00-10-12          …..

Mr. Scott CAMPBELL of C&D Aerospace is in the hangar until Sunday to work on the ceiling tile pieces.  Their company is the supplier of these pieces.  John GARSTANG advised that CAMPBELL has identified the heavily burnt pieces of tile as being from one of the forward sliding doors.  There are only two units of this 0.5-inch thickness in the aircraft, and both are at these front doors.  He also advised that they would have undergone temperatures of 1700 deg for five minutes to receive this amount of fire damage.

(Clarification:)    Each of the two doors is on a pair of tracks and it is pulled up into the attic area by cables on a dual pulley system.  This portion of the ceiling slides under the centre area as the door lifts so that it moves out of the way for the door's assent.  Because the door raises and lowers, there is no equipment directly overhead, and only the insulation material in the hull of the aircraft.  A heavy green plastic-like sheet covers it all to ensure its integrity against moisture, but everything was found to not be unusually flammable or a producer of high heat.  So there was nothing in the area that would burn for this period of time at these temperatures, keeping in mind that 1700 degrees F was the temperature on the surface of the tile, not above the tile where any material would have been burning and producing a much higher temperature.