In another video clip, Ashleigh Banfield of MSNBC is interviewing a woman when WTC 7 collapses in the background. Banfield: "This is it!" Newsman Brian Williams: "What we've been fearing all afternoon has apparently happened. We've been watching number 7 World Trade, which was part of the ancillary damage of the explosion and collapse of the other two." Watch it here:
Report from a worker in WTC 7:
http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=1918455&postcount=49Reports from firefighters about WTC 7's condition:
"The biggest decision we had to make was to clear the area and create a collapse zone around the severely damaged [WTC 7] building. A number of fire officers and companies assessed the damage to the building. The appraisals indicated that the building's integrity was in serious doubt." – Chief of Operations Daniel Nigro [Fire Engineering, 10/2002]
"7 World Trade was burning from the ground to the ceiling fully involved." –Firefighter Steve Modica
"So we go there and on the north and east side of 7 it didn't look like there was any damage at all, but then you looked on the south side of 7 there had to be a hole 20 stories tall in the building, with fire on several floors. Debris was falling down on the building and it didn't look good. But they had a hoseline operating. Like I said, it was hitting the sidewalk across the street, but eventually they pulled back too
Then we received an order from Fellini, we're going to make a move on 7. That was the first time really my stomach tightened up because the building didn't look good. I was figuring probably the standpipe systems were shot. There was no hydrant pressure. I wasn't really keen on the idea. Then this other officer I'm standing next to said, that building doesn't look straight. So I'm standing there. I'm looking at the building. It didn't look right, but, well, we'll go in, we'll see.
So we gathered up rollups and most of us had masks at that time. We headed toward 7. And just around we were about a hundred yards away and Butch Brandeis came running up. He said forget it, nobody's going into 7, there's creaking, there are noises coming out of there, so we just stopped. And probably about 10 minutes after that, Visconti, he was on West Street, and I guess he had another report of further damage either in some basements and things like that, so Visconti said nobody goes into 7, so that was the final thing and that was abandoned.
– Capt. Chris Boyle
"They told us to get out of there because they were worried about 7 World Trade Center, which is right behind it, coming down. ... I just remember it was tremendous, tremendous fires going on. Finally they pulled us out. They said all right, get out of that building because that 7, they were really worried about. They pulled us out of there and then they regrouped everybody on Vesey Street, between the water and West Street. They put everybody back in there. Finally it did come down. From there this is much later on in the day, because every day [sic] we were so worried about that build-ing we didn't really want to get people close. They were trying to limit the amount of people that were in there. Finally it did come down." - Richard Banaciski
"The most important operational decision to be made that afternoon was the collapse (Of the WTC towers) had damaged 7 World Trade Center, which is about a 50 story building, at Vesey between West Broadway and Washington Street. It had very heavy fire on many floors and I ordered the evacuation of an area sufficient around to protect our members, so we had to give up some rescue operations that were going on at the time and back the people away far enough so that if 7 World Trade did collapse, we [wouldn't] lose any more people. We continued to operate on what we could from that distance and approximately an hour and a half after that order was [given], at 5:30 in the af-ternoon, World Trade Center collapsed completely" - Daniel Nigro, Chief of Department
"Early on, there was concern that 7 World Trade Center might have been both impacted by the col-lapsing tower and had several fires in it and there was a concern that it might collapse. So we in-structed that a collapse area -- (Q. A collapse zone?) -- Yeah -- be set up and maintained so that when the expected collapse of 7 happened, we wouldn't have people working in it. There was considerable discussion with Con Ed regarding the substation in that building and the feeders and the oil coolants and so on. And their concern was of the type of fire we might have when it collapsed." - Chief Cruthers
"Then we found out, I guess around 3:00 [o'clock], that they thought 7 was going to collapse. So, of course, [we've] got guys all in this pile over here and the main concern was get everybody out, and I guess it took us over an hour and a half, two hours to get everybody out of there. (Q. Initially when you were there, you had said you heard a few Maydays?) Oh, yes. We had Maydays like crazy.... The heat must have been tremendous. There was so much [expletive] fire there. This whole pile was burning like crazy. Just the heat and the smoke from all the other buildings on fire, you [couldn't] see anything. So it took us a while and we ended up backing everybody out, and [that's] when 7 collapsed.... Basically, we fell back for 7 to collapse, and then we waited a while and it got a lot more organized, I would guess." - Lieutenant William Ryan
Firehouse: When you looked at the south side, how close were you to the base of that side?
Boyle: I was standing right next to the building, probably right next to it.
Firehouse: When you had fire on the 20 floors, was it in one window or many?
Boyle: There was a huge gaping hole and it was scattered throughout there. It was a huge hole. I would say it was probably about a third of it, right in the middle of it. And so after Visconti came down and said nobody goes in 7, we said all right, we'll head back to the command post.
– Capt. Chris Boyle
Hayden: By now, this is going on into the afternoon, and we were concerned about additional collapse, not only of the Marriott, because there was a good portion of the Marriott still standing, but also we were pretty sure that 7 World Trade Center would collapse. Early on, we saw a bulge in the southwest corner between floors 10 and 13, and we had put a transit on that and we were pretty sure she was going to collapse. You actually could see there was a visible bulge, it ran up about three floors. It came down about 5 o'clock in the afternoon, but by about 2 o'clock in the afternoon we realized this thing was going to collapse.
Firehouse: Was there heavy fire in there right away?
Hayden: No, not right away, and that's probably why it stood for so long because it took a while for that fire to develop. It was a heavy body of fire in there and then we didn't make any attempt to fight it. That was just one of those wars we were just going to lose. We were concerned about the col-lapse of a 47-story building there. We were worried about additional collapse there of what was remaining standing of the towers and the Marriott, so we started pulling the people back after a couple of hours of surface removal and searches along the surface of the debris. We started to pull guys back because we were concerned for their safety.
Firehouse: Chief Nigro said they made a collapse zone and wanted everybody away from number 7— did you have to get all of those people out?
Hayden: Yeah, we had to pull everybody back. It was very difficult. We had to be very forceful in getting the guys out. They didn't want to come out. There were guys going into areas that I wasn't even really comfortable with, because of the possibility of secondary collapses. We didn't know how stable any of this area was. We pulled everybody back probably by 3 or 3:30 in the afternoon. We said, this building is going to come down, get back. It came down about 5 o'clock or so, but we had every-body backed away by then. –Deputy Chief Peter Hayden
The next thing I did was we saw a fire starting to show at windows in 7 World Trade Center, decided to go in and try and see if there was anybody in the building and/or put out the fires, and we did a search from floor to floor of 7 World Trade Center passing fire on floors 3, 7, 9. The standpipes had no water. We tried to extinguish a few fires with cans. When we got to 11, there was just too much smoke and we decided that, without water, if we went any higher, we'd be on fool's mission.
So we left 7 World Trade Center, back down to the street, where I ran into Chief Coloe from the 1st Division, Captain Varriale, Engine 24, and Captain Varriale told Chief Coloe and myself that 7 World Trade Center was badly damaged on the south side and definitely in danger of collapse. Chief Coloe said we were going to evacuate the collapse zone around 7 World Trade Center, which we did. –Lieutenant Rudolph Weindler
WTC Building 7 appears to have suffered significant damage at some point after the WTC Towers had collapsed, according to firefighters at the scene. Firefighter Butch Brandies tells other firefighters that nobody is to go into Building 7 because of creaking and noises coming out of there. [Firehouse Magazine, 8/02]
"The firefighters made the decision fairly early on not to attempt to fight the fires, due in part to the damage to WTC 7 from the collapsing towers." FEMA WTC BPS, 5/1/2002, pp. 5-21
I remember at that time also they were worried about Building 7 because when the second tower came down, they were worried about parts of -- actually, when the first tower came down, they were worried about parts of Building 7 collapsing, so I remember getting into Building 7 and searching. –Firefighter Anthony Salerno
Battalion Chief John Norman later recalls, "At the edge of the south face you could see that it is very heavily damaged." [Firehouse Magazine, 5/02]
[Shortly after the tower collapses] I dont know how long this was going on, but I remember standing there looking over at building 7 and realizing that a big chunk of the lower floors had been taken out on the Vesey Street side. I looked up at the building and I saw smoke in it, but I really didnt see any fire at that time. Deputy ––Chief Nick Visconti
Yes, I watched 7. At one point, we were standing on the west side of West Street and Vesey. And I remember Chief Nigro coming back at that point saying I dont want anybody else killed and to take everybody two blocks up virtually to North End and Vesey, which is a good ways up. And we stood there and we watched 7 collapse. –Chief Joseph Pfiefer
For instance, Dr. Guttenberg and Dr. Asaeda, who were at 7 World Trade Center, they got trapped in there and had to like climb in and out and get out because that building also became very damaged supposedly and they were there. We thought they were dead. I guess he was in an area where Commissioner Tierney might have been, I believe. I think she was in 7 also. –Paramedic Manuel Del-gado
That was another problem, to wait for building seven to come down, because that was unsecure. It was about 5:30 that building came down. –Paremedic Steven Pilla
"The consensus was that it was basically a lost cause and we should not lose anyone else trying to save it." Along with some others, he goes inside WTC 7 and yells up the stairwells to the fire fighters, "Drop everything and get out." September 11th," Dean Murphy, 2002, pp. 175-176]