Obituary Hints That Original World Trade Center Was Built By the Concrete Club

On March 31, 2012, former mayor of Kutztown, Pennsylvania and civil engineer Gennaro Marino passed away. His obituary noted his work as an engineer on major construction projects in New York City including the World Trade Center and the Pan Am building—now known as the Met Life building—through the construction companies North Berry Structures Corporation and DIC Concrete Corporation.

North Berry and DIC Concrete also happen to be two of seven members of the so-called Concrete Club—mafia-affiliated New York City concrete companies that dominated the industry for years and were used by organized crime to skim off millions.

The existence of the Concrete Club was exposed during the Commission trials in the eighties brought by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and then-U.S. attorney Rudolph Giuliani. The Commission trials brought numerous high-level labor racketeering, extortion, and other charges against multiple members of the major organized crime families in New York.

Ready-mix concrete was apt for monopolistic control as it has to be delivered on-site within 90 minutes of being mixed before it hardens, which can lead to delays, cost overruns, and concrete mixer repairs. Concrete businesses within a short range of New York City construction sites benefitted from their proximity and could collude to block out competition.

While there there were no known issues with the quality of concrete at the original World Trade Center, it potentially had issues related to fireproofing—particularly the spray-on fireproofing applied to steel beams. While the steel used in the buildings was awaiting construction, it began to rust, making it difficult to apply the spray-on fireproofing in a way that would stick.

The company that won the contract to apply the fireproofing was headed by an associate of the Gambino crime family, Louis DiBono, who would eventually be found assassinated and left in a car in the garage underneath the World Trade Center.

Whether the buildings should have been able to withstand the plane crashes and resulting fires has been a source of dogged debate and various theories for years, particularly for WTC building 7.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published an exhaustive review of what caused building 7 to collapse, as it wasn’t hit by a plane but instead caught fire from the other buildings’ debris. While the other buildings had excessively hot fires fed by jet fuel, WTC 7 collapsed solely from a standard building fire fed by ordinary office combustibles.

According to that NIST review:

The heat from the uncontrolled fires caused steel floor beams and girders to thermally expand, leading to a chain of events that caused a key structural column to fail. The failure of this structural column then initiated a fire-induced progressive collapse of the entire building.

But the buckling that led to the building’s collapse wasn’t due to inadequate fireproofing according to NIST. While the fire led to the buckling of steel beams, it happened at a relatively low temperature.

Due to the effectiveness of the spray-applied fire-resistive material (SFRM), or fireproofing, the highest steel column temperatures in WTC 7 only reached an estimated 300 degrees Celsius (570 degrees Fahrenheit), and only on the east side of the building did the steel floor beams exceed 600 degrees Celsius (1,100 degrees Fahrenheit).

However, fire-induced buckling of floor beams and damage to connections—which caused buckling of a critical column initiating collapse—occurred at temperatures below approximately 400 degrees Celsius (where thermal expansion dominates). Above 600 degrees Celsius (1,100 degrees Fahrenheit), there is significant loss of steel strength and stiffness.