IN the aftermath of the terrible Victorian bushfires, with more than 200 dead, there has been a lot of recrimination particularly over the issue of control burning – or lack of. Others blame a combination of drought and unprecedented weather conditions – some have even blamed global warming.
There are new building guidelines following claims that many houses were simply not built to appropriate standards. In all of this discussion I have seen no mention of the word “asbestos” – and I don’t mean in the context of disease, but rather in the context of a fire retardant.
Yes, some types of asbestos represent a genuine danger to workers at certain exposure levels and under certain conditions, but there was never any doubt that the material was an effective fire retardant.
In 1903 at the Iroquois Theatre in Chicago a fire started during a matinee performance killed 603 people. The cotton curtain was considered the culprit, but the only alternative at that time was iron curtains which were difficult to manoeuvre. That was just before the advent of asbestos. By 1909 almost all of Chicago’s theatres had asbestos curtains and soon city codes and insurance companies across the US were demanding it.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt called for asbestos fireproofing in all ships.
Some claim that the Twin Towers in New York collapsed so quickly because there was no effective fire retardant used in its construction. The original plans for the World Trade Centre required the interior steel in both towers to be covered in asbestos-based fireproofing-material. But these plans were changed following campaigning by activists. According to testimony by Donald Trump under oath at a hearing of the US Senate in 2005, “a lot of people say that if the World Trade Centre had asbestos, it wouldn’t have burned down … a lot of people in my industry think asbestos is the greatest fireproofing material ever made.”
Will anyone dare mention the world asbestos in consideration of building codes in the aftermath of the Victorian bushfires?
**************************
Notes
The Anti-Asbestos Inferno, In Eco-freaks, by John Berlau, Nelson Current, Nashville, 2006
Submission by Ralph Barraclough, House of Representative’s Bushfire Inquiry, 2003. http://www.aph.gov.au/House/committee/bushfires/inquiry/subs/sub482.pdf
Fire code advanced by a year, The Australian, March 7, 2009. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25150704-5018722,00.html
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Not so long ago local and state govts mandated the use of asbestos in all commercial buildings to provide a fire rating that would allow people time to exit the premises in the event of fire. The fact that these steel beams today [as with the Twin Towers] don’t have this fire rating is a ticking time bomb.
I still have asbestos brake lining material and have used it quite recently to make disc brake pads, mainly for competition because there is nothing else as good. I understand that some big aircraft still have to use asbestos in their brakes as nothing else works.
Asbestos saved a lot more lives than it ever took.
But what amazes me is, if govts mandated its use, how come they can line up, demonise and financially almost cripple, people like James Hardie & Co when they were just as responsible?
Was this a union/govt set-up?
There were a lot more than hundreds dead because they worked in the manufacturing and mining of asbestos products. There may be a place for it, but it’s proven to be damned dangerous.
James Hardie had the problem of knowing what the problems were with working with the stuff, but hiding that.
To get a small ship through survey many parts of the vessel had to be lined with asbestos [govt regs], particularly the galley where a fire can break out anytime. Engine rooms etc.
Imagine the gun turrets and magazines of fighting ships when the stuff is hitting the fan!
Bushfiries certainly need asbestos lining in their vehicles to give them a good chance of survival. An asbestos blanket covered with aluminium sheeting.
But it ain’t gonna happen!
From a politician’s POV it’s better to have a relatively quick, agonising death where no one can be blamed than a slow, drawn out one that the media can get hold of and make agonising for the polly.
“James Hardie had the problem of knowing what the problems were with working with the stuff, but hiding that.”
That’s true, SJT but so did govts and Hardies didn’t insist that people buy the product but govts did. It was L.A.W. LAW that you had to spray steel beams in commercial buildings etc probably up til around 1980 and they knew of the dangers since 1924 and meso since around 1960.
With the WTC, I think they only sprayed asbestos up to about the 40th floor because govt regs changed during construction. Around 1970 in the USA.
Some facts from the ACT response to bushfire affected sites post 18th Jan 2003
http://www.health.act.gov.au/c/health?a=da&did=10009573&pid=1055814070
For ongoing issues
http://www.safetowork.com.au/TAG/asbestos
IMO Jennifer is way out of her depth on this one, given that book plug above
“IMO Jennifer is way out of her depth on this one, given that book plug above”
Congrats to Jen for addressing the problem!
It’s very hard to find out the truth and it needs to be dragged into the daylight.
If you’re not too nervous to tell us anything you know, Gavin, please go right ahead.
http://www.aihw.gov.au/publications/aus/ah04/ah04-x02-041126.pdf
so you are more likely to die of an “accident or adverse effect” than from “Bronchitis,
emphysema and asthma”.
So where are all these people dying from asbestos related incidents?
Every carpenter in Australia over the age of 45, most of them, would have worked with asbestos at some time in their career. I did and I’m not a carpenter.
The guys that mined it without proper safety equipment, (I would imagine) would be the ones prone to emphysema etc.
What exactly are their figures?
Do you reckon they’ll be queuing up to work at Wittenoom?
“And if the blue sky mining company wont come to my rescue
If the sugar refining company won’t save me
Who’s gonna save me? “
Luke – you are going to save them!
mind you they won’t have a job, and we’ll miss out on the benefits of asbestos insulation, and you’ll keep sucking on the ….
SD: “But what amazes me is, if govts mandated its use, how come they can line up, demonise and financially almost cripple, people like James Hardie & Co when they were just as responsible?”
Mate; Some of my subissions were on the same theme, however somebody had to wind up the general use of asbestos before more victims suffered along the lines of those in the media
Was this a union/govt set-up?
also: Somebody had to pay the bills.
“So where are all these people dying from asbestos related incidents?
Every carpenter in Australia over the age of 45, most of them, would have worked with asbestos at some time in their career. I did and I’m not a carpenter. ”
Somebody is claiming those billions Hardie has set aside for compensation.
“That’s true, SJT but so did govts and Hardies didn’t insist that people buy the product but govts did. It was L.A.W. LAW that you had to spray steel beams in commercial buildings etc probably up til around 1980 and they knew of the dangers since 1924 and meso since around 1960.”
Hardies was mining and selling that stuff after then.
So what have we got now… to replace asbestos?
gavin and SJT, many of the victims contracted the disease while the various govts were mandating that it had to be used. They were even employing people to do it, as is warships etc.
If I tell you that I’ll put you in gaol if you don’t do something and by doing that thing you get a serious illness, who is responsible?
“also: Somebody had to pay the bills.”
What’s that supposed to mean? Someone had to be the sucker? That’s exactly what it looks like to me too!
So what have we got now… to replace asbestos?
well for walls we have probably the most eco friendly product ever.
http://www.ortech.com.au/durra/durrapanel.htm
but it’s limited.
“So what have we got now… to replace asbestos?”
Jen, from what I see, glass fibre, carbon and kevlar composites sometimes mixed with ceramics, all very hitech in most cases but for building material some sort of fibrous cement that is not so hitech but it seems a good product.
The fire proofing material, as the firies say, is pretty useless and dangerous to boot.
I’m out of the building business these days so I’m not an expert.
http://www.wallsandall.com.au/page/products/mono/Blueboard
janama, was this what you meant? I couldn’t raise your link.
James Hardie are great survivors and good luck to ’em.
Build your dream home. It’s only as good as the frame. [If the rust don’t getcha then the white ants will]
But to get back to the ticking time bomb, if a big modern shopping centre had a sudden fire during business hours and exits got jammed, the lightweight steel purlins in today’s buildings would buckle and fall very quickly with a possible disastrous result.
A bit like the opera house fires of the 19th century before the advent of asbestos.
Jen, I forgot to add that in highrise buildings in Australia we use steel reinforced concrete which has a good fire rating and doesn’t need asbestos coating like exposed steel does.
It’s not the modern shopping centres you need to worry about SD. It’s the old ones. That and the fact that Joe public ignore the evacuation warnings and alarms and some retail tenants are more concerned about their stock than their life.
WTC had more trouble with an uneven fire retardant covering on critical beams on critical floors than none at all.
Asbestos needs to get past the scary “I” word to be legalised again……. Insurance.
My old man was a house builder. He must have cut up thousands and thousands of asbestos sheets with a panel saw to to fit onto houses. He died of cancer. Not from asbestosis but the kind that comes in a legal packet sold all around town.
And we use a central core and hang the floors off it with strengthened tensioned steel concrete.
It would have been interesting to see what would have happened to the WTC if the towers had of been constructed the Australian way.
sorry spangled – here’s the link again – this works
http://www.ortech.com.au/
It was featured on the new inventors where they showed a man with his hand up against a sheet of the stuff while a guy on the other side held a blowtorch to the panel.
They take the straw from the wheat harvest and heat process it to remove a natural polymer that becomes the binding agent to hold the panel together. There are no other added chemicals so it’s the most eco friendly material available. Because its light and strong it has been used to line stadiums and convention center ceilings.
spangled..”But what amazes me is, if govts mandated its use, how come they can line up, demonise and financially almost cripple, people like James Hardie & Co when they were just as responsible? Was this a union/govt set-up?”
It was the unions who recognized the health problems of its workers breathing in compounds in the air that got the legislation in the first place. My uncle’s lungs were ruined from breathing in silicate particles while working in a foundary. Thousands of coal miners also suffered from lung problems, cancer among them.
In the bad old days, when asbestos was used initially, no one wore respirators as they installed it, nor was it installed safely. Asbestos wool was left in areas where it circulated in ventitlation system. It’s not the hardboard asbestos that is the problem as much as the wool version. Even today, when workers install mineral-wool insulation, they wear respirators. Maybe the government over-reacted by banning asbestos outright but that was better than having people get it in their lungs. Once it there, there’s no way to remove it.
It’s not just asbestos we are worried about in industrial/commercial environments. During construction, worker are breathing in concrete dust and calcium from drywall. No one thought of either being an issue up until 10 years ago but even seemingly innocuous byproducts of construction as these create health issues. We take the lungs too much for granted but they are delicate mechanisms that once damaged cannot be recovered. It is good practice on most unionized sites here to have a weekly clean up, during which time the dust is swept up using a particle suppressant like Dustbane.
Fire control today is done largely with water springling systems. In one building at the Trade Centre (the third one to fall), the sprinkler system pumps were not working. To claim asbestos might have helped in the other two towers seems naive. When two aircraft loaded with jet fuel crash into a steel-frame building, there’s a lot more to worry about than asbestos lining on the steel. The major damage there no doubt came from the tremendous energy induced by the impact.
A large aircraft travelling at several hundred miles per hours carries tremendous momentum, and that momentum is converted into a tremendous explosion when it is suddenly stopped. No amount of asbestos could have prevented those buildings collapsing since it was not the fire alone causing the problem. The steel structure on the impact side would have been destroyed putting all the support on the remaining beams. The subsequent heat from the explosion, aided by the burning jet fuel, probably weakened the other beams. I don’t think asbestos was ever intended to deal with those conditions.
Jenifer:
“So what have we got now… to replace asbestos?”
Google intumescent coatings.
Gordon, I can’t agree. I understand that had the steel been insulated the towers would have stood for at least 4 hours in stead of the 2 – giving more time for evacuations etcetera.
Gordon: I think Jenifer is correct. What I cannot understand is why the intumescent coatings were not used in place of asbestos.
The whole thing again underscores the folly of believing that a steel building is fire-proof. It is, unless you put something in it that is not.
jae thank you that looks very interesting and I will look at it very seriously before I do anymore household painting.
There has been some discussion here trying to connect Sept 11 building collapses to lack of asbestos. Note the controversy about building seven http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_World_Trade_Center this was opened in 1986 and a more or less conventual building compared to the Twin Towers. The steel beams were spayed with fire proofing as were the Twin Towers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_World_Trade_Center but not asbestos. Even though the sprinklers did not work on the day the building did not collapse until 5:20pm many hours after the Twin Towers and you would have to assume the fire proofing was the same. So I would go with an explanation of unusual events to lack of asbestos. BTW in the second reference I came across a statement that the Twin Towers did no have sprinklers!!
From John Berlau’s book (Chapter 3, The Anti-Asbestos Inferno):
1. Architect Minoru Yamasaki counted on using asbetos-based spray when he decided to build the two towers out of steel.
2. They foresaw the remote chance of a plane crashing into the buildings … a small plane had accidentally flown into the Empire State Building in 1945. So each building was planned to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707, the largest jet of the day loaded with fuel.
3. With commencement of building, the government gave the contract to a company to use an asbetos-based spray to insulate the steel. They started spraying with a Chrysotile asbestos.
4. At the time claims were being made in New York that not one man spraying asbestos fibre would be alive in twenty years. In response the government ensured workers had masks etcetera.
5. Further claims were made that there was no safe threshold for asbetos including employee and residents who had asbestos in their homes and offices.
6. Asbestos-replacements were pushed as an alternative including for the Twin Towers.
7. So the asbestos spray was only used on the columns up to the thirty-eighth floor of the first tower and none of the second tower.
Gordon,
unions did their job as well as they could but it seems that govts were as much the correct target as the miners and manufacturers but do you think some deal was cooked up or did the unions realise they couldn’t sue or would have much more difficulty suing govts, so the miners and manufacturers were made the “patsies”?
jae,
That intumescent paint would certainly be worth a try on the inside of bush firies vehicles.
SD,
On the issue of bushfire vehicles, here is a video of one being burnt:
http://www.sosnews.org/bushfires/?p=38
Jen,
That’s just breathtakingly bad! Painted fibreglass on the outside of the safety cab!
And that was just covered up?
When you see what govts and bureaucrats can do in the face of overwhelming evidence, it sure needs people like you to hold up the lantern.
I hope that the royal commission does a bit better than that in Victoria!
I was a member of the East Darr Bush Fire Brigade in 1955 and we were fighting a fire in a 30cwt Chev truck with a few 44 gallon drums of water and the sheep jetting plant when the Chevvie started to play up as the front was approaching.
We wrestled a drum onto the roof of the Chev and punched a few small holes around the bottom of the drum and got inside as the front arrived.
We were probably lucky that we did not cop the full force but the truck was pretty badly burnt.
But that system probably worked better than the one in the video.
Oops I meant
So I would go with an explanation of unusual events rather than lack of asbestos. BTW in the second reference I came across a statement that the Twin Towers did not have sprinklers!!
Jennifer
Maybe the uses of asbestos should be looked at again long and hard. Alarmist thinking and the way the law works encourages chucking the baby out with the bath water. I don’t see however it is logical to try using Sept 11 for this argument. Buildings 1 and 2 fell early on and started the fire in building seven which collapsed at 5:20pm many hours on. Building 1 had some asbestos fire proofing it seems, even so collapsed relatively quickly. Does not all this point to structure and impact being the significant factors not asbestos? We should look elsewhere for support for the use of asbestos.
Does John Berlau’s book give any insight as to how asbestos could be used safely? I have seen a fibro house burn once, the walls sort of exploded!
Ah, but which asbestos?
Asbestos is not some bizarre chemical warfare synthetic. It occurs naturally and is so abundant that each of us may breathe in thousands of fibres each day. anyone over 50 on the face of the planet may have millions of fibres in their lungs.
But, as I asked at the beginning, which asbestos?
The term has unfortunately been used to describe two quite different minerals.
The first group includes five varieties of iron silicates known as amphiboles, and of these the most widely used are “blue” and “brown” asbestos. The long fibres of these types can penetrate the lungs and surrounding tissue and cannot be dissolved or removed by the body’s defences.
The other Asbestos is a very different substance known as chrysotile or “white” asbestos. This is a serpentine mineral, a form of magnesium silicate. It has some properties similar to the amphiboles, but is otherwise very different.
Its soft fibres are easily destroyed by acids so that it is readily destroyed in the slightly acidic environment of the lungs etc.
Chrysotile is the stuff used in asbestos cement products, i.e. Fibro. Simply put, the most common variety of “asbestos” is mot a major hazard to anyone. Materials containing amphiboles (around 10% of total asbestos containing products) are a different matter.
Sadly, research politics and he lure of potential billions from insurance payouts helped to totally blur the distinction between the two. The activities of the “ambulance chasers” in the campaign against asbestos helped bring down Lloyds of London. The collapse of Lloyds was the result of greatest fraud in history, well, second greatest after the Obamessiah’s Generational Theft Act of 2009.
The effective ban on asbestos has also created a major industry in asbestos removal. Accounts of “creativity” in this industry are legion in The US, UK and Australia.
Not only that, but Eternit (Belgium) and St. Gobain (France), both very large international producers of chrysotile based products promoted a ban on their production, figuring that they could dominate the fast growing market for alternatives with their own new product range.
In 2005 Bernstein and his research team showed that the half life of chrysotile fires in the lung was 11.4 days and in further study, they found no significant pathological response at exposure rates five thousand times higher than the USA maximum permissible limit.
See:
D. Bernstein et al., “The Toxicological response of Brazilian Chrysotile Asbestos”, Inhalation Toxicology, 18 (2006), 313-32.
There are several other papers by Bernstein and others on this issue.
Cheers,
Bruce
” In all of this discussion I have seen no mention of the word “asbestos” – and I don’t mean in the context of disease, but rather in the context of a fire retardant.” – Jennifer Marohasy
It is important to make a distinction between ASBESTOS ( a fibrous , incombustible , magnesium and calcium silicate , used as thermal insulation ; its dust causes ASBESTOSIS( a form of lung disease caused by inhaling fibres of asbestos and marked by fibrosis and associated with bronchogenic carcinoma.
Harking back to WTC.
The investigation found that support steel beams had been sprayed with fireproofing unevenly. In critical areas such as joins of beams there were areas where no fireproofing layer was apparent – i.e. no protection at all.
As Jennifer has pointed out the WTC was designed for a fully laden and fully fueled direct hit by a 707 aircraft to a one and half time.
Other engineers have stated that if 5 adjacent floors of a skyscraper sized building are aflame the building will come down – whether or not hit by an aircraft.
Asbestos – basically two types – Blue Asbestos that is very dangerous but only mined in two locations, South Africa and Canada.
White asbestos is less harmful and actually gets dissolved in the lung tissues, so the body can get rid of it.
However the mining deaths and working with asbestos was principally due to ignorance – lung diseases are also produced by flour dust in flour mills, silica dust in underground mines, to mention some more mundane sources of micro-particles which damage lung tissue. The lack of face masks to filter out the dust, and in an asbestos mine one is also breating in the fine rock dust, silica etc, that occurs in addition to the Asbestos.
The family home in NSW is built from asbestos sheeting and none of the family developed any inkling of lung disease commonly attributed to “asbestos”.
Incidentally the U.S. Navy used blue asbestos for their ships, not white.
Oh, I see Bruce has explained it more fully a few posts earlier. I wrote this just from reading the first page of comments.
I see we both come up with the same facts as well.
🙂
Anne Novek, you did not make any distinction between Asbetos and ??????????????
Jennifer,
In addition the U.S. EPA banned Asbestos, then the bureaucrat in the EPA who engineered the ban, then quit and started up an asbestos removal company and made millions.
I would find that somewhat unethical given the real nature of Asbestos.
Sorry Louis,
It is important to make a distinction between asbestos ( the group of minerals) and asbestos diseases .
Louis,
I think blue asbestos was mined at Wittenoom in WA.
Spangles,
You are right – so it’s 3 locations blue asbestos was mined world wide. No wonder so many died and all it was called was asbestos with no detail that it was the blue variety. The Wikipedia entry only refers it as asbestos. Guilty by association it seems for the white variety.
Jen “Gordon, I can’t agree. I understand that had the steel been insulated the towers would have stood for at least 4 hours in stead of the 2 – giving more time for evacuations etcetera”.
It’s definitely a complex problem. I was not aware till recently of the conspiracy nonsense surrounding the Towers’ collapse that no one can really say for sure what caused the collapse. There are some excellent rebuttals to the conspiracy theory that explain what went on and it’s not at all clear.
I realize I made a comment that the notion of the use of asbestos as a prevention of the collapse was naive. I did not mean that as a shot at your article or your opinion on asbestos. I was trying to bring in the effect of such a huge explosion, both from the impact and the burning of jet fuel. The conspiracy theory suggests the aircraft could not have caused that kind of damage and that the explosions were rigged by the government. I think anyone who suggests that cannot possibly understand the effect of momentum and impulse.
There is tremendous energy available in an aircraft of that size flying at speed. If that energy is suddenly transfered during a very short time period, the explosion due to the sudden transfer of energy is tremendous, as we have witnessed. Then there’s the effect of the heat of that explosion on the fuel itself. It all blew at once. I highly doubt that any insulation as fragile as asbestos could have mechanically withstood the violence of such an explosion. It would literally have been torn to shreds.
I just find it unbelievable that something as simple as asbestos could have saved those building or delayed their demise. For one, I work in the construction environment and I highly doubt that the asbestos would have been applied to the proper thickness and mechanically attached with such an explosion in mind. In New York, with their penchant for cost savings, I doubt if it would have been applied that accurately. For another, there’s just no way the steel beams on the impact side could have stood up to the impact of a fully loaded aircraft striking them at speed. On the remaining sides, the asbestos would have been subjected to tremendous air pressure from the exploding aircraft and high speed projectiles from metal parts having been blown apart at high speed.
The third building was half destroyed by 3 ton sections falling from the higher towers, which sheared right through the support beams on one side of the building, leaving huge gaps in the vertical structure. The fireman on the scene used a device to measure the tilt of the building and they knew it would collapse, they just didn’t know when. The momentum of those 3 ton missiles was due to the acceleration of gravity, which is 9.8 m.s.s. When those planes exploded, there could easily have been parts of similar weight colliding with support frames at equal or greater speed. IMHO, the building was irrecoverably damaged by the impact. When you read the account of the third building and how the firemen could not tell when it would collapse, I don’t understand how any engineer could offer his opinion that asbestos would have allowed another 2 hours to save those on higher floors.
Maybe you’re right, but I don’t think anyone has ever tested asbestos under such conditions. As far as evacuation, I think anyone who may have suggested that was seriously fooling themselves. Even if through some miracle, the stairwells had remained intact, there’s no way anyone would have survived the gases in the stairwells. I was in the vicinity of a high voltage transformer blowing up and it filled an entire area with dense smoke that lingered for an hour. With the ventilation system breached in the towers, the entire stairwell would have been full of toxic gases. With the heat generated by those planes, I can’t see how anyone could have passed those floors, even after 4 hours.
Steel frame buildings are usually built with a concrete core, where the elevators and stairs are located. The concrete is reinforced, but it’s not that thick. I am not going to pretend that I understand the engineering behind it for such tall buildings, but I do know they design for minimum cost. Therefore, the concrete would not have been designed as a blast shelter. I’m sure they would have collapsed with such a violent explosion. If the stairwells were just steel-frame, there no way they would have survived the blast. People simply could not have gotten down anyway.
I really hate it when engineers step forward to offer their opinions after the fact. The collapse of those towers was devastating to anyone who witnessed it, either directly or on film. If you read the rebuttal to the conspiracy theories, you will find different accounts of what they ‘think’ happened, not what actually happened. The notion that it was simply fire heating up steel support frames till they buckled doesn’t make that much sense to me. The heat may have caused the steel to lose it temper, but something far more sinister and complex seems to have happened.
spangled “do you think some deal was cooked up or did the unions realise they couldn’t sue or would have much more difficulty suing govts, so the miners and manufacturers were made the “patsies”?”
I can only speak for unions in Canada. I have seen peculiar situations, such in 1970’s New Zealand, where unions were literally told how to operate by the government. In modern unionism in Canada, nothing suprises me anymore. The backroom deals, implemented under the guise of ‘for the good of the union’, which can bypass the constitution, are questionable. In other words, a member could take the union to court over such breaches of the constitution and possibly win.
The problem with conspiracy theories is the difficulty in proving them. There are conspiracy theories even within unions. I just don’t know the answer to your question. Hopefully, a unionist would act honourably, but humans are humans. There should have been no question in the early 1980’s UK miners’ strike against the Thatcher government. When push came to shove, many unionists abandoned the union in favour of their own interests. A union is only as strong as the conviction and guts of its members.
Jen “They foresaw the remote chance of a plane crashing into the buildings … a small plane had accidentally flown into the Empire State Building in 1945. So each building was planned to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707, the largest jet of the day loaded with fuel”.
When the Towers were designed in the early 1960’s, nothing was known of the impact of a plane the size of a 707 on a building. Computer modeling was either non-existent or in its infancy. Computers were simply not readily available or were operated by vacuum tubes or primitive transistors. The Challenger spacecraft that exploded soon after it’s launch was brought down by the failure of a simple O-ring, which Richard Feynman demonstrated breaking apart after immersion in ice water. That spacecraft was designed by far more sophisticated computer technolgy, yet it exploded due to a simple component failure.
The official explanation from NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technologies) exhonorated the designer of the towers but that strikes me as being more political than practical. The design was based on a tubular construction technique in which steel beams replicate a steel tube. There is no concrete core in the building and the floors have to be an integral part of the tube design. NIST found that the heat caused the floors to bow in, pulling in on the vertical beams and causing them to collapse.
I got the following from commentary on the NIST report from the net, although I have not been able yet to track down the report itself:
“The NIST report states that the towers would probably have stood indefinitely, if the impacts had not dislodged the fireproofing material that protected the steel from fire-generated heat. Construction-grade steel begins to lose strength at 425°C (~800°F) and is only about half as strong at 650°C (1,202°F). NIST argues in its report that the crashed jetliners damaged or dislodged 100% of the protective insulation within the impact zone, while also spilling many thousands of gallons of jet fuel over multiple floors. The resulting 800-1,000°C (1,440-1,800°F ) blaze seriously weakened the now-exposed steel, leading to a global structural failure”.
The twin towers were designed so that the perimeter took most of the weight. The floors were designed from a much lighter steel construction with 4 inches of concrete poured on corrugated steel. The floor were built with a truss design in which the underside of the floor was firmed by triangle-based truss while the floors were bolted to the perimeter steel at a much thinner face plate. Nist claims many of those bolts sheered with impact from the planes, allowing the floor to buckle and possibly fall on each other (pancake).
The idea of the design was to give floorspace with a view unobstructed by support columns. Reading between the lines, that design flaw probably lead to the collapse. It makes sense that more ‘ugly’ columns would have given the building far more stability during a lateral impact crash. In 30-story high rises on which I have worked, the core is thick, heavily reinforced concrete and the floors are thinner reinforced concrete. There are two variations. On one, the perimeter walls are also reinforced concrete, supporting the floors. On the other, to enable a view, the floors are self supporting except for narrow vertical, perimeter walls of reinforced concrete. The floor have tensioning cables in them, attached to the core, that take most of the weight of the floors. Once again, for the sake of esthetics, the stability of a building is compromised. If an airliner hit such a building, sheering those cables, down comes the building.
The stress of the whole AGW fiasco has obviously made all you right wingers go stark raving mad. Either that or you have absolute indifference to human suffering when commercial and political expedience call.
Go right ahead. Every day your ideologically driven stupidity and callousness drives you further away from even the most disinterested punter. Knock yourselves out.
Right Wing Festival “….you have absolute indifference to human suffering when commercial and political expedience call. Go right ahead. Every day your ideologically driven stupidity and callousness drives you further away from even the most disinterested punter. Knock yourselves out.”
Could you elaborate? I think I may have done this myself: drop by a site, take it out of context, and leave them a nasty note. Don’t imagine you’ll be back to read this.
Hey, Louis…I’m a right-winger. Could you send me that bottle?
Meanwhile back at the new building codes.
The sole purpose of these codes is not to save lives. If the respective governments gave a tinkers cuss for human lives then they would have done something about fuel loads and regrowth long ago. The only purpose served by these new codes is to pre-empt both the Royal Commission and public opinion by suggesting that there was a fundamental flaw in the design and construction of the houses that were lost.
This is outright bollocks. Any house with an effective “liquid mushroom” sprinkler system, and without highly combustible trees and shrubs in close proximity, (or the right to remove them in an emergency) will survive most fires. The exceptions being mostly the ones with large overhanging wooden decks on top of an escarpment.
So now we have the urban dominated government that completely ignored the repeated warnings of the most well informed and experienced members of the rural minority now implementing a new “urban ignorance tax”, in the form of about $22,000 worth of bull$hit prescriptions, to be paid only by the rural victims of their earlier malgovernance.
Rural Australia needs to get this ignorant, murderous, metroscum right out of our decision making processes. THEY ARE THE PROBLEM.
An outwardly reasonable, intelligent and well meaning urban person becomes a callous, unreasonable, and dangerous moron when they apply their numerically dominant values to the landscape and circumstances of the rural minority. They would judge the credibility of an experienced fire fighter by his syntax. What else needs to be said?
“take it out of context” – The context is very clear; a demented, contrarian buffoon who makes a living by appealing to a reactionary lunatic fringe thinks the aftermath of a disaster is a suitable time to float a half baked provocation to excite a ragtag band of unhinged camp followers.
Ian “metroscum” Mott: there was a time when even the craziest old bushies had a degree of charm about them…I’m thinking of the possum man on the Murray…nowadays we have people like you who have obviously drunk deep of the pesticides at the sheep dip. It’s OK though, the Royal Commission will patronise the crazy old man by allowing him to vent a sarin gas belch before hustling him out the door so that saner considerations may occur. Giddy up.
Festival of Hate,
Instead of frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog, what about giving us your “constructive” contributions.
Our little mate “Festival” touches on, but fails to consider, an interesting point. We have a large urban majority that is in almost complete denial of their role, through the representatives they elected, in the recent manslaughter of members of the rural minority.
And this callous indifference is rationalised by a retreat into a definition of extremism that is entirely based on the urban majority’s perception of itself. To these people, any perception that is at variance with the perceptions of that culpable majority can be dismissed as an “extreme view” solely on the basis of it’s origin as a minority perception.
But of course, “Festival’s” choice of pseudonym makes it very clear that his intention has always been to induce readers to disregard the views expressed here, not by the weight of his arguments but, rather, by characterising them as being fringe, political, coloured by hate and unreasonable.
But if the shoe had been on the other foot, and it was urban folk who were the victims of systematic malgovernance by a dominant rural clique then, of course, the definition of a reasonable perception or an extreme response would be a great deal more elastic than the one being applied by Festival and those he is trying to protect.
But of course, the existence of double standards is powerful evidence that a majority has abrogated its responsibility to deliver equal justice and equity to minorities.
Gordon Robertson, Louis Hissink and company ate sitting on their fat asses all day long in front of the computer posting idiotic message to each other , meanwhile Gordon is drooling for hot hippie chicks. Obviouslyh is brain is totally ruined by acid that he took in his hippie days!
Birdie “Gordon is drooling for hot hippie chicks”.
About all I can do right these days is drool, never mind drool for.
Drongo, my constructive contribution is returning the favor by holding a mirror up. Alternatively, I could point you toward one of the thousands of mesothelioma sufferers, those who have died of the disease or their surviving family and friends. I’m sure they’d love to hear about your little asbestos love-in. But your small minds are preoccupied with the color and motion of a one-off disaster, you lack the mental capacity and faculties to grasp the slow motion horror of the thousands condemned to gradually suffocate or drown in their own sputum. Any excuse to engage in your culture wars, your vileness is beneath contempt.
Ian Mott, first it was the “metroscum”, now it’s the “dominant rural clique”. Get a grip man! You’re a paranoid freak disappearing up your own siege mentality. The metroscum, dominant rural clique and greenies are coming round to torch you mate! Your only escape is a brick fortress in the ‘burbs, or a watchtower in the paddocks surrounded by acres of concrete.
“The fire!!! The fire!!! It’s a conspiracy I tells ya!!”
No-one’s listening to the spray laden, eye popping rants of you rednecks anymore. You gave the game away by trampling over the dead to push your backward looking agendas. You had a minor victory early by igniting ignorance and base emotion in a minority of fellow travellers but, in the process you exposed the ideological, moral and intellectual bankruptcy at the heart of your twisted conceptions.
You right wing loonies can’t take a trick, you’re getting smashed in every realm these days.
Wars? Check. Economy? Check. Environment? Check.
You’re a pack of losers who’d struggle for a gig as sideshow freaks.
FOH,
I am not denying that it happened!
I am trying to find out who was responsible.
Shining a mirror on me is not going to shed any light on that problem.
If you can’t see that you shouldn’t be here.
OK? Now, try some rational debate.
It’s really patethic that Jennifer is a nanny for a kindergarten for old demented men!
Birdie “It’s really patethic that Jennifer is a nanny for a kindergarten for old demented men”
Really?
Blogs like this have replaced our comic books!
Phantom,
Do we recall the good old days when the blog was called a SCIENTIFIC blog! ( cough, cough)
Ann,
That cough of yours is a worry. Might be asbestos related.
I’m a bit that way myself.
Festival, your last post epitomises the concept of the articulate bimbo.
It was George Bernard Shaw in Pygmalion, a.k.a. My Fair Lady, who punctured the belief that any idea presented by someone with a complete command of the language must, automatically, be a superior notion to an idea presented by someone with a lesser command of language, ie from a lower class etc.
Your froth has all the outward appearance of intelligent comment but you betrayed a serious comprehension deficit. My reference to a “dominant rural clique” was purely hypothetical, presented as antithesis, as most competent readers would readily understand. But you have either failed to comprehend this fairly straight forward language or you have deliberately chosen to portray it as some sort of paranoid response on my part.
But do keep it up. Your total lack of substantive comment merely highlights the lengths that you and your kind will go to stiffle debate and defame contributors under the gutless protection of a pseudonym.
I’ve been searching for info on asbestos building survey and your post regarding Jennifer Marohasy » Asbestos and Rebuilding After the Victorian Bushfires is spot on!