said NIST spokesperson Michael Newman. 7 World Trade Center According to Richard Gage, 7 World Trade Center (7 WTC), a 47-story high-rise building that was part of the World Trade Center complex and collapsed in the afternoon on September 11, 2001, is the "smoking gun" of September 11, providing the most compelling evidence that something was suspect about the building's collapse that had not been told to the public. Gage also described 7 WTC as "the most obvious example of controlled demolition." According to Gage, the only way to bring a building down with free-fall acceleration would be to remove its columns, which provide resistance to the force of gravity. Scott Grainger, a fire protection engineer and member of the group, told the BBC that the evidence he had seen indicated the fires in 7 WTC were scattered about on the floors and would have moved on as they would have found no more combustibles. He thus claims that the fires could not have developed enough heat to cause the collapse of the building. Gage dismisses the explanation of the collapse of 7 World Trade Center given by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), according to which uncontrolled fires and the buckling of a critical support column caused the collapse, and argues that this would not have led to the uniform way the building actually collapsed. "The rest of the columns could not have been destroyed sequentially so fast to bring this building straight down into its own footprint," he says. Gage argues that skyscrapers that have suffered "hotter, longer lasting and larger fires" have not collapsed. "Buildings that fall in natural processes fall to the path of least resistance," says Gage, "they don't go straight down through themselves." Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth also questions the computer models used by NIST, and argues that evidence pointing to the use of explosives had been omitted in its report on the collapse of 7 WTC. The community of experts in structural mechanics and structural engineering generally supports the explanation of the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings provided by the investigation conducted by NIST. In the case of 7 WTC, the appearance of a controlled demolition can be explained by an interior failure of the building, which is suggested by the sequence of the collapse of 7 WTC that shows roof elements sinking into the building while