On Mon, 12 Jan 2004 03:27:11 GMT, Bjørnar Bolsøy wrote:
Alan Minyard wrote in
:
On Sat, 10 Jan 2004 21:17:22 GMT, "Bjørnar Bolsøy"
wrote:

Mark and Kim Smith wrote in
:

Well sure there were explosives. It's called jet fuel and
oxygen. These folks really need to learn how those building
were built before they start coming up with these dumb
theories.

Is it likely to assume that the fuel burned up in the explosion
when the airplane impacted?

No, there would be a great deal of fuel remaining. Remember that
the "explosion" would rob itself of Oxygen.

Looking at the video of the south tower impact, doesn't the huge
fireball outside the building seem to suggest that much, if not
most, of the fuel burned up on the outside?

No. It suggests that enough fuel to create a fireball several
hundred feet in diameter burned up outside the south tower.

FEMA's World Trade Center Building Performance Study [1]
estimates that the amount of fuel consumed in the fireball
was between 1,000 and 3,000 gallons. The 767 that hit the
south tower was carrying about 10,000 gallons of fuel, so
that leaves between 7,000 and 9,000 gallons of fuel to help
start the fires in the building.

The FEMA report assumes the fireballs generated by the impact
of AA 11 on the north tower were similar in size, and that a
similar amount of fuel remained after the impact. No estimate
was made because there is no detailed video footage of the
fireballs from the first impact.

The bottom line is that a lot of fuel was consumed in the
post-impact fireballs, but there was a whole lot more left
over.

The FEMA study estimates that most of the fuel that remained
on the impact floors of the towers was consumed in the first
five minutes or so after impact, fully involving almost the
entire contents of several floors of each tower in the fires.


ljd

[1] The FEMA study is available in PDF form at

http://www.fema.gov/library/wtcstudy.shtm

The discussion of the initial impact and development
of the fires is in chapter 2, pp 2-21 and 2-22.