Cutter Charges in the North Tower of the WTC

By David Chandler


This project began with an email from Graeme MacQueen to me describing an explosion on the NW corner of WTC1.

I started looking for other such explosions and found a prominent one right at the initiation point on the 98th floor. I further noticed a corner column sticking up after the roofline had fallen past. The top of the surviving column matched the height of the corner ejection moments before. This seemed to be the event that cut the column. The column hovered and swayed for several seconds then precipitously dropped. I wondered if Graeme's explosion was the one that triggered the drop. I found a way to synchronize the videos and then was able to verify that Graeme's "puff" occurred exactly at the moment of drop of the column.

The main significant points I see in this observation are:
1) The building is doing more than just blowing smoke out the windows. The puffs we see are part of the cause of the collapse.
2) We are seeing charges that can cut through the steel corners of the buildings
3) We are seeing a specific 14" column cut by explosives in two places: one to set it loose, and one to cause it to drop.
4) The two explosions occur in a time-delayed sequence, indicative of demolition

(Tony Szamboti and Carolyn Chandler, also made observations that contributed toward this video. All are acknowledged in a credits screen before the closing logo.)