Film explores 9/11 demolition theory

On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, ceremonies held around the country remembered the lives and sense of safety lost as a result of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. Huntington Beach residents Aaron Haley and Joe Dunlap wanted to honor the event with a different focus.

They chose to talk about molten steel, horizontal plumes of smoke and pulverized concrete powder.

At 8 p.m. Monday night, nearly 100 people crowded into the Newland Barn to view the new film "9/11 Revisited: Keeping Up With Jones."

Composed from a DVD Haley and Dunlap ordered online while splicing in segments of a presentation made by Brigham Young University Physicist and Professor Steven Jones delivered in June in Chicago, the film presented the scientific aspects involved in the collapse of the buildings and the implications of the evidence.

According to the film, Jones first got involved in researching after watching video footage of the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 around 5:30 p.m. (Eastern time) the same day. To Jones, the way the buildings fell looked alarmingly similar to a planned deliberate demolition.

At one point during Jones' presentation covered in the film, side-by-side videos were shown of the collapse of Building 7 and a planned demolition.

"When I saw Jones and read his paper, I thought he's onto something," Haley said in an interview days earlier.

Before the film began, Haley encouraged the audience to go online and research the evidence on their own, not to simply trust anything they heard that night.

"This is about education," Haley said. "That's where we're coming from."

The event was the first public venue for the film. The first two screenings were held at the apartments where Haley and Dunlap live.

A moment of silence was observed. The film began, opening with a shot of the Statue of Liberty and then immediately went to audio and video clips of media coverage of the crashes and then the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, which was hard for some to watch, even five years later.

Huntington Beach resident Fred Galluccio was one of about half the audience who were unaware of the collapse of Building 7, having previously avoided watching any footage of the buildings fall on that tragic day.

"It was the first time I've really seen the towers fall," Galluccio said.