But a newly released video appears to finally prove once and for all that Building 7 was brought down by the intense heat of the blazing World Trade Center - and not explosives, as conspiracy theorists claim.
The video shows up-close shots of the lower floors of World Trade Center Building 7, located just across the street from the Twin Towers, and focuses in on the exterior metal beams of Building 7 as they begin to buckle as they are overheated.
Though the entirety of the collapse is not shown in the video, it does show how there is legitimacy to the explanation provided by the government's 9/11 Commission investigation.
The video was made by a local news reporter and was released through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Shot from the north side of the building on Barclay Street, and between the buildings in the background, the video shows the mass of raging fires taking place on the grounds of the World Trade Center.
Though Building 7 was separate from the main World Trade Center complex, there were two pedestrian bridges connecting Building 7 to the main complex across the street, linking the buildings by the third floor.
In the video, viewers can see the glowing flames on what appears to be the sixth floor of the building, and as the camera zooms in, you can even see the metal bars of the exterior buckling.
It is unclear when exactly during the day the video is shot, but considering the fact that the building is still standing it must be well before it's collapse which happened at 5.21pm. That said, the news reporter is the only person we see on the street, so the mass confusion and evacuation that took place earlier in the morning in the midst of the attacks had settled at that point.
At points, the news reporter seems clearly aghast, saying 'It's a surreal environment' and 'It's almost impossible to describe'.
Official investigators say that after the South Tower fell at 9.59am and the North Tower at 10.28am, the pieces of the rubble did irreparable damage to Building 7, causing it to burn by floor by floor, getting progressively weaker along the way.
The investigation by the Federal Emergency Management Agency said that the collapse was caused by a combination of the damage from the debris - and not the impact of the debris itself- and lacking water in the fire sprinklers throughout the building.
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| The complex: Building 7, highlighted in blue, is shown burning in the video |
The largest tenant of the 47-story building was the bank Salomon Smith Barney, but there were also offices of the CIA, the Department of Defence, utility company ConEd, and the Internal Revenue Service.
Because of the time span of the events, everyone was able to evacuate the building and there were no casualties within Building 7.
Government analysts part of the 9/11 Commission said that all three of the buildings that fell in New York that day were due to 'total progressive collapse,' which means that when a building has extreme damage in one area, the entire structure of the building is weakened as a result.
(source; DailyMail)
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