Reply #14: Some unsolicited free help ...

[OudeVanDagen]

"It is clear that the top 35 or so floors have snapped off and are toppling eastward." What you are trying to describe is what structural engineers would call 'drift' which is a radical relationship or disassociation of one floor to the floor above and or below. Drift initiates collapse sequences in multi storied structures.

"But what could possibly cause the top section to disintegrate?" That would be the inability of the disassociated section to dampen itself.

"this section would fall as one piece (like a tree in the forest)." It's not a tree, it's a 200 X 200 foot section of building weighing several thousand tons. Weight wins.

"this section had been laced with explosives and was undergoing a controlled demolition" But there has been no evidence of explosives found. No residues, no tear-out, no graining, no delaminations, nothing to support that theory.

And some unsolicited free advice ... check the reports and litigation records of prior structural collapses (KC Hyatt Regency, Kemper Arena, and any others I've often listed) ... and find out about the failures of structural connections ... about drift ... about thermal load and dynamic load influences ... and to find out about the process used by investigators. The most recent newsworthy collapse was in Cairo ... web news outlets have offered plenty of fresh info on the protocols of collapse investigation.