Albuquerque Journal
September 21, 2001
Fire, Not Extra Explosives, Doomed Buildings,
Expert Says
By John Fleck
Journal Staff Writer
A New Mexico explosives expert says he now believes there
were no explosives in the World Trade Center towers, contrary
to comments he made the day of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.
"Certainly the fire is what caused the building to fail,"
said Van Romero, a vice president at the New Mexico Institute
of Mining and Technology.
The day of the attack, Romero told the Journal the towers'
collapse, as seen in news videotapes, looked as though it had
been triggered by carefully placed explosives.
Subsequent conversations with structural engineers and more
detailed looks at the tape have led Romero to a different conclusion.
Romero supports other experts, who have said the intense heat
of the jet fuel fires weakened the skyscrapers' steel structural
beams to the point that they gave way under the weight of the
floors above.
That set off a chain reaction, as upper floors pancaked onto
lower ones.
Romero said he believes still it is possible that the final
collapse of each building was triggered by a sudden pressure
pulse caused when the fire reached an electrical transformer
or other source of combustion within the building.
But he said he now believes explosives would not have been
needed to create the collapse seen in video images.
Conspiracy theorists have seized on Romero's comments as evidence
for their argument that someone else, possibly the U.S. government,
was behind the attack on the Trade Center.
Romero said he has been bombarded with electronic mail from
the conspiracy theorists.
"I'm very upset about that," he said. "I'm
not trying to say anything did or didn't happen."
BELOW IS THE ORIGINAL STORY AS IT APPEARED
ON SEPT. 11, 2001 hours after the attack
September 11, 2001
Explosives Planted In Towers, N.M. Tech
Expert Says
By Olivier Uyttebrouck
Journal Staff Writer
Televised images of the attacks on the World Trade Center
suggest that explosives devices caused the collapse of both towers,
a New Mexico Tech explosion expert said Tuesday.
The collapse of the buildings appears "too methodical"
to be a chance result of airplanes colliding with the structures,
said Van Romero, vice president for research at New Mexico Institute
of Mining and Technology.
"My opinion is, based on the videotapes, that after the
airplanes hit the World Trade Center there were some explosive
devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse,"
Romero said.
Romero is a former director of the Energetic Materials Research
and Testing Center at Tech, which studies explosive materials
and the effects of explosions on buildings, aircraft and other
structures.
Romero said he based his opinion on video aired on national
television broadcasts.
Romero said the collapse of the structures resembled those
of controlled implosions used to demolish old structures.
"It would be difficult for something from the plane to
trigger an event like that," Romero said in a phone interview
from Washington, D.C.
Romero said he and another Tech administrator were on a Washington-area
subway when an airplane struck the Pentagon.
He said he and Denny Peterson, vice president for administration
and finance, were en route to an office building near the Pentagon
to discuss defense-funded research programs at Tech.
If explosions did cause the towers to collapse, the detonations
could have been caused by a small amount of explosive, he said.
"It could have been a relatively small amount of explosives
placed in strategic points," Romero said. The explosives
likely would have been put in more than two points in each of
the towers, he said.
The detonation of bombs within the towers is consistent with
a common terrorist strategy, Romero said.
"One of the things terrorist events are noted for is
a diversionary attack and secondary device," Romero said.
Attackers detonate an initial, diversionary explosion that
attracts emergency personnel to the scene, then detonate a second
explosion, he said.
Romero said that if his scenario is correct, the diversionary
attack would have been the collision of the planes into the towers.
Tech President Dan Lopez said Tuesday that Tech had not been
asked to take part in the investigation into the attacks. Tech
often assists in forensic investigations into terrorist attacks,
often by setting off similar explosions and studying the effects.
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