It wasn't founded on the claim of "physical evidence" but that's where most of the noise is now. And the outcome of that shift was predicted, accurately, in "Truth and Lies of 9/11" (Nov. 2001).
Good Science and 9-11 Demolition Theories
Mike King
Captain Chris Boyle (Engine 94) with 18 years of service with the FDNY gave this interview:
Firehouse: Did that chief give an assignment to go to building 7?
Boyle: He gave out an assignment. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but he told the chief that we were heading down to the site.
… We went one block north over to Greenwich and then headed south. There was an engine company there, right at the corner. It was right underneath building 7 and it was still burning at the time. They had a hose in operation, but you could tell there was no pressure. It was barely making it across the street. Building 6 was fully involved and it was hitting the sidewalk across the street. I told the guys to wait up.
A little north of Vesey I said, we’ll go down, let’s see what’s going on. A couple of the other officers and I were going to see what was going on. We were told to go to Greenwich and Vesey and see what’s going on. So we go there and on the north and east side of 7 it didn’t look like there was any damage at all, but then you looked on the south side of 7 there had to be a hole 20 stories tall in the building, with fire on several floors. Debris was falling down on the building and it didn’t look good.
But they had a hoseline operating. Like I said, it was hitting the sidewalk across the street, but eventually they pulled back too. Then we received an order from Fellini, we’re going to make a move on 7. That was the first time really my stomach tightened up because the building didn’t look good. I was figuring probably the standpipe systems were shot. There was no hydrant pressure. I wasn’t really keen on the idea. Then this other officer I’m standing next to said, that building doesn’t look straight. So I’m standing there. I’m looking at the building. It didn’t look right, but, well, we’ll go in, we’ll see.
So we gathered up rollups and most of us had masks at that time. We headed toward 7. And just around we were about a hundred yards away and Butch Brandies came running up. He said forget it, nobody’s going into 7, there’s creaking, there are noises coming out of there, so we just stopped. And probably about 10 minutes after that, Visconti, he was on West Street, and I guess he had another report of further damage either in some basements and things like that, so Visconti said nobody goes into 7, so that was the final thing and that was abandoned.
Firehouse: When you looked at the south side, how close were you to the base of that side?
Boyle: I was standing right next to the building, probably right next to it.
Firehouse: When you had fire on the 20 floors, was it in one window or many?
Boyle: There was a huge gaping hole and it was scattered throughout there. It was a huge hole. I would say it was probably about a third of it, right in the middle of it. And so after Visconti came down and said nobody goes in 7, we said all right, we’ll head back to the command post. We lost touch with him. I never saw him again that day.
http://www.firehouse.com/terrorist/911/magazine/gz...
Here is an extract from the testimony of Deputy Chief Peter Hayden, who had 33 years service in Division 1 to his credit:
Firehouse: Other people tell me that there were a lot of firefighters in the street who were visible, and they put out traffic cones to mark them off?
Hayden: Yeah. There was enough there and we were marking off. There were a lot of damaged apparatus there that were covered. We tried to get searches in those areas. By now, this is going on into the afternoon, and we were concerned about additional collapse, not only of the Marriott, because there was a good portion of the Marriott still standing, but also we were pretty sure that 7 World Trade Center would collapse. Early on, we saw a bulge in the southwest corner between floors 10 and 13, and we had put a transit on that and we were pretty sure she was going to collapse. You actually could see there was a visible bulge, it ran up about three floors. It came down about 5 o’clock in the afternoon, but by about 2 o’clock in the afternoon we realized this thing was going to collapse.
Firehouse: Was there heavy fire in there right away?
Hayden: No, not right away, and that’s probably why it stood for so long because it took a while for that fire to develop. It was a heavy body of fire in there and then we didn’t make any attempt to fight it. That was just one of those wars we were just going to lose. We were concerned about the collapse of a 47-story building there. We were worried about additional collapse there of what was remaining standing of the towers and the Marriott, so we started pulling the people back after a couple of hours of surface removal and searches along the surface of the debris. We started to pull guys back because we were concerned for their safety.
www.firehouse.com/terrorist/911/magazine/gz/hayden...
I believe that the testimony of experienced fireman ought to give most sober-minded people very serious doubt about the CD hypothesis, in particular the account of the sagging of the building prior to collapse, the assertion by Hayden that it was a heavy fire, and the testimony regarding lack of water pressure to fight the blaze.
Boyle’s report suggested that the debris caused a huge gash of twenty storeys in that face, which would allow for the flow of air to the fires simply unprecedented in fires in similar buildings.
All the evidence suggests that WTC 7 was unique in the history of fire-fighting because (a) structural damage was extensive, (b) vast openings in the south face allowing unimpeded airflow, (c) water mains had been severed by the collapse of the Towers, and hence almost no water was available to the Fire Service, and (d) the Fire Service had anyway made the eminently reasonable policy decision that their priority was to save lives not buildings, so it burned for 7 hours virtually unattended. Also, the bulging of the building prior to collapse is also prime evidence against the CD theory, because controlled demolition never produces such bulges.
In this section Jones also wants to argue that the fine rubble produced in the WTC 7 collapse is evidence of explosives:
Jones: By contrast, concrete floors in the Twin Towers and WTC 7 were pulverized to dust -- as is common in controlled demolitions using explosives.
But we have already pointed out that concrete floors, if they are pulverised to dust in controlled demolition, are pulverised due to gravity, not explosives. This is a core mistake repeated by Jones and other CD theorists.
Brent Blanchard deals with WTC 7 in section 7 of his paper. He refutes the claim that the owner of WTC 7 had any role in its collapse, and also says: 'Any detonation of explosives within WTC 7 would have been detected by multiple seismographs monitoring ground vibration in the general area. No such telltale "spike" or vibratory anomaly was detected by any recording instrument.'