Originally Posted by hershie

Not sure why there is any controversy about WTC7 still. It was obviously not only fire but structural damage too:

I didn't have to look hard to find these tidbits on Wikipedia:

- As the North Tower collapsed, debris hit WTC7 "with the force of a volcanic eruption."[6] Much of the bottom 10 stories of the building's south face were destroyed, with damage visible as high as the 18th floor.


and I think this should make people feel more comfortable that there was no cover-up:


- In response to FEMA's concerns, the Commerce Department?s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) made a three-year, US$24-million investigation into the structural failure and collapse of several WTC structures, including 7 World Trade Center. The study drew not only on in-house technical expertise but also the knowledge of several outside private institutions, including the Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers (SEI/ASCE), the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE), the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC), the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), and the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEAoNY).[7]

NIST has released video and still-photo analysis of Building 7 before its collapse that appears to indicate a greater degree of structural damage from falling debris than originally assumed by FEMA. Specifically, the NIST's interim report on 7 WTC displays photographs of the southwest façade of the building that show it to have significant damage. The NIST interim report on 7 WTC details a 10-story gash that existed on the south façade, extending a third of the way across the face of the building and approximately a quarter of the way into the interior, but does not provide any photographs of the damage to the south façade.[1] A unique aspect of the design of 7 WTC was that each outer structural column was responsible for supporting 2,000 square feet (186 square meters) of floor space, suggesting that the simultaneous removal of a number of columns would severely compromise the structure's integrity. Consistent with this theory, news footage shows visible cracking and bowing of the building's east wall immediately before the collapse, which began at the penthouse floors.[1]

NIST "anticipated that a draft report will be released by early 2007".[8][9] NIST released a progress report in June 2004, outlining its working hypothesis, which was that a local failure in a critical column, caused by damage from either fire or falling debris from the collapses of the two towers, progressed first vertically and then horizontally to result in "a disproportionate collapse of the entire structure".[10][11] In a New York magazine interview in March 2006, Dr S. Shyam Sunder, NIST's lead WTC disaster investigator, said, of 7 World Trade Center, "We are studying the horizontal movement east to west, internal to the structure, on the fifth to seventh floors?; he added "But truthfully, I don?t really know. We?ve had trouble getting a handle on Building No. 7".[12]

Despite FEMA's preliminary finding that fire caused the collapse, conspiracy theorists believe the collapse was the result of a controlled demolition. When asked about controlled demolition theories, Dr. Sunder said, "We consulted 80 public-sector experts and 125 private-sector experts. It is a Who?s Who of experts. People look for other solutions. As scientists, we can?t worry about that. Facts are facts."[13] In answer to the question of whether "a controlled[-]demolition hypothesis is being considered to explain the collapse", NIST said that, "[w]hile NIST has found no evidence of a blast or controlled demolition event, it would like to determine the magnitude of hypothetical blast scenarios that could have led to the structural failure of one or more critical elements."[9]