WTC 7 was severely damaged on the south side of the building and was on fire for about 7 hours

WTC 7 was severely damaged on the south side of the building and was on fire for about 7 hours

See Video: On 9/11, WTC1 Hit WTC7, Seriously Damaging the South Side
At 10:29 a.m., WTC 1 (the north tower) collapsed and contrary to the claims of 9/11 conspiracy people, it did not collapse into its footprint like a controlled explosion. (See the diagram) Instead, as the building collapsed, the debris from WTC 1 spilled into the surrounding streets and onto WTC 7 among others, damaging the building. (See the diagram to the left showing the debris in black which extended north beyond WTC 6).

Eyewitness accounts from firemen such as Captain Chris Boyle and Deputy Chief Peter Hayden and photographic evidence back this up. It is the south side of WTC 7 that was damaged and it is likely that the fires (see figures 5-16 and 5-17) started as a result of debris from the collapse of WTC 1, the fires in WTC 7 started at approximately the same time as the collapse of WTC 1 and it is the fires that are primarily the reason the WTC 7 building collapsed. Most 9/11 conspiracy people only show you the east side and north side of the WTC 7.

Reports from the scene mention the damage:
Captain Chris Boyle
Engine 94 - 18 years

Boyle: ... on the north and east side of 7 it didn't look like there was any damage at all,
but then you looked on the south side of 7 there had to be a hole 20 stories tall in the building, with fire on several floors. Debris was falling down on the building and it didn't look good.

... Then we received an order from Fellini, we're going to make a move on 7. That was the first time really my stomach tightened up because the building didn't look good. I was figuring probably the standpipe systems were shot. There was no hydrant pressure. I wasn't really keen on the idea. Then this other officer I'm standing next to said, that building doesn't look straight. So I'm standing there. I'm looking at the building. It didn't look right, but, well, we'll go in, we'll see.

So we gathered up rollups and most of us had masks at that time. We headed toward 7. And just around we were about a hundred yards away and Butch Brandies came running up. He said forget it, nobody's going into 7, there's creaking, there are noises coming out of there, so we just stopped. And probably about 10 minutes after that, Visconti, he was on West Street, and I guess he had another report of further damage either in some basements and things like that, so Visconti said nobody goes into 7, so that was the final thing and that was abandoned.

Firehouse: When you looked at the south side, how close were you to the base of that side?

Boyle: I was standing right next to the building, probably right next to it.

Firehouse: When you had fire on the 20 floors, was it in one window or many?

Boyle: There was a huge gaping hole and it was scattered throughout there. It was a huge hole. I would say it was probably about a third of it, right in the middle of it. And so after Visconti came down and said nobody goes in 7, we said all right, we'll head back to the command post. We lost touch with him. I never saw him again that day.
http://www.firehouse.com/terrorist/911/magazine/gz/boyle.html

Fire chief Daniel Nigro clearly thought the building could collapse. Here's why:

The biggest decision we had to make was to clear the area and create
a collapse zone around the severely damaged [WTC Building 7].
A number of fire officers and companies assessed the damage to the
building. The appraisals indicated that the building's integrity
was in serious doubt.
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?id=1521846767-634

Another fireman reported damage that progressed as the day wore on.

Deputy Chief Peter Hayden
Division 1 - 33 years

Hayden: ... also we were pretty sure that 7 World Trade Center would collapse.
Early on, we saw a bulge in the southwest corner between floors 10 and 13, and we had put a transit on that and we were pretty sure she was going to collapse. You actually could see there was a visible bulge, it ran up about three floors. It came down about 5 o'clock in the afternoon, but by about 2 o'clock in the afternoon we realized
this thing was going to collapse.

Firehouse: Was there heavy fire in there right away?

Hayden: No, not right away, and that's probably why it stood for so long because it took awhile for that fire to develop. It was a heavy body of fire in there and then we didn't make any attempt to fight it. That was just one of those wars we were just going to lose. We were concerned about the collapse of a 47-story building there. We were worried about additional collapse there of what was remaining standing of the towers and the Marriott, so we started pulling the people back after a couple of hours of surface removal and searches along the surface of the debris. We started to pull guys back because we were concerned for their safety.

Firehouse: Chief Nigro said they made a collapse zone and wanted everybody away from number 7 - did you have to get all of those people out?

Hayden: Yeah, we had to pull everybody back. It was very difficult. We had to be very forceful in getting the guys out. They didn't want to come out. There were guys going into areas that I wasn't even really comfortable with, because of the possibility of secondary collapses. We didn't know how stable any of this area was. We pulled everybody back probably by 3 or 3:30 in the afternoon. We said, this building is going to come down, get back. It came down about 5 o'clock or so, but we had everybody backed away by then.
http://www.firehouse.com/terrorist/911/magazine/gz/hayden.html

Most 9/11 conspiracy people only show you the east side and north side of WTC 7 but it is the south side of the building that was damaged by the debris from WTC 1 and it is the west side of the building where the smoke was pouring out of. (see figures 5-16 and 5-17)

"at the edge of the south face you could see that it was very heavily damaged. ... until you had done either a couple of 360s around this whole site or if you got an aerial view somehow, you really couldn’t appreciate the scope of the damage." - Battalion Chief John Norman
Special Operations Command - 22 years

More eyewitness accounts from firemen and photographic evidence (Reports from the scene mention the damage):

Deputy Chief Nick Visconti
Division 14 - 34 years

Visconti: So now I was in contact with Jay. I found out what kind of shape he was in and I kept getting reports back from people that we're not there yet, we're working our way, there's a collapsed area in 6. I'm standing not too far from Frank Fellini. He says, Nick, I'm really worried about this building. We were all worried because there was a lot of fire in it and we were concerned about the building collapsing. We weren't sure that it was stable enough that it wasn't going to collapse.

Firehouse: Which building was that?

Visconti: Building 6. So I had put a battalion chief with each of the groups that went into 6. I kept trying to talk to him, walking over there, walking down a little bit into the ramp they went down, the door they went down into and how are you doing? You know we're trying, we can't find it. I don't know how long this was going on, but I remember standing there looking over at building 7 and realizing that a big chunk of the lower floors had been taken out on the Vesey Street side. I looked up at the building and I saw smoke in it, but I really didn't see any fire at that time. ...

Now, World Trade Center 7 was burning and I was thinking to myself, how come they're not trying to put this fire out? I didn't realize how much they had because my view was obstructed. All I could see was the upper floor. At some point, Frank Fellini said, now we've got hundreds of guys out there, hundreds and hundreds, and that's on the West Street side alone. He said to me, Nick, you've got to get those people out of there. I thought to myself, out of where? Frank, what do you want, Chief? He answered, 7 World Trade Center, imminent collapse, we've got to get those people out of there. I walked out and I got to Vesey and West, where I reported to Frank. He said, we're moving the command post over this way, that building's coming down.

At this point, the fire was going virtually on every floor, heavy
fire and smoke that really wasn't bothering us when we were searching
because it was being pushed southeast and we were a little bit west
of that. I remember standing just where West and Vesey start to rise
toward the entrance we were using in the World Financial Center. There
were a couple of guys standing with me and a couple of guys right at
the intersection, and we were trying to back them up and here goes
7. It started to come down and now people were starting to run.
http://www.firehouse.com/terrorist/911/magazine/gz/visconti.html

http://www.911myths.com/html/wtc7_damage.html
http://www.geocities.com/factsnotfantasy/WTC7Page2.html

See 911Myths.com: WTC 7 Fire "A video taken from another angle shows conclusively that this really is smoke coming from WTC7"
Download it here

The very thing that Griffin points to as a feature of a fire caused collapse we can see in photos of the World Trade Center.

Griffin writes, "in fire-induced collapses---if we had any examples of such---the onset would be gradual. Horizontal beams and trusses would begin to sag; vertical columns, if subjected to strong forces, would begin to bend. But as videos of the towers show, there were no signs of bending or sagging, even on the floors just above the damage caused by the impact of the planes." But contrary to what Griffin claims, there were indeed signs of bending or sagging. Witnesses reported it and photos document it. Griffin is simply wrong.

WTC Pre-Collapse Bowing Debunks 9/11 Controlled Demolition Theory