Quote:
Originally Posted by Chanda  The giant freaking hole was on the corner of the building. The damage wasn't equally distributed throughout the building, which is why, scientifically, it should never have collapsed straight down. |
You have no idea what you're talking about, the hole extended 1/3 across the south facade and 1/4 into the interior in a building which was designed in such a way that each outer structural column was responsible for supporting 2,000 square feet (186 square meters) of floor space, this initial local failure combined with an unfought raging inferno to initiate a vertical progression of the initial local failure occurring up to the east penthouse, and as the large floor bays became unable to redistribute the loads, it brought down the interior structure below the east penthouse; and then triggered by damage due to the vertical failure, caused horizontal progression of the failure across the lower floors (in the region of floors 5 and 7 that were much thicker and more heavily reinforced than the rest of the floors) resulting in a disproportionate collapse of the entire structure.
Basically huge chunk of building missing + unfought fires = collapsing building.
