Had no other stress been imposed on the structures, the study concluded, they could have remained standing indefinitely.
Reflecting on Adams's comments about how Tuck fell and should have remained standing, Tuck responded: "Maybe he should have kept his feet on the ground.
During the last four decades, other towers in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles have remained standing through catastrophic blazes that burned out of control for hours because of malfunctioning or nonexistent sprinkler systems.
Nearby, at what was once the country's largest theater, only the exterior walls have remained standing since a 1983 fire.
She said that for her, the most painful part of the four-week trial had been listening to officers recount how her son had remained standing after they fired at him.
Overnight guests ask: "Will I sleep?" Insurers and building inspectors ask: "Will it cave in?" But just the way some Roman vaulted arches have remained standing for 2,000 years, the ice hotel's domed construction distributes the pull of gravity through the walls, not straight down.
One confounding factor, cautions geographer Margaret Skutsch of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Morelia, is that many remaining indigenous territories are in remote, humid tropical forests with low population densities, meaning that lack of development pressure, rather than effective management, may explain why such forests have remained standing.
While it is possible that some portion of the tree had remained standing for several weeks, meeting a dramatic end at the hands of a killer storm, only the earlier date is supported by newspaper accounts.
China National Radio said that more than 80 percent of the homes in the area had collapsed but that schools and government buildings had largely remained standing.
