911 Blogger: Statement Of September 11th Advocates Regarding The Release Of The NIST Final Draft Of Collapse Of WTC7

For Immediate Release
September 26, 2008
?NIST has finally released its long awaited investigative report regarding the collapse of World Trade Center 7. WTC 7 was the third building in the World Trade Center Complex to collapse at 5:20 PM on September 11, 2001. However, this building was not hit by an airplane.
As family members of 9/11 victims, we were extremely interested in the findings of this report. We had hoped that NIST’s report would serve to explain the cause of a total collapse of a conventional steel building and be able to refute the rampant conspiracy theories. We also hoped that this report, in conjunction with NIST’s final reports on WTC 1 and 2, would offer recommendations for improved building and fire codes to ensure public safety in ALL buildings going forward.
While we feel that technical experts should review, critique and replicate the findings within this report, we also feel that we must express our concerns based on public comments by NIST regarding their findings.
Over the past seven years, the Families of the 9/11 Victims have been repeatedly told by fire experts, engineers and architects that we should NOT FOCUS our efforts on advocating for building and fire code changes based on the collapse of the WTC 1 and 2 towers. We were continuously reminded that the crashing of airplanes into buildings was a unique event. Additionally, we were told that the design and construction of WTC Towers 1 and 2 was unique and that there were no other buildings of that particular height or design in the world. We were repeatedly told that the key was WTC 7 since this building was of conventional design and height, yet it too collapsed without the unique event of an airplane striking it.

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