A reported 1400 vehicles were damaged on 9/11. These vehicles had peculiar patterns of damage and some were as far away as FDR Drive (about 7 blocks from the WTC, along the East River). Vehicles had missing door handles for example, windows blown out, window frames deformed, melted engine blocks, steel-belted tires with only the steel belts left, and vehicle front ends destroyed with little or no effect on the back end of the vehicles. What could have caused such extraordinary damage? Portions of cars burned while paper nearby did not.
| Figure 64. Peculiar wilting of car doors and deformed window surrounds on FDR Drive. |
| Figure 65. Map of lower Manhattan shows the WTC and FDR Drive a half mile or more apart. Arial view of lower Manhattan. |
Many vehicles had their outer surface peeled away like a sardine can. In some instances, clearly there is more than peeling paint was involved. It appears that the sheet metal delaminated as though something caused the material to melt or disintegrate at a certain depth. In some cases it appears that there was more heat damage inside than outside and vice versa.
The pictures below document a wide variety of damage to vehicles, including total incineration of vehicles, toasted and disappeared engine blocks, steel-belted tires with no rubber and only steel belts, deformed wheels, missing grills, broken and missing vehicle windows and mirrors, no door handles, wilted doors, and unburned paper next to burning cars.
- Towed?
In the debate over toasted cars ignited by this article, some have argued that the wrecked vehicles on FDR drive were damaged at the WTC and were loaded up and transported and dumped on FDR drive for storage. First, there is no evidence that this was done. Second, it makes no sense to load up wrecks, transport them, only to dump them in a busy thoroughfare for storage. These wrecks would have had to be picked up yet again and transported again. If vehicles were truly moved from the WTC to FDR Drive, we wonder why WTC steel beams were not stacked up on FDR drive, as well, if it was such a good storage area. Third, governments may be stupid, but we doubt they could be this inefficient. If reported, it would have been a minor scandal. Fourth, we might be wrong about the facts here, but it looks like the motive for this speculation about shifting wrecks around lower Manhattan is to protect the official story or thermite story or other pet theories. We fail to see any other explanation for such a "forced" interpretation for these photographs. Fifth, marks on the roadway suggest that some of these vehicles were pushed to the side of the roadway until they could be removed. This is a more natural explanation for why some of the cars appear to have been moved from where they were damaged rather than all the way from the WTC.
| Figure 66(o). Why doesn't the paper burn? | Figure 66(p). No window? What happened to the rear-view mirror? |
| Figure 66(q). Why is the rubber window gasket hanging outward? | Figure 66(r). Sans windows. (But nice tire!) |
| Figure 66(s). Why is the paper shredded but nothing else apparently disturbed? | Figure 66(t). What blew out the windows without damaging the rest of the fire truck? |
| Figure 66(u). The window gasket is on the outside. What blew out the windows? What dislodged the front grill? | Figure 66(v). It didn't blow out just the middle portion of the windows; it blew out the windows all the way back to the frame where it was mounted. |
| Figure 66(w). Hosing down the windowless fire truck. | Figure 66(x). Final cleaning of the windowless fire truck. Notice its grill is missing. |
| Figure 66(y). What could have caused such extensive damage to this car? Has the passenger side shoulder harness survived? Where's the steering wheel? | Figure 66(z). Why is this fire truck burnt? It is missing its front grill, headlights, and related front end bright-work. Where are the tires? |
Most of the 1400 toasted cars had some, if not all, windows missing. What would cause this? Figure yy, below, shows a silver convertible with its top apparently intact but missing some of its window glass. If the windows were blown out from pressure inside, we would expect the convertible top to have been torn or blown off. This suggests that the windows were not blown out by internal pressure, but may have been shattered by some other mechanism.
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| Figure toast1. afterWTC2 was destroyed there don't appear to be any fires. (9/11/01) | Figure toast2a. The cloud from the destruction of WTC1 rolls toward the parking lot. (9/11/01) |
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| Figure toast2b. Just after WTC1 is destroyed, fires start to burn the vehicles in the large lot, but not the paper. Why? (9/11/01) |
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| Figure toast6. Sunlight begins streaming through the intersection. (9/11/01) | Figure toast8. How did these cars catch on fire? (9/11/01) |
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| Figure toast12. The rust is noticeable (9/23/01) Source: (JW cut down from NOAA) |
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| Figure toast13. A lot more rust (9/?/01) |












































































