Did the WTC collapse form energy?

“It was just an enormous amount of energy that was being formed by the collapse of the building, and that energy compressed the air and caused the dust to be blown out of the side of the building.” Gene Corley, Structural Engineer, “The 9/11 Conspiracies: Fact or Fiction,” The History Channel.

Does that make sense from a scientific viewpoint? This statement caught my attention because I’d assumed that energy is released.

I admit that it’s been a long time since my high school physics class. (At least it was math-based; my college course was as close to a “mick”—i.e., an easy class with watered-down material (in this case for humanities majors)—as UCLA offered in those days.)

Wikipedia: “The total amount of mass and energy in a closed system … remains constant. Energy cannot be created or destroyed ….”

Is this definition accepted only as applies to a “closed system”—which I’m not sure I understand!—or does it have broader application? Is it accepted as scientific fact, or considered an aspect of the theory of relativity?

Grasping the science is probably both beyond me and beside the point. I just wondered if a falling building forms energy, or if it’s plausible for a scientist to say that.