Monday, April 30, 2007

Rosie Takes Another Bite....

On her video blog this time. A writer asks about whether the bridge fire in Oakland demolishes her 9-11 kookiness, but she's ready for him:

Here's the difference. There were 200-foot flames in San Francisco (sic), and you know what, the fire did not pulverize the concrete into dust. It also didn't fall symetrically into its own imprint (sic) beneath, and it also did not fall at free-fall speed (sic).




I think that's close enough to its own footprint, Rosie. Don't know whether it collapsed at free-fall speed, but I'm certain it was quite sudden. The concrete dustification crap really seems to be catching on, although of course it has nothing to do with World Trade Center 7.

Another questioner asks her for an apology:

"I'm not going to apologize for questioning whether or not it is possible, through the laws of physics, for World Trade Center 7 to have fallen the way it did. And I also would like to know why it was left out of the 9-11 [Commission] Report. That's very interesting. And a bridge is a lot different than a 47-story office building with 25 internal steel columns."


This is of course an evasion. Part of her earlier claim was that fire could not melt steel (a ridiculous notion), and now she's trying to ignore the rather obvious fact not that the steel melted, but that it weakened enough that it could not hold up the bridge, the same thing that happened in WTC-7.

Note that the junior hens nod as if Rosie were dropping pearls of wisdom on us all. Actually the impressive part was when the gal in the back claimed that during her college days she could chug a beer in three seconds.

Hat Tip: Hot Air, where our buddy AllahPundit is apparently enjoying a well-deserved vacation, the slacker!

Update: According to this article, the steel may have melted:

Heat from the flames exceeded 2,750 degrees and caused the steel beams holding up the interchange from eastbound I-80 to eastbound Interstate 580 above to buckle and bolts holding the structure together to melt, leading to the collapse, California Department of Transportation director Will Kempton said.


I wonder if that's not just a preliminary conclusion based on the 2750 degree melting point of steel and the assumption that the steel actually melted. Anybody seen any photos indicating it actually melted?

Update: Here's a video of the collapse. As you can see, once it breaks free, it falls very, very quickly and does not appear to slow at all when it hits the lower roadway, bursting through that as well.

So to sum it up, gasoline fire sufficiently weakens steel to the point where it can no longer support the steel structure, and it gives way at an acceleration that certainly seems to be nearly free fall. But Ro still thinks she's right?

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