On this week's episode of 9/11 Free Fall, fire protection engineer Scott Grainger and structural engineer Kamal Obeid join host Andy Steele to discuss Leroy Hulsey’s presentation of his Building 7 study to the Structural Engineers Association of Arizona this week. Grainger and Obeid also share their thoughts on how educating the engineering community is critical to bringing about a new 9/11 investigation.
Andy Steele:
Welcome to 9/11 Free Fall. I'm the host, Andy Steele. Today I'm joined by Scott Grainger and Kamal Obeid. Scott has been licensed as a civil engineer and fire protection engineer in Arizona and other states and has been in civil and fire protection design and consulting for 43 years. His emphasis has been in forensic engineering and the investigation of system and equipment failures. He appeared in AE911Truth's most recent film, SEVEN, and of course, is a signatory to AE911Truth's petition calling for a new investigation into the destruction of the three World Trade Center towers on September 11th, 2001.
He's joined by Kamal Obeid, who is a board member for AE911Truth, and he also appears in the documentary SEVEN. Kamal holds a master's degree in civil engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. And he's been a practicing civil and structural engineer in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1980 and a licensed structural engineer since 1985. Guys, welcome back to the show.
Kamal Obeid:
Thanks for having us.
Scott Grainger:
Thanks, Andy.
Andy Steele:
So, we've got some action going on here in the area of outreach to engineers, and Scott has played a large part in it. And I know you've been doing some great efforts too, as well, Kamal, and of course, Roland Angle, with the Project Due Diligence, who isn't here today but should get a lot of credit for what he's done. We're going to be talking about that.
It's going center around the World Trade Center 7 study done from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. And, believe it or not, there may be somebody out there who just woke up to all this stuff last week — their mind is blown, they don't know all the ins and outs and particulars of what's gone on with this movement in the past couple of years. So Kamal, since you're on our board here, can you please a remind our audience what the World Trade Center 7 study out of the University of Alaska Fairbanks is all about?
Kamal Obeid:
Sure. Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth raised funds privately to essentially commission the study. We had been looking around for a long time to try to figure out who would be the best leader of that study, and we found Leroy Hulsey, who is a professor of civil engineering specializing in structural engineering. And his specialty is actually finite element analysis, which is really what is needed for a comprehensive analysis of this building. And the purpose was to look at this thing objectively with no preconception, try to figure out how the building collapsed and what was the mechanism of its collapse. And then also look at what the NIST study had done and try to mimic those mechanisms that the NIST study developed as the initiating mechanism for the collapse and the various different cascading events and stuff that they alleged caused the building collapse. And look at all of those and try to figure out is it this or is it that?
And so basically part of the study was to go through the NIST detail by detail to try to see what happens once they take the connection out, basically the way NIST said they took it out, and then see what happens. And they could not duplicate, at all, the collapse that NIST came up with. NIST showed, at the end of their study, after they did all the various different mechanisms of collapse that brought the supposedly what's called the global collapse of the building about, they basically came up with a model that looked like a crumpling beer can. That, essentially, the building did not look at all while it was collapsing, after they triggered all these things that were unlikely to happen, to happen. And still the building looked like a crumpling structure, and it did not look at all like the actual mechanism of collapse.
So, that's part one of the study. Then part two of the study essentially is to… what needs to happen to cause the building to collapse the way it did? And so that's what Leroy, with his team, studied and basically analyzed to try to figure out how they brought the building down. And it turns out that the only way that could happen is by taking out eight floors simultaneously of the building, the columns on eight floors, in order to cause the structure to look identical while it's collapsing to the actual footage.
So that's really the study in a nutshell. That's what Leroy did. And he will tell you, as he's doing his presentation, he will tell you exactly what he assumed and all the things… what brought about all the different criteria that he put into the study, whether it's the heat transfer mechanisms or the fire, how fire distributes around these with the structure and what caused the... which is really Scott's department... and then the other structural components. So, failing this connection and that connection, how that happened and what NIST came up with and what he came up with, and then leaves it up to you, the audience, to basically conclude how this whole thing happened.
Scott Grainger:
And the interesting thing about the NIST report, and we're assuming here, Andy, that everybody knows what NIST is, and that's basically the federal government. So that report, the NIST report, is the federal government's final analysis of what they think happened. And one of the major issues that I'm very aware of in that analysis, and I've got a copy of the darn thing in my office here, is they, NIST, did not provide access to the computer analysis details that they ran. They don't give you that. And without that it’s really not… you're unable to actually verify or find where any errors that they made in there were made. They don't want to let that information out. They claim it's... what's the word, Kamal? Anyway, it's private.
Kamal Obeid:
Undermines public security or whatever.
Andy Steele:
It jeopardizes public safety.
Kamal Obeid:
Right. Public safety. Yeah..
Scott Grainger:
Yeah. Right. They're looking out for us. So, yeah. And then, so, in the report that Hulsey did, he demonstrated that if the building would collapse the way that NIST claimed that it would, well, it wouldn't. Not really. So what then he determined, like Kamal said, what would have to happen in order to make the building fall the way it did, and you had the sever all the columns on the first eight floors on the building of that’s 50 floors tall, I think it is, with the penthouse. Of course, that's far from what the NIST report said. But if you do that, according to the analysis, and you can actually gain access to the routines that Hulsey used if you really want. All of the references are there in the report and the sources for him. And you can go, and if you've got the program capacity. Five, what is it? Six hundred and some megabytes, or gigabytes, gigabytes of data in order to run all of that. But the report itself is only about 60, 80 pages long.
Kamal Obeid:
Right. And let me just add one thing about the report.
Scott Grainger:
… Hulsey's report.
Kamal Obeid:
Yeah. The columns that were severed in the model were above the Con Ed substation. So they started, I think he was looking between floors eight and 13 or whatever… eight floors in order for that to happen. And he explained that to me actually, in order for what... I mean, the building would come down with less columns removed. However, you need to develop enough of what's called a pile driver of the upper floors smashing down on the lower floor to cause complete collapse of the building like that. So that's what he had to do.
Scott Grainger:
Yeah. And the complete collapse that we're talking about was that that collapse really didn't get a whole lot of press the time that it occurred. It fell almost entirely within its footprint. Like the buildings you've seen collapse in Las Vegas, primarily, when they intentionally demolish a building. And a lot of people have seen that occur. That's really interesting. But that's the kind of collapse that actually occurred, you know, completely within its footprint. And that takes a tremendous amount of design in order to make it fall that way. That's not just a simple matter of going in there and cutting every column, which, obviously, there's well over a hundred of those. It's quite a feat.
Kamal Obeid:
It's an art form, I suppose.
Scott Grainger:
Oh yeah. Definitely.
Kamal Obeid:
It takes planning and studying in order to really fall into its footprint. I mean, that's so that you don't cause damage to adjacent properties and try to minimize. And basically just bring this thing down in a nice, neat pile. So you can basically haul it away, which is what happened is that they hauled all the evidence away. It was gone very quickly.
Scott Grainger:
Very.
Andy Steele:
That's because we can't be looking into what they have done. And I'll tell you what, this report put up by Dr. Hulsey was very anticipated for a number of years, and a lot of people were following this and it is very difficult to wave your hand and say that Dr. Hulsey and the University of Alaska Fairbanks is merely a conspiracy theorist. They've tried that on AE911Truth for a number of years, but now here it is coming from another source. And we've got two conflicting reports here. How do you rectify that? How do you look at the two of them and come to some kind of conclusion on which is better? Well, the first step is to actually look at it, and we've had outreaches to Congress to read this report. We sent them copies of the DVD SEVEN, which both of you are in, as I mentioned, and it's available at our store ae911truth.org. You can buy the DVD or you can go on Amazon Prime.
You can see these two gentlemen. You can see a summary of what this whole study was about and listened to Dr. Hulsey and others basically tell you that what NIST has given us as this official story, this official conclusion of why Building 7 fell, can't possibly happen. And then that opens the door to so many other questions about September 11th. But we just focus on the engineering aspects here. Now I want to make sure that we bring attention to this because this is a very good accomplishment. There is an event, and when I say event, I'm talking, it is going to be online. Engineers are going to be able to watch this. I think Scott can tell our audience about it a little bit better. So Scott, please tell our audience what's going on here with Dr. Hulsey on Thursday.
Scott Grainger:
Okay, Andy. Be glad to. The Structural Engineers Association of Arizona has their annual meeting coming up on the 10th and 11th of this month, which is this coming Thursday and Friday. And Dr. Hulsey is on the agenda for that meeting on the 11th. He'll be speaking for an hour and a half from noon, Mountain Standard Time, to 1:30 Thursday afternoon on the subject of the report that he authored.
Andy Steele:
Right, and this audience will be getting this program after that presentation has happened. So that is okay, because basically we want to tell our audience that this is happening, that this kind of outreach is going on. It is so important to reach out to the engineers. I mean, that is why AE911Truth exists. Shouldn't even really have to comment on why it is so important that engineers be on board with this issue, that they raise these questions, because, of course, with their background and their knowledge should be the first ones to speak on such an issue of pro or con. And if they're con, they need to raise some valid points to refute the University of Alaska study.
Scott Grainger:
Yeah, you're right. You're 100% correct that engineers should be able to discuss this openly and without fear of any reprisals. But, in fact, that really is not the way life is right now. And we honor The Structural Engineers Association of Arizona for them agreeing so willingly to have this presentation during their annual meeting. There are engineering organizations that are not anywhere near as open to listen to more than one viewpoint, a collapse in this case. And SDA Arizona is one that's very open. So we're happy that they're working with us.
Andy Steele:
Exactly. Anybody that will open the door and listen to information is practicing real science. And it isn't the first time in history that science has taken a back seat to politics or worries or superstitions or whatever, but in an open and transparent society issues like this should be discussed.
Kamal, I want to ask this because it's been 20 years, we're coming on the 20th anniversary here, and I hear people who are not engineers say, "Oh, it was 20 years ago. Who cares? Maybe it was a controlled demolition. At this point, who cares?" But engineers, they're in science. They have a science, they studied their subject for all of these years. So they're obviously very interested in... I mean, is this an issue that engineers can lose interest in? I mean, even if they believe the official story, shouldn't this be something that they should know a lot about considering that a fire for the first time in history brought down an entire skyscraper in only six and a half seconds?
Kamal Obeid:
Well, I think science doesn't have a shelf life, does not have an expiration date. It is imperative for engineers to really understand what caused this collapse and have it in the record. That is for the sake of the profession, we have to be doing a job that is ethical, that is based on facts and based on science. We can't just have something in the record that's bogus. That would be a blemish on the profession forever. I mean, maybe not now, but under the current environments, but then who knows. When people look back at what has been done. Have we been sitting on our hands, essentially observing this force with the official story being put forward as science. I think that should be unacceptable to any practicing scientist or engineer.
Scott Grainger:
The engineering profession as a whole has a very good reputation amongst the population. If you look at one of those lists and see who is at the top, and a used car sales person is down to the bottom of the list. At least that's what it used to be. And engineers were right up there at the top with doctors and so forth. This sort of thing can ruin that kind of a reputation and the faith that people have in engineers to actually design and construct a building as large, tall, complicated as any one of the three of those structures are. And I would emphasize again what Kamal said, and Andy, you did as well: On that day, there had never been, when folks woke up for breakfast that day in New York, there'd never been a steel building fail and collapse due to fire. They might've weakened, but none of them never, in the entire history of steel structures, never collapsed. And on that day, there was three.
Well, that fact alone makes you have to wonder what on earth was so different about what happened that day? And it might remind you that this is not the first time that an airplane hit a tall building. The Empire State Building is one of those been hit, and it didn't collapse. There's something wrong. We need more information to better understand. Otherwise, one of the after effects of this has been considerable additional costs to all of us in the form of additional costs because of changes in the building code, because too many people actually believe what the government's report said, the NIST report, and how it failed.
So there's been changes, additional costs, related to protection of the steel frame and additional provisions for evacuating a structure that, to my mind, really weren't necessary, but they were the results and aftermath of this claim that these three structures, only two of which got hit by an airplane, failed.
Well, as Hulsey's report says, the buildings didn't fail. They were caused to collapse. And certainly in the case of World Trade Center 7, there was no airplane that hit that building. That building collapsed for very different reasons. So, anyway, just adding to what Kamal said.
Andy Steele:
That's right. And if you are an engineer signatory at AE911Truth or an engineer who hasn't signed yet, I would say first, if you're the latter, go ahead and sign that petition. Put your name where it counts here and join the over 3,000 architects and engineers who have called into question why these buildings came down and want to re-investigate it. Through an engineer signatory, you can do the same thing that Scott has managed to do. All it is is getting the presentation put forth. If you're a part of an engineering organization, it doesn't matter which one it is, if you can get Dr. Hulsey to appear before them. And the one good thing about what we've been experiencing for the past, oh God, how long has it been since March of 2020? That we've had the Covid world going on? The one good thing out of that is that we've had more events happening online.
So there's not even travel involved for any of these parties. They can do it right from their home and make their presentations and reach more people through the internet. So please, if you've got those connections, if you can get their ears at these organizations and get Dr. Hulsey before them, he can make this presentation and we can awaken more minds. Now, something I just want to ask really quick. So let's say somebody is not an engineer. Let's say they're one of the used car salesman you're talking about out there or a garbage man. Is it exclusively engineers that can have an educated opinion on this? I mean, can people look at Building 7 falling and also participate in the overall debate happening throughout the world on this issue? We'll start with Kamal.
Kamal Obeid:
Well, I think anybody with an inquisitive mind that is willing to do the research, and it doesn't have to be that technical, but actually just use logic and essentially delve into the information that's out there. And in general, all these scientific reports are put together, in large part, the summaries or the abstracts, or portions of the reports are written in layman's language that is just all logical. I mean, just take a look from a logical standpoint, with an open mind, that's all we ask. And I think people… we should give everybody the benefit of the doubt that they can actually really get to understand why this happened and how it happened. And that's what is needed, in fact. We need people with an open mind with an inquisitive brain that basically look at the science and decide for themselves. That's how a critical mass is built.
Otherwise, it's just us engineers. I mean, that's great. I mean, that's good, but in order we, maybe, we are the ones to initiate that because of the scientific part of it and what we determined out of our analysis and studies, but still that has to be propagated by the general public. And so the general public has to be convinced this makes sense, or this doesn't make sense and then act accordingly.
Scott Grainger:
Right. And then it's important for the general public to understand that it's significant. And besides the fact that there was the approximately 3,000 individuals that died that day and many, many more died as a result of work that they did in that collapsed structure, that's all of the contamination and so forth. But they certainly... I agree 100% with what Kamal said. Nobody is prohibited from having an opinion on this subject, particularly if they've taken the time to look at the material. The AE911 website has a lot of video material from that day and shortly thereafter of the components of the building. Videos, many, many videos of the actual collapses and some explanations to go with that, to describe if you're not at all familiar with what you're seeing, what's happening in the images. And to give you a sense of... I was going to say comfort, but there's nothing comfortable about this. The sense of understanding that buildings don't collapse uniformally from fires. They don't, and actually steel frame buildings don't collapse from fires period until that day. And there hasn't been any since.
And it leaves you to make up your own mind about your... it's a common sense situation. And as Kamal emphasized, for all the engineers involved, and I believe that's a, relatively speaking, small percentage of the entire population, although it's a good percent of the numbers of engineers and architects, but we need support from the general population. We need them to understand why it's important and the significance of the collapse and how it's continues to this day and for as long as I can see to cost us in the form of changes in building codes and fire codes that were unnecessary. And it's a blemish on our country to accept a report that is simply not supportive. The government report in this case is the questionable report.
Andy Steele:
Exactly. And of course, juries and court cases, not everyone on a jury, actually, most people in a jury are not educated on the sciences that get presented in that courtroom. Typically that's presented to them and they make their own decision. And the decision that those juries come to end up being the verdict. So if you know that Building 7 was a controlled demolition, or even if you question it, just use your physics and common sense, speak loud, speak proud, and call for a new investigation. Guys, you are doing some great work out there with your outreach, and thank you so much for it. And thank you for coming on 9/11 Free Fall today.
Kamal Obeid:
Thank you, Andy. Thank you so much.
Scott Grainger:
Thanks, Andy. Thanks, Kamal.
