Debunking the WTC1 Main Freight Fireball Myth

“bsbray” of Studyof911.com, Oct. 31, 2006. Last updated Feb. 17, 2007 (added photos and more technical data). Drawn heavily from the research of AboveTopSecret.com forum member “Valhall”, with additional helpful feedback from “ashmok” of the same forums (Thanks, you two!). Feedback welcomed here.

Several witness testimonies at least are in public domain that describe explosive events in the lower levels of WTC1 as distinct from the its plane impact, and causing severe damage in the basement floors, at the foundation of the building. It has been entertained that the reported explosions and damages to the basement levels can be explained by the WTC1 freight elevator plummeting into the basement, accompanied by a fuel-air explosion from the impacted floors. In this article, I will show evidence that contradicts this theory.

First, we will establish the case for there actually having been damage to the lower floors of WTC1, and offer four separate witness testimonies. The Naudet brothers’ footage (presented in the documentary 9/11) shows damage to the WTC1 lobby before WTC2 had collapsed.[1]

On January 22^nd, 2002, Chief Frank Congiusta interviewed FDNY Lieutenant William Walsh for the World Trade Center Task Force. Here is an excerpt from the transcript of that interview provided by The New York Times (emphasis added)[2]:

[Lt. Walsh:] What I observed as I was going through these doors and I got into the lobby of the World Trade Center was that the lobby of the Trade Center didn't appear as though it had any lights.

All of the glass on the first floor that abuts West Street was blown out. The glass in the revolving doors was blown out. All of the glass in the lobby was blown out.

The wall panels on the wall are made of marble. It's about two or three inches thick. They're about ten feet high by ten feet wide. A lot of those were hanging off the wall.

[B.C. Congiusta:] Wait a second.

(Interruption.)

[Walsh:] What else I observed in the lobby was that -- there's basically two areas of elevators. There's elevators off to the left-hand side which are really the express elevators. That would be the elevators that's facing north. Then on the right-hand side there's also elevators that are express elevators, and that would be facing south. In the center of these two elevator shafts would be elevators that go to the lower floors. They were blown off the hinges. That's where the service elevator was also.

[B.C. Congiusta:] Were these elevators that went to the upper floors? They weren't side lobby elevators?

[Walsh:] No, no, I'd say that they went through floors 30 and below.

[B.C. Congiusta:] And they were blown off?

[Walsh:] They were blown off the hinges, and you could see the shafts. The elevators on the extreme north side and the other express elevator on the extreme south side, they looked intact to me from what I could see, the doors anyway.

Construction worker Phillip Morelli was on the fourth basement level under WTC1 when it was impacted. His testimony is given below, with emphasis added.[3]

Eyewitness Phillip Morelli

I go downstairs, the foreman tells me to go to remove the containers, as I’m walking by the main freight car of the building, in the corridor, that’s when I got blown. I mean, the impact of the explosion, or whatever happened, it threw me to the floor, and that’s when everything started happening…

It knocked me right to the floor. You didn’t know what it was. Of course you’re assuming something just fell over in the loading dock, something very heavy, something very big, you don’t know what happened, and all of a sudden you just felt the floor moving and you get up and the walls… And then you know, I mean now I’m hearing that the main freight car, the elevators fell down, so I was right near the main freight car so I assume what that was.

Then, I mean you heard that coming towards you. I was racing, I was going towards the bathroom. All of a sudden, I opened the door, I didn’t know it was the bathroom, and all of a sudden the big impact happened again, and all of the ceiling tiles was falling down, the light fixtures were falling, swinging out of the ceiling, and I come running out the door, and everything, the walls were down, and I started running towards the parking lots. …

I just thought something… because I know that the loading dock is on B1, that’s three floors above me, I just assumed that a car or something exploded on B1 or something got delivered and something big and heavy fell over. You just knew it was something big…

It will be shown later in this document that the main freight elevator in WTC1, elevator 50A, did not fall into the basement levels, and its operator survived to tell its story. Note that Morelli experienced two explosive events from the basement levels of WTC1. He was also near the main freight shaft during this experience, and yet reported no fireball.

WTC1 master janitor William Rodriguez gives this testimony in an interview with Lenny Charles as to his experiences in the basement levels of WTC1 during the impacts[4]:

Rodriguez: I worked in the building for 20 years. I was the person in charge of all the stairwells in the building. I had the only master key that opened all the doors in the building, and I went floor by floor opening the doors.

On 9/11, on 8:46, I was at the basement of the North Tower, the first tower to be impacted, the second one to fall. While I was there, a second or two before the plane hit, there was a huge explosion on the sublevel B2 to sublevel B3.

Charles: So there was an explosion from below you?

Rodriguez: Correct. And that was, you know, a second or two before the impact of the plane.

Charles: But it was clear and it was distinct that the explosion was before the plane hit the top of the building?

Rodriguez: Oh, yes, definitely, definitely. As a matter of fact, it was so hard that I thought it was an electrical generator that just blew up on the sublevels, because the support of the building, the electrical pumps and generators, was located by the mechanical room on that floor.

And when I went to verbalize it, we heard the impact of the plane, very far away, coming from the top. So there was a big difference of something coming from the top and something coming from the basement. I mean I worked there for 20 years, I could tell the difference of one thing coming from each side.

And at that moment a person comes running into the office saying, “Explosion, explosion!”, with his hands extended, all his skin was off from under his armpits like he was a piece of cloth, and was hanging off both hands. It was his actual skin.

An article on Rodriguez’s experiences from The Conservative Voice provides further information[5]:

Arriving at 8:30 on the morning of 9-11 he went to the maintenance office located on the first sublevel, one of six sub-basements beneath ground level. There were a total of fourteen people in the office at this time. As he was talking with others, there was a very loud massive explosion which seemed to emanate from between sub-basement B2 and B3. There were twenty-two people on B2 sub-basement who also felt and heard that first explosion.

At first he thought it was a generator that had exploded. But the cement walls in the office cracked from the explosion. "When I heard the sound of the explosion, the floor beneath my feet vibrated, the walls started cracking and everything started shaking." said Rodriguez, who was crowded together with fourteen other people in the office including Anthony Saltamachia, supervisor for the American Maintenance Company.

From the above testimony from Rodriguez, we can establish that Rodriguez was on sublevel B1, and that the explosions came from below him, as he says, from sublevels B2 or B3.

Finally, a third testimony, from Mike Pecoraro, is provided on the Chief Engineer magazine’s website.[6]

WTC Stationary engineer Mike Pecoraro

Deep below the tower, Mike Pecoraro was suddenly interrupted in his grinding task by a shake on his shoulder from his co-worker. “Did you see that?” he was asked. Mike told him that he had seen nothing. “You didn’t see the lights flicker?”, his co-worker asked again. “No,” Mike responded, but he knew immediately that if the lights had flickered, it could spell trouble. A power surge or interruption could play havoc with the building’s equipment. If all the pumps trip out or pulse meters trip, it could make for a very long day bringing the entire center’s equipment back on-line.

Mike told his co-worker to call upstairs to their Assistant Chief Engineer and find out if everything was all right. His co-worker made the call and reported back to Mike that he was told that the Assistant Chief did not know what happened but that the whole building seemed to shake and there was a loud explosion. They had been told to stay where they were and “sit tight” until the Assistant Chief got back to them. By this time, however, the room they were working in began to fill with a white smoke. “We smelled kerosene,” Mike recalled, “I was thinking maybe a car fire was upstairs”, referring to the parking garage located below grade in the tower but above the deep space where they were working.

The two decided to ascend the stairs to the C level, to a small machine shop where Vito Deleo and David Williams were supposed to be working. When the two arrived at the C level, they found the machine shop gone.

“There was nothing there but rubble, “Mike said. “We’re talking about a 50 ton hydraulic press – gone!” The two began yelling for their co-workers, but there was no answer. They saw a perfect line of smoke streaming through the air. “You could stand here,” he said, “and two inches over you couldn’t breathe. We couldn’t see through the smoke so we started screaming.” But there was still no answer.

The two made their way to the parking garage, but found that it, too, was gone. “There were no walls, there was rubble on the floor, and you can’t see anything,” he said.

They decided to ascend two more levels to the building’s lobby. As they ascended to the B Level, one floor above, they were astonished to see a steel and concrete fire door that weighed about 300 pounds, wrinkled up “like a piece of aluminum foil” and lying on the floor. “They got us again,” Mike told his co-worker, referring to the terrorist attack at the center in 1993. Having been through that bombing, Mike recalled seeing similar things happen to the building’s structure. He was convinced a bomb had gone off in the building.

Note that because the impacts did leak liquid jet fuel down through shafts in the core, and Pecoraro was also right over the towers’ parking garage as these events occurred, the smell of kerosene is not unusual. However, a fuel-air explosion requires a specific mixture of fuel to air (such as 1.3 to 6.0% gasoline vapor to air), or at least the creation of a “vapor cloud” that is then ignited.[7] Liquid jet fuel igniting as it falls will not produce a fuel-air explosion. Rather, the liquid jet fuel would just catch on fire, or even run down various shafts unburned, without being properly distributed as an aerosol beforehand. Evidence of fuel-air explosions exists only in the impacted upper floors, where fireballs engulfed large, but immediate areas of the buildings. There is no evidence of fire of any sort (with or without simultaneous overpressures) traveling down elevator shafts beyond the closest mechanical levels in WTC1, though some liquid jet fuel may have seeped farther down through various shafts.

It should also be noted that the fireballs themselves, that emerged visibly from the towers, were not fuel-air explosions. As explained in federal investigation reports (FEMA WTC Building Performance Study, Chapter 1.3), these fireballs were deflagrations, and did not have the explosive force of an actual high-explosive such as a fuel-air explosion.

An FAE would also not produce thick white smoke, as reported by Pecoraro, but short-lived, fuel-rich fireballs such as what was seen during the plane impacts.

On the other hand, there are several instances of white smoke photographed rising from the bases of WTC1 and WTC2[8]:

White smoke rising from the base of WTC2 as it begins its collapse.

A view closer to the ground, seconds later in the same collapse.

White smoke to the South of WTC1 as WTC2 comes down.

White smoke rising up near the southwest corner of WTC1, on the southern face. [9]

Pecoraro’s testimony also indicates that explosive events rocked floors below sublevel B1, as the machine shop that was destroyed (“C” level) appears to have been on B2, as the WTC1 lobby is described as being two levels above the machine shop.

In testimony shown above, Mr. Morelli states that he was told that one of the explosive events in the WTC1 basement floors was caused by the main freight elevator falling into the basement. This claim has been repeated by many individuals in effort to reconcile these testimonies with the “official version” of the events at the WTC on 9/11, as well as a claim that a fireball (or fuel-air explosion) ripped down at least one elevator shaft into the lobby or basement levels.

WTC1’s Main Freight Shaft Was

Not Rocked to the Basement by an FAE!

First, let us establish that there was only one elevator per building with access from the basement levels all the way up to the 108^th floor.

From NIST NCSTAR 1-1, Design, Construction, and Maintenance of Structural and Life Safety Systems[10], page xxxvii (page 39 of the PDF file), emphasis added:

Elevators were the primary mode of routine ingress and egress from the towers for tens of thousands of people daily. In order to minimize the total floor space needed for elevators, each tower was divided vertically into three zones by skylobbies, which served to distribute passengers among express and local elevators. In this way, the local elevators within a zone were placed on top of one another within a common shaft. Local elevators serving the lower portion of a zone were terminated to return to the space occupied by those shafts to leasable tenant space. People transferred from express elevators to local elevators at the skylobbies which were located on the 44th and 78th floors in both towers. Each tower had 99 passenger and 7 freight elevators, all located within the core of the building.

From the same document, page xlviii (page 50 of the PDF file), emphasis added:

There were 99 passenger elevators in each tower, arranged in three vertical zones to move occupants in stages to skylobbies on the 44th and 78th floors. These were arranged as express (generally larger cars that moved at higher speeds) and local elevators in an innovative system first introduced in WTC 1 and WTC 2. There were 8 express elevators from the concourse to the 44th floor and 10 express elevators from the concourse to the 78th floor as well as 24 local elevators per zone, which served groups of floors in those zones. There were seven freight elevators, only one of which served all floors. All elevators had been upgraded to incorporate firefighter emergency operation per American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) A17.1 and Local Law 5 (1973).

From an online reproduction of a 1967 Otis Bulletin article from the Otis Elevator Company, the company contracted to install all of the WTC Tower elevators in 1967[11]:

In addition to normal freight service one freight elevator in each of the towers will serve a total of 112 stops from the fifth basement to the 108th floor. It will rise 1,387 feet (422.8 meters) – 400 feet (122 meters) more than the former record rise in the Empire State Building.

And finally, from NIST NCSTAR 1-7, Occupant Behavior, Egress, and Emergency Communications[12], page 34 (page 72 of the PDF file):

In addition to the passenger elevators, there were seven freight elevators in each tower; most served a particular zone, while Car 50 served every floor.

So we conclude from all of the above only one elevator per building had access from the fifth basement level to the 108^th floor, and this was Car 50. These would be the “main” freight elevators in each tower.

USA Today published an article by Gregg Zoroya titled “The Griffiths”, the online version of which was last updated September 10^th, 2002, on two survivors of the WTC disaster in New York.[13] The two survivors were husband and wife, and were also both elevator operators for the North Tower, WTC1, the same building relevant in the testimonies of Lt. Walsh, Phillip Morelli, William Rodriguez, and Mike Pecoraro.

Former WTC1 elevator operators Carmen and Arturo Griffith. Photo by Robert Deutsch, USA Today.

The husband, Arturo Griffith, operated WTC1 elevator Car 50, which USA Today further describes as, “the big freight car going from the six-level basement to the 108th floor.”

[The Griffiths] were both operating elevators in the north tower on Sept. 11. Arturo was running 50A, the big freight car going from the six-level basement to the 108th floor. When American Airlines Flight 11 struck at 8:46 a.m., Arturo and a co-worker were heading from the second-level basement to the 49th floor.

Like his wife, who had just closed the doors on a passenger elevator leaving the 78th floor, Arturo heard a sudden whistling sound and the impact. Cables were severed and Arturo's car plunged into free fall.

"The only thing I remember saying was 'Oh, God, Oh, God, I'm going to die,' " he says, recalling how he tried to protect his head as the car plummeted.

The emergency brakes caught after 15 or 16 floors. The imploding elevator door crushed Arturo's right knee and broke the tibia below it. His passenger escaped injury.

There is a one-story discrepancy of this elevator’s range with Otis Elevator Company’s 1967 Bulletin article (six vs. five accessible basement levels), but it remains clear that the main freight elevator is indeed the elevator relevant to this article.

Though the door to Mr. Griffith’s elevator was knocked out when the safety brakes caught the free-falling elevator, there was no fuel-air explosion (FAE) down this elevator shaft. Remember that such an event is hypothesized to have not only traveled hundreds of feet down this elevator shaft into the basement, but to have also caused major destruction in the basement levels of WTC1 as reported by Rodriguez, Pecoraro, Morelli, and their co-workers, including a destroyed basement machine shop, and blown-out, lower-level elevators accessing the lobby.

This contrasts with the account of Mr. Griffith’s wife, Carmen:

A full elevator had just left the 78th floor, and Carmen was about to carry up six or seven stragglers. The plane struck as the doors of her elevator closed. They could hear debris smash into the top of the car; then the elevator cracked open, and flames poured in. Carmen jammed her fingers between the closed doors, pulled them partly open and held them as passengers clambered over and under her 5-foot-6 frame to escape.

Before finally throwing herself out onto the lobby floor, she glanced back to be sure the elevator was empty. That was when fire scorched her face with second- and third-degree burns, and literally welded her hooped right earring to her neck. Her hands were badly burned.

Note that Mrs. Griffith was not on the elevator that had access to the basement levels. Also note that, though she was burned, there was not a blast characteristic of an explosion that would cause such destruction as what was witnessed in the WTC1 basements, or else Mrs. Griffith surely would not have survived.

Car 6

The following excerpt comes again from NIST NCSTAR 1-7, page 34 (page 72 of the PDF file).

In addition to the passenger elevators, there were seven freight elevators in each tower; most served a particular zone, while Car 50 served every floor.

Car #5: B1-5, 6, 9-40, 44
Car #6: B1-5, 44, 75, 77-107 (Dual-use express, see below)

[…]

There were two express elevators (#6 and #7) to Windows on the World (and related conference rooms and banquet facilities) in WTC 1 and two to the observation deck in WTC 2. There were five local elevators in each building: three that brought people from the subterranean levels to the lobby, one that ran between floors 106 and 110, and one that ran between floors 43 and 44, serving the cafeteria from the skylobby. All elevators had been upgraded to incorporate firefighter emergency operation requirements.

So we see that another elevator, Car 6, ran from the impacted floors of WTC1 to sublevel B1, but no further.

From page 122 of the same document (page 160 of the PDF file):

For an elevator’s cables to be cut and result in dropping the car to the bottom of the shaft, the cables would need to have been in the aircraft impact debris path, floors 93 through 98 in WTC 1 or floors 78 through 83 in WTC 2. Inspection of the elevator riser diagram and architectural floor plans for WTC 1 shows that the following elevators met these criteria: cars 81 through 86 (Bank B) and 87 through 92 (Bank C), local cars in Zone III; car 50, the freight elevator, and car 6, the Zone III shuttle. … Cars 6 and 50 could have fallen all the way to the pit in the sub-basement level, and car 50 in WTC 1 was reported to have done so.

Here, NIST states explicitly that elevator Car 6, along with Car 50, were the sole elevators of WTC1 with access to the basements from the impacted floors of WTC1. And as noted in the previous excerpt from NCSTAR 1-7, Car 6 only reached sublevel B1, the uppermost basement level, while explosions and other destructive events were observed on B1 as well as below B1, on B2 and possibly lower (see the above testimonies of Rodriguez and Pecoraro).

Conclusions

All of the above information should bring us to the logical conclusion that a fuel-air explosion did not travel hundreds of feet down the main freight elevator shaft of WTC1, from the impacted floors to the basements, to cause structural damage to the basement floors and lobby. Car 50 was the only elevator with access from the impacted floors of WTC1 to the sublevels B2 and below, and its operator survived, having experienced no explosions or fireballs down the main freight shaft.

That such a fireball could have traveled down Car 6 has not specifically been ruled out by the above information, but it could not have extended beyond sublevel B1, whereas explosive events caused much destruction on lower floors.

Also, considering an FAE traveling down this shaft sufficient in strength to destroy a machine shop in the basement levels (as per Pecoraro’s testimony), even if this elevator had access to this floor, and cause elevators servicing the lowest floors to blow out (as per Walsh’s testimony), as well as additional structure damage in the basements, it seems extremely unlikely, if not impossible, that the shaft itself, and neighboring floors all the way down would not be similarly destroyed by the massive overpressures accompanying this FAE down the building. Put simply, an FAE moving down an elevator shaft and causing severe damage in basement levels with massive force, could also be expected to destroy the shaft itself, especially since this shaft would be a very confined area, and its wall supposedly not reinforced by any concrete in the walls or etc.

The visible fuel-air explosions caused by the impacts visibly failed to destroy even the outer perimeter columns of the impacted floors, or to even remove their aluminum cladding, which was only fastened on and not solidly connected. Only the plane impacts themselves severed perimeter columns or caused such damage to the aluminum cladding.

Image showing exterior damage to the impacted region of WTC2, right next to where the fireball emerged. Note that the aluminum panels have been dislodged in some places, but otherwise the structure is still intact where the plane has not physically knocked steel columns out. There is no evidence of great overpressures from the fireball itself.

How, then, could a fireball that failed to remove this aluminum cladding in its immediate blast, travel down over a thousand feet of an unprotected elevator shaft and maintain sufficient overpressures to shatter concrete and steel fire doors? It has already been shown that the operator of elevator 50, the main freight, did not even experience a fireball, let alone life-threatening overpressures. This fits logically with the lack of exterior damage shown above.

More realistic explanations of the WTC1 basement events, including the use of secondary explosive devices, should be considered.