Alferd_Packer
6th May 2008, 02:55 PM
The following is a long quote, it is burried in a much larger document (http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/Event/2002/jun/nist/pcs2/nist-public2.htm) and should be read in it's entirety.
Roger Morse, Morse Associates: My name’s Roger Morse. I’m an architect. My practice is centered largely around forensic investigations of buildings. As part of that work, I investigated the fireproofing in hundreds of buildings, maybe in thousands of locations. One of the things that I was called upon to do was to look at the fireproofing in the World Trade Center. I did that over about a ten year period of time, starting in the early 1990s, and the last time I was in the building was in June of 2001. There were problems with the fireproofing in the World Trade Center.
I thought that NIST ought to know of those problems, so that was why that I’m here today, that – please understand that the problems that existed in the World Trade Center towers are not unique to the World Trade Center towers. These are generic sort of problems, they exist in many high rise buildings all over the United States, certainly, and it’s to my knowledge, into Europe.
This is a slide of the fireproofing on a long span joists. This is the end of the long span joist. The red color that you see toward the bottom is the red lead primer that’s on the joist. You can see that the fireproofing in this location is extremely thin. It’s certainly not the three-quarters of an inch that was indicated in the ASCE report.
Another view of the end of one of the long span joists. You can see red lead on the bottom strand of the truss, the diagonal is going up to the outside wall. This is the end of the long span joist. You can see that the fireproofing thickness on the diagonals is certainly not three quarters of an inch. This is again one of the diagonals, coming to the end of the truss. You can see the red lead on the top of the truss and you can see that the diagonal coming to the connection point to outside walls is basically completely exposed.
This is not a situation where the fireproofing was knocked off later in the occupancy of the building. You can see cement paste has run down over the surface of the red lead. This is a place where the fireproofing was never applied in this particular location. Or if it was applied, it was applied on the back side, on the side away from where this photograph was taken. And you have the same kind of situation on the secondary trusses, these ran from the – from main truss to main truss and supported the floor. You can see in the main truss coming forward in the photograph that you can see the red lead where the fireproofing is missing completely from the webs of the truss on the tributary truss. You can see that the bottom chord, it’s not fireproofed at all, and that the diagonals are thin and have missing fireproofing.
Again, it’s the same sort of situation. One of the things that happens, generally, in fireproofing applications, is that the fireproofing is applied from the floor, and the applicator simply may not be able to see the areas – all the areas that need to be covered with the fireproofing material. Also, the fireproofing on a long span joist, or any kind of joist construction is very difficult, it’s sort of the round rod and the small angles that are in the top and the bottom of the truss – makes for a very difficult target for the applicator.
Again, this is one of the tributary trusses and you can see red lead at the top on the angles that form the top cord of the truss. The joist to wall connection, there were problems with that, you can see in this photograph, we have the end of the trusses, the long-span joist. They’re sitting on an angle seat that’s welded to the face of the exterior columns. You can see that the fireproofing material in this location is a wetspray gypsum, plaster sort of fireproofing material. You can see that it’s very thin. It’s so thin that it hasn’t even completely disguised the shape of the bolts that are connecting the truss to the seat.
You can see that the trusses are not fully seated, they’re not all the way to the outside wall. The thickness of the fireproofing material on the exterior wall, the inside face of the exterior wall is also very thin. You can see that because again, it hasn't disguised or hidden the bolt pattern where the spandrel panels were bolted together. This was supposed to have a fire rating of four hours, according to the drawings of the building, that would take somewhere around an inch to an inch and a half of this fireproofing material.
Again, this is one of the connections, you can see that the fireproofing material is very thin on the, on the seat that's supporting the end of the long span joists. If this were properly fireproofed, the entire space behind the seat would be filled with fireproofing material. You need, the space behind the seat is less than an inch. You need more than an inch of material to be able to completely protect that, so that that would be justly completely imbedded in the fireproofing material.
On the core columns, I looked at the core columns up to the 78th floor. I wasn't able to get access to them above that. The fireproofing on the core columns was failing in story high sheets, it was just falling off of the face of the columns. What had happened was that the fireproofing was applied to rust that was on the steel, the rust was coming free from the underlying steel of the columns, and the fireproofing was failing as a result. This is a picture of the face of the column, also it's the face of the column showing the rust scale.
I found upon careful examination that the fireproofing was sticking just fine to the rust, the problem was that the rust was coming loose from the face of the steel. When I looked at the back of the rust deposits that remained on the column, I saw that there was cement, excuse me, cement paste on the back of the rust flakes, so that it was clear that the rust existed at the time of the fireproofing installation.
The fireproofing on the columns in the core, the beams in the core, in the elevator shafts, this was again below the 78th floor, were missing in a number of locations due to impact blows from the cables in the elevator shafts. Why would these kind of problems arise in any kind of building construction, any kind of high-rise building construction? One of the problems is obstructions from ductwork, you can see that the ductwork has made it virtually impossible to get to the, for the fireproofing applicator to get to the top chord of the truss in this location.
Ceilings that are in place before the fireproofing is installed can make it difficult for the applicator, and then difficult for the inspector to determine what's gone on. You can see this is the location where the structure for the ceiling was in place prior to the application of the fireproofing. And later work that occurs in the building, where the fireproofing may be completely removed in locations, either during later construction in the building. This is a location where the fireproofing has been removed from the column during the installation of the elevators. Or where conduit or that sort of thing being installed, that there's degradation of the fireproofing system.
The fireproofing systems are installed at the point at which the fireproofing work is complete. They're not inspected again prior to the occupancy of the building, so that this kind of damage does not become apparent. There are some errors in the ASCE report, there was a dry spray fireproofing, mineral wool fireproofing with a Portland and gypsum binder, Portland cement gypsum binder, that was used on the long span joists, the floor trench headers, the outside face of the outside wall on the columns and beams and the core. In the inside face of the outside wall and the long span joist supports were protected by a wet spray fireproofing.
The other thing that, I'm just about of time here, I'd like to point out that the fireproofing that was used in the floors that were impacted by the airplanes was just, were fireproofing that had no asbestos in them. This was a changeover point in the technology of fire protection in buildings, from non-asbestos to asbestos containing fireproofing, and alas, the non-asbestos materials weren't as good a material as were the asbestos containing materials. They were less dense, less uniform, less cohesive on the surface.
This was a time before there were tests to assure the quality of a fireproofing installations, to be able to make field tests, field quality assurance tests, to assure that the fireproofing was installed properly. Had those tests existed, they came into existence in 1977, the deficiencies in the fireproofing that I showed in my earlier slides would have been discovered and would have been corrected. Thank you.
The only real conspiacy associated with the WTC is the association of the company that installed the fireproofing when the building was built with a certain Mr. John Goti.
Roger Morse, Morse Associates: My name’s Roger Morse. I’m an architect. My practice is centered largely around forensic investigations of buildings. As part of that work, I investigated the fireproofing in hundreds of buildings, maybe in thousands of locations. One of the things that I was called upon to do was to look at the fireproofing in the World Trade Center. I did that over about a ten year period of time, starting in the early 1990s, and the last time I was in the building was in June of 2001. There were problems with the fireproofing in the World Trade Center.
I thought that NIST ought to know of those problems, so that was why that I’m here today, that – please understand that the problems that existed in the World Trade Center towers are not unique to the World Trade Center towers. These are generic sort of problems, they exist in many high rise buildings all over the United States, certainly, and it’s to my knowledge, into Europe.
This is a slide of the fireproofing on a long span joists. This is the end of the long span joist. The red color that you see toward the bottom is the red lead primer that’s on the joist. You can see that the fireproofing in this location is extremely thin. It’s certainly not the three-quarters of an inch that was indicated in the ASCE report.
Another view of the end of one of the long span joists. You can see red lead on the bottom strand of the truss, the diagonal is going up to the outside wall. This is the end of the long span joist. You can see that the fireproofing thickness on the diagonals is certainly not three quarters of an inch. This is again one of the diagonals, coming to the end of the truss. You can see the red lead on the top of the truss and you can see that the diagonal coming to the connection point to outside walls is basically completely exposed.
This is not a situation where the fireproofing was knocked off later in the occupancy of the building. You can see cement paste has run down over the surface of the red lead. This is a place where the fireproofing was never applied in this particular location. Or if it was applied, it was applied on the back side, on the side away from where this photograph was taken. And you have the same kind of situation on the secondary trusses, these ran from the – from main truss to main truss and supported the floor. You can see in the main truss coming forward in the photograph that you can see the red lead where the fireproofing is missing completely from the webs of the truss on the tributary truss. You can see that the bottom chord, it’s not fireproofed at all, and that the diagonals are thin and have missing fireproofing.
Again, it’s the same sort of situation. One of the things that happens, generally, in fireproofing applications, is that the fireproofing is applied from the floor, and the applicator simply may not be able to see the areas – all the areas that need to be covered with the fireproofing material. Also, the fireproofing on a long span joist, or any kind of joist construction is very difficult, it’s sort of the round rod and the small angles that are in the top and the bottom of the truss – makes for a very difficult target for the applicator.
Again, this is one of the tributary trusses and you can see red lead at the top on the angles that form the top cord of the truss. The joist to wall connection, there were problems with that, you can see in this photograph, we have the end of the trusses, the long-span joist. They’re sitting on an angle seat that’s welded to the face of the exterior columns. You can see that the fireproofing material in this location is a wetspray gypsum, plaster sort of fireproofing material. You can see that it’s very thin. It’s so thin that it hasn’t even completely disguised the shape of the bolts that are connecting the truss to the seat.
You can see that the trusses are not fully seated, they’re not all the way to the outside wall. The thickness of the fireproofing material on the exterior wall, the inside face of the exterior wall is also very thin. You can see that because again, it hasn't disguised or hidden the bolt pattern where the spandrel panels were bolted together. This was supposed to have a fire rating of four hours, according to the drawings of the building, that would take somewhere around an inch to an inch and a half of this fireproofing material.
Again, this is one of the connections, you can see that the fireproofing material is very thin on the, on the seat that's supporting the end of the long span joists. If this were properly fireproofed, the entire space behind the seat would be filled with fireproofing material. You need, the space behind the seat is less than an inch. You need more than an inch of material to be able to completely protect that, so that that would be justly completely imbedded in the fireproofing material.
On the core columns, I looked at the core columns up to the 78th floor. I wasn't able to get access to them above that. The fireproofing on the core columns was failing in story high sheets, it was just falling off of the face of the columns. What had happened was that the fireproofing was applied to rust that was on the steel, the rust was coming free from the underlying steel of the columns, and the fireproofing was failing as a result. This is a picture of the face of the column, also it's the face of the column showing the rust scale.
I found upon careful examination that the fireproofing was sticking just fine to the rust, the problem was that the rust was coming loose from the face of the steel. When I looked at the back of the rust deposits that remained on the column, I saw that there was cement, excuse me, cement paste on the back of the rust flakes, so that it was clear that the rust existed at the time of the fireproofing installation.
The fireproofing on the columns in the core, the beams in the core, in the elevator shafts, this was again below the 78th floor, were missing in a number of locations due to impact blows from the cables in the elevator shafts. Why would these kind of problems arise in any kind of building construction, any kind of high-rise building construction? One of the problems is obstructions from ductwork, you can see that the ductwork has made it virtually impossible to get to the, for the fireproofing applicator to get to the top chord of the truss in this location.
Ceilings that are in place before the fireproofing is installed can make it difficult for the applicator, and then difficult for the inspector to determine what's gone on. You can see this is the location where the structure for the ceiling was in place prior to the application of the fireproofing. And later work that occurs in the building, where the fireproofing may be completely removed in locations, either during later construction in the building. This is a location where the fireproofing has been removed from the column during the installation of the elevators. Or where conduit or that sort of thing being installed, that there's degradation of the fireproofing system.
The fireproofing systems are installed at the point at which the fireproofing work is complete. They're not inspected again prior to the occupancy of the building, so that this kind of damage does not become apparent. There are some errors in the ASCE report, there was a dry spray fireproofing, mineral wool fireproofing with a Portland and gypsum binder, Portland cement gypsum binder, that was used on the long span joists, the floor trench headers, the outside face of the outside wall on the columns and beams and the core. In the inside face of the outside wall and the long span joist supports were protected by a wet spray fireproofing.
The other thing that, I'm just about of time here, I'd like to point out that the fireproofing that was used in the floors that were impacted by the airplanes was just, were fireproofing that had no asbestos in them. This was a changeover point in the technology of fire protection in buildings, from non-asbestos to asbestos containing fireproofing, and alas, the non-asbestos materials weren't as good a material as were the asbestos containing materials. They were less dense, less uniform, less cohesive on the surface.
This was a time before there were tests to assure the quality of a fireproofing installations, to be able to make field tests, field quality assurance tests, to assure that the fireproofing was installed properly. Had those tests existed, they came into existence in 1977, the deficiencies in the fireproofing that I showed in my earlier slides would have been discovered and would have been corrected. Thank you.
The only real conspiacy associated with the WTC is the association of the company that installed the fireproofing when the building was built with a certain Mr. John Goti.