"danny burstein" wrote in message
...
In "John Smith"
writes:

It appears you only have to cause one floor to drop in that type of
building
to bring it down. On the History Channel they have a program called
Engineering Disasters, and in one of the shows they addressed that very
issue. They had actual films of a building that fell during construction
in just the way the WTC fell. After much testing they found that rebar
had
been placed 1/2 inch off from where it was supposed to be in the floor.
As
the building got taller there was enough weight placed on a lower floor
and
it failed. The building went straight down, just like the WTC, killing a
bunch of workers. All this because of some rebar in the wrong place.

Sounds like (more or less) they're describing
the pancaking of L'Ambiance Plaza in
Bridgeport, Ct., back in (clickety click) 1987

( and even if they're not, it's a good read...)

short version: the building was a "lift slab"
structure, where the floors were built up
at ground level, then lifted by crane to
their destination height, and attached to
the columns. First would be the top floor,
then ( top -1 ), ( top -2 ), rinse, lather, repeat.

One of the upper floors came loose, fell down, and
the rest joined up.

A couple of cites:
http://www.pubs.asce.org/WWWdisplay.cgi?9204513

http://www.fire.nist.gov/bfrlpubs/bu...PDF/b94023.pdf (pdf)

and, for good measu

http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/anal...lambiance.html

( note that the last includes some commentary which
is full of [expletive deleted], such as the claim that
"The rubble of the L'Ambiance Plaza building contained
clearly recognizable stacks of floor slabs, contrasting
with the striking absence of a single photograph showing
a piece of floor slab or even steel truss at Ground Zero...)


Great links, thanks. I do think the building they had on the film was in
Florida, but I seem to remember them saying the name L'Ambiance Plaza when
talking about other building that had fallen. There was a guy doing a video
tape during the construction so you got to see it come down.

Although it is hard to tell from the photos shown, it sure looks like there
were pieces of floor slab in some of them.