Reference: http://911review.com/articles/griffin/nyc1.html
Philadelphia Fire 1991
In
1991, a huge fire in Philadelphia’s One Meridian Plaza lasted for 18 hours and
gutted 8 of the building’s 38 floors, but, said the FEMA report, although
“[b]eams and girders sagged and twisted . . . under severe fire exposures. . . ,
the columns continued to support their loads without obvious damage” (FEMA,
1991)
Scientific Experiments Mid
1990s
Another important comparison is afforded by a series of experiments run in Great
Britain in the mid-1990s to see what kind of damage could be done to steel-frame
buildings by subjecting them to extremely hot, all-consuming fires that lasted
for many hours. FEMA, having reviewed those experiments, said: “Despite the
temperature of the steel beams reaching 800-900°C (1,500-1,700°F) in three of
the tests. . . , no collapse was observed in any of the six experiments” (1988,
Appendix A).
Caracas fire 2004
In Caracas a fire in a 50-story building raged for 17 hours, completely
gutting the building’s top 20 floors, and yet it did not collapse (Nieto, 2004).