for anyone interested, the page I pointed at previously contains links both to the official explanations for the fall of WTC7, which include many references to evidence, and public documents that clash with certain aspects of that explanation:
http://www.consensus911.org/the-911-consensus-points/#WTC71

the especially interesting question about WTC7, which has been obscured here a bit, is not *that* it fell, but *how* it fell. (very quickly, near-symmetrically, into its own footprint, and in free fall for at least a brief period of time, which NIST first denied because of how unusual it would be, and then admitted, as the page above documents.) Unlike WTC1 and 2, which had central structures of various sorts and were tall, thin buildings, and in the official explanation had damage via burning debris of various sorts down those central structures that is said to partly account for a symmetrical collapse, WTC7 was shorter and wider, had no central structures, and had not even allegations of symmetrical damage of any sort.

*some*--but not all--of the reasoning and facts provided by both James and Peter is not the same as that provided by NIST in its reviews.

NIST and its engineers had to work very, very, very hard to find a way to mesh the available evidence with any structural analysis that could explain how--again, not *that*--it fell.

here is a link to what I believe is the most recent article, peer-reviewed in a standard engineering journal (the house organ of the ASCE), by one of the senior NIST engineers with a very detailed explanation of how WTC7 fell. I am not an engineer, but only someone who reads things in as much detail as possible. I continue to be struck by the number of times models need to be adjusted in order to get anything like the collapse in its observed form to work out, the novel nature of the models, the amount of uncertainty that remains--and then, as the 9/11 Consensus Panel questions suggest, the amount of available evidence that has to be jettisoned or downplayed (or, in the skeptics' opinion, misrepresented) in order to get any model at all to work. This includes the official explanation of how damage to the top and side of the building could cause it to collapse into its own footprint, which is at the very least, not a behavior engineers expected, no matter how long it burned.

McAllister et al, "Analysis of Structural Response of WTC 7 to Fire and\ Sequential Failures Leading to Collapse," Journal of Structural Engineering, 2012
http://booksc.org/book/40940290/b7468e

- z