book - it is full of things that had never happened before. Another fan-favorite among CT'ers is the oft-repeated but irrelevant claim that 7 fell "at free-fall speed", which for some reason they assume means "controlled demolition" when in fact the speed at which something falls tells you absolutely nothing about why it fell. Once the initiating failure occurs, whether it be natural collapse or deliberate demolition gravity does all the work either way.
Motive is the other problem - why do it? What is so important about 7 that it must come down? The usual response is "there were secret files in the building da gubmint wanted destroyed. Presumably no paper shredder was available and they couldn't fit one in the budget. Besides, we all know that bringing down a building is the best way to destroy files;
http://www.billbiggart.com/911_16.html
Then there is the question of why use two hijacked airliners hitting the twins and two more hitting D.C. as a cover? Why not just a simple truck bomb? It would have required just a handful of conspirators instead of the thousands of conspirators any CD hypothesis would be necessity require and thus would be far more likely to be successful and remain a secret.
The collapse of 7 World Trade Center has been extensively studied by scores of physicists and structural engineers the world over, not just "da evul gubmint", including several engineering firms hired by the insurers who had a vested interest in not paying out on a claim. They have all reached the same basic conclusions about how it fell. It was a natural collapse due to fire and not a shred of evidence supporting any other cause, including explosive controlled demolition. The results of these investigations have been published extensively in the professional literature, been discussed in detail and engineering conferences and have been incorporated in building codes all over the world. There is absolute concensus among QUALIFIED professionals about what happened.
So you can believe the experts, or you could believe that a battalion of top-secret demolition Ninjas snuck into the building that morning and wired the whole thing with explosives that do not explode - no blast, no flash, no debris burst, no noise - for the purpose of destroying some filing cabinets (because da gubmint couldn't afford a paper shredder), all while nobody noticed.
Thank you for asking the question in a thoughtful manner.
Lots of people are just ignorant.
Apparently in their version of reality, buildings should be able to withstand having several 100 tons of flaming debris raining down on them without taking any damage or catching on fire.
Apparently in their version of reality, metal has the melting point of infinity, and that there is no in-between state for "completely hard" and "completely liquid."
Stop! Enough already with the crackpot conspiracy theories. They have ALL been thoroughly debunked countless times, by people who really ARE qualified experts.
WTC leaseholder Larry Silverstein admitted that building 7 was pulled down by a controlled demolition:
it was not very badly damaged before it suddenly went down in the same manner as a controlled demolition, just like the other two. I wonder if a third plane was meant to hit it, but did not get there, so they pulled it down anyway. There was a spokesman on television that day who said they "decided to pull it".
Could it be that the building did collapse from fire? I know a lot of people think the U.S gov. brought down the building
Could it just be that people cannot believe something that seemed impossible happened - eg it came down naturally. 90 years ago many people thought it would be impossible to fly at the speed of sound and that's possible.
