subscribe to our feed.
As promised, I’m covering a variety of 9/11 topics surrounding technology. This entry is going to focus on forensic technology after the 9/11 tragedy. After the search and rescue mission turned into a search and recover, most people turned their energies to mourning for those lost. But an army of people also turned their expertise into forensics. One group worked on metallurgic forensics and the other on bodily forensics. Both were daunting undertakings.
…
The National Institutes of Justic asked to convene with the National Institutes of Health and a host of other health organizations. Out of that meeting came a push to start identification of the more than 20,000 physical fragments. Forensic scientists were confronted with an unfamiliar scenario. They didn’t know the amount of victims or the identity thereof. Also, many incidents involved less than 500 victims. They were in new territory.
DNA collection began from possible victims. They took hair samples from brushes, previous blood samples, and cheek swabs from next of kin. Because of the sheer mass of data, new network infrastructure was created. High speed data transfers between state police and the medical examiner’s office. But that wasn’t the only challenge confronting these specialists, as they soon found. Those remains were subjected to 2,000 degree (F) heat. That made identification really challenging. The Gene Codes corporation took the torch to come up with an effective system they call “Mass-Fatality Identification System”, or M-FISys. I’ll let them explain the process: “But despite the difficulties and complexities, we have developed new technologies combining short-tandem repeat analysis, mtDNA sequencing and SNP comparison that go far beyond any bioinformatics tools that were available in this field when we began.” It’s great to see people rising to the challenge, especially in this tragedy.
The Bode Technology group also stepped up to the plate. They developed a new process to extract DNA out of the bone fragments that previously had been a loss. “The so-called decalcification approach isn’t new. But Bode’s twist on it allowed the company to extract DNA from 82 percent of 92 bone samples that turned up dry before, Huffine said.” (Wired News, Randy Dotinga)
Then we come to the metallurgical forensics. This is one of the most hotly contested and debated areas of the whole 9/11 event. Many conspiracy theorists will cite explosive sounds after the initial plane collissions, collapse speed close to free fall (indicating that the building were “pulled” or used for controlled implosion), and dust plumes below the fall line (again, indicating a controlled implosion). But the National Institutes of Standards and Technology retorts: “As stated in Section 5.3.2 of NIST NCSTAR 1, a document from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) indicated that the impact of a [single, not multiple] Boeing 707 aircraft was analyzed during the design stage of the WTC towers. However, NIST investigators were unable to locate any documentation of the criteria and method used in the impact analysis and, therefore, were unable to verify the assertion that “… such collision would result in only local damage which could not cause collapse or substantial damage to the building.…”
And what about the issue of detonated collapse? NIST again replies: “In summary, NIST found no corroborating evidence for alternative hypotheses suggesting that the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition using explosives planted prior to Sept. 11, 2001. NIST also did not find any evidence that missiles were fired at or hit the towers. Instead, photographs and videos from several angles clearly show that the collapse initiated at the fire and impact floors and that the collapse progressed from the initiating floors downward until the dust clouds obscured the view.”
Unfortunately, some of the most important pieces of forensic material was destroyed. It’s crazy, but true. Here is a quote from the Committee on Science’s hearing at the House of Representatives, on Wednesday, March 6, 2002: “Early confusion over who was in charge of the site and the lack of authority of investigators to impound pieces of steel for examination before they were recycled led to the loss of important pieces of evidence that were destroyed early during the search and rescue effort…In the month that lapsed between the terrorist attacks and the deployment of the BPAT team, a significant amount of steel debris – including most of the steel from the upper floors – was removed from the rubble pile, cut into smaller sections, and either melted at the recycling plant or shipped out of the U.S. Some of the critical pieces of steel – including the suspension trusses from the top of the towers and the internal support columns – were gone before the first BPAT team member ever reached the site. Fortunately, an NSF-funded independent researcher, recognizing that valuable evidence was being destroyed, attempted to intervene with the City of New York to save the valuable artifacts, but the city was unwilling to suspend the recycling contract. Ultimately, the researcher appealed directly to the recycling plant, which agreed to provide the researcher, and ultimately the ASCE team and the SEAoNY volunteers, access to the remaining steel and a storage area where they could temporarily store important artifacts for additional analysis. Despite this agreement, however, many pieces of steel still managed to escape inspection.”
What was the verdict of their limited analysis? They concluded that the intense fuel fire compromised the strength of the steel structure. They said that the steel structure was 10% of its room temperature strength. They did, to their credit, sort and look through thousands of tons of steel frame. But people will still doubt their findings. But I will leave that to the conspiracists.
Sources: Gene Code Corporation, Wired News, Bode Technology, 9/11 Commission Report, CNN, National Institutes of Standards and Technology World Trade Center Report
Photo Source: NIST WTC fire experiment
[tags]9/11, 9/11 forensics, 9/11 steel forensics, 9/11 body forensics[/tags]
If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.
Recent Comments