Unless otherwise indicated, all information in this article comes from “On Debunking 911 Debunking” by Ryan Mackey.

On pages 30-32, Ryan Mackey provides us with David Ray Griffin’s comparison of the ‘88 First Interstate Bank fire in L.A.   That fire lasted for 3 ½ hours and destroyed five floors, but the structural damage was negligible.

However, there are several differences which Griffin ignores- fortunately, Ryan Mackey provides the differences, and those differences were as follows:

1. There was no loss of fireproofing, unlike the WTC
2. There was considerably less ventilation, and therefore less oxygen for the First Interstate Bank fire, unlike the WTC, where the impact of the planes left gaping holes in the side and broke windows
3. The LA Fire Dept was able to fight that fire as it started on a fairly low floor and the elevators were still functional, and
4. The First Interstate Bank more than likely started at a single location and spread slowly rather than starting across multiple floors at once

On page 23, Ryan Mackey shows us that David Ray Griffin uses the typical “truther” fallacy of black smoke means an oxygen-starved fire at temperatures far lower than 1000º C and that another of Griffin’s sources, James Hoffman (who, as we see here, is a SOFTWARE ENGINEER) claims that temperatures between 800º and 1100ºC can occur in office fires but only briefly.  However, let’s not forget that oil wells that catch fire will emit lots of black smoke- and oil wells are outdoors where there’s loads of oxygen.

On page 24, Ryan Mackey notes that Griffin backpedals and says that Hoffman stated that some large indoor fires produce bright orange flames as they have plenty of oxygen and are hotter.  The trouble is orange flames were seen emerging from the WTC windows.

 On pages 28 and 29, Ryan Mackey provides the following quote from David Ray Griffin’s book Debunking 911 Debunking:

However, NIST found no evidence that fire resistance tests of the WTC floor system were ever conducted. As a result, NIST conducted a series of four standard fire resistance tests (ASTM E 119). In this series of tests, the effects of three factors were studied: (1) thickness of sprayed fire-resistive material (SFRM), (2) test restraint conditions, and (3) scale of the test. The tests were conducted by Underwriters Laboratories Inc. under a NIST contract and represented both full-scale (35 ft span) and reduced-scale (17 ft span) floor assemblies constructed to represent the original design as closely as practical. … The restrained full-scale floor system obtained a fire resistance rating of 1 ½ h, while the unrestrained floor system achieved a 2 h rating. For the unrestrained test condition, specimens protected with ¾ in. thick sprayed fire resistive material were able to sustain the maximum design load for approximately 2 h without collapsing; in the unrestrained test, the load was maintained without collapsing for 3½ h.

However, as Ryan Mackey points out, this is exactly the type of test that would have been done before the Twin Towers were constructed. He further gives us the three main points that prove Griffin wrong:

1. The fire rating only applies to the COMPLETE structural system, which necessarily includes undamaged fireproofing. Hint: This means high speed aircraft impacts render the fire rating worthless.
2. The rating’s only an estimated measure of the time the structural steel can withstand a fire, which is not necessarily representative of an individual fire, and
3. The fire rating is NOT to any particular temperature- the 2000º F temperature Griffin uses is the MAXIMUM FURNACE TEMPERATURE, not the temperature of the steel.

As usual, David Ray Griffin has no idea what he’s talking about.

Also see: Debunking David Ray Griffin Archive

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