No one could have predicted the collapse of WTC 7

Since my first post regarding the pre-reports of the collapse of WTC 7, my suppositions have been met with all sorts of hypotheses. Ironically, in just a short amount of time, these replies have already touched upon the first two of the Kubler-Ross stages of grief. The first stage is denial (The video footage was fake), and the second stage is anger (Why would you ever want to believe these reports?). I have no idea what forms the next three stages will take, but it certainly will make for good conversation.

Lately, it has been asserted that perhaps the reports were merely mistaken identity, or a miscommunication hitting the news wires (since the veracity of the reports can no longer be denied). However, there are some very strong reasons why this cannot be the case.

Aside from the fact that WTC 7 was not only identified by name and size in each of the three pre-knowledge videos (and was also stared at in the Aaron Brown video) there is other conclusive evidence that illustrates rather well the fact that if one were to assume the collapse of a building that day (never mind that no steel-framed building in the entire history of steel-framed construction has EVER collapsed as a result of fire), WTC 7 should have been at the very bottom of the list.

Proof against mistaken identity

Let's start with WTC 5 and 6. Rather than go through and discuss all of the far more damaged buildings that could have been considered "collapse risks", I shall illustrate my point with these two buildings.

As you can see from the picture here:

Building 6 (which is near the top of the image) and building 5 (which is the building below it) have massive amounts of damage resulting from falling debris. They were also the subjects of raging fires. Should anyone have been concerned about a building that was going to collapse, it would at least have been one of these two. But no mention of them was made, and there were no predictions about their imminent implosions.

In addition to buildings 5 and 6, buildings 3 and 4 were also severely damaged and engulfed in flame. But building 7 had little to no visible external damage, and the fires in the building were minor by comparison, as you can see here:

With no gaping holes in the top of the building, almost all windows intact, and a row of flames emanating from only a few floors (8 floors were reported to be on fire, and according to firefighter tapes, were "small pocket fires that should be pretty easy to contain), one has to wonder where the concern for the structural integrity of the building was coming from. In the image below, taken from above the building, you can see that the damage to the top of the building (presumably done by falling debris), is superficial at best, and it is rather plain that the structural integrity of the building was no where near being compromised.

The visible damage to this building, as compared with others should not have targeted it for an assumptive complete collapse. Remember, the three reports I posted all claimed that WTC "had collapsed" (including the Aaron Brown video, which was quickly converted to "or is collapsing" once he, and presumably the newsroom, could plainly see that WTC 7 was still standing), indicating that the entire building had imploded. Not partial-collapse. Not crumbled. These reports were about complete structural failure. Even if the fires had weakened the structural integrity of the building (which I am about to prove would have been quite impossible), no steel-framed building in the history of steel-framed buildings has EVER collapsed as a result of fire!!! In other words, there is no historical precedent for the assumption that it would happen here, whether the assumption came from firemen, policemen, or newspapermen. The bottom line is, they shouldn't have even been able to guess that this could happen.

Proof against pre-knowing WTC 7 would collapse

Not only should no one have known that WTC 7 would collapse as a result of fire, but the very likelihood that the building should fall in a completely uniformed manner (as a result of fire) is scientifically impossible. Here's why. When a building is on fire, the environment is uncontrolled. The burning fires will be uneven, the heat displacement will be uneven, and therefore the damage to the structural integrity of the building will be uneven. As a result, any heat-weakened steel supports would warp unevenly. Even if the fire were hot enough to melt the steel supports, their collapse would have been on an individual basis, not a universal one. In other words, the collapse would have been uneven at best. But for this particular building, the likelihood of that ever happening is exponentially less than most.

This article from the new york times, dated Feb 19, 1989 shall make the case for me. The article, entitled, "COMMERCIAL PROPERTY: The Salomon Solution; A Building Within a Building, at a Cost of $200 Million", has this to say:

BEFORE it moves into a new office tower in downtown Manhattan, Salomon Brothers, the brokerage firm, intends to spend nearly two years and more than $200 million cutting out floors, adding elevators, reinforcing steel girders, upgrading power supplies and making other improvements in its million square feet of space...
In some office buildings, that alteration would be impossible, but Silverstein Properties tried to second-guess the needs of potential tenants when it designed Seven World Trade Center as a speculative project.

''We built in enough redundancy to allow entire portions of floors to be removed without affecting the building's structural integrity, on the assumption that someone might need double-height floors,'' said Larry Silverstein, president of the company. ''Sure enough, Salomon had that need...

MORE than 375 tons of steel - requiring 12 miles of welding - will be installed to reinforce floors for Salomon's extra equipment. Sections of the existing stone facade and steel bracing will be temporarily removed so that workers using a roof crane can hoist nine diesel generators onto the tower's fifth floor, where they will become the core of a back-up power station.

With that kind of reinforcement, there is NO WAY there could have been a universal, symmetrical collapse. But for no less than 3 separate news stations to report on the universal and total collapse of WTC 7, before the fact, when many other buildings were in far greater danger of falling, and in light of the fact that a universal and symmetrical collapse of WTC 7 would have been impossible ... whoever sent out the report MUST have known of a scheduled collapse.

The bottom line is ... the building was demolished, and its collapse was NOT the result of fire.