There goes the profit on that job...

[RicodJour]

Good camera placement. Get a load of the girl that just wanted to stand there under the high tension wires. The Darwin Awards nearly claimed another one.

R

[aemeijers]

Shit happens, even for top-tier demo companies. As-built doesn't always match the plans on record for how much rebar was used, the concrete used, etc. When they took down the old Hudson's in Detroit several years ago, they ended up damaging a segment of the elevated 'People Mover' tramway. Especially true for older building where the records are incomplete, and because older building were often built with a bigger structural margin than modern buildings, simply because they didn't have computers and decades of test results and lessons learned to draw from.

[Kurt Ullman]

Then there is the semi-famous story about the Sands in LV. Controlled Demolition came in and started to rig the place based on the plans. Soon found that the contractor had much thicker cement and more rebar than speced or required by codes. The conjecture was the contractor wanted to run NO chance of getting on the wrong side of the Mob guys.

[The Daring Dufas]

Bomb resistant construction? 8-)

TDD

[Jeff Thies]

It's great!

I once watched a stone mantle accidentally get knocked over at a party. I knew I was far enough away, I didn't account for the bounce!

Jeff

[Ed Pawlowski]

I'm surprised they did not have it tied off some how to prevent it from going into the wires. Overconfident?

[Larry W]

Could be the thicker cement was for hiding some people who did get on the wrong side of the Mob guys...

[Red Green]

"Ed Pawlowski" wrote in news:c-SdnfQyX9mUKkHRnZ2dnUVZ [e-mail]:

Low bidder.

[ChairMan]

There, I fixed it for ya

[ChairMan]

>

Yeah, a cable and a come-along, probably look pretty cheap about now

[Larry Fishel]

I think maybe you're underestimating the mass of this structure. (The perspective in the video makes it look a lot smaller than it is.)

[aemeijers]

Just how would you tie off a brick structure? Even if you only have charges at the bottom, you never know exactly where the the joints will let go. And even if it all holds together, and the cable doesn't snap, then what the hell do you do? Pull on the cable and hope the top where the cable is attached doesn't come loose? You certainly can't send anyone in to set more charges. I have seen tall metal or wood structures tied off to direct the fall, like felling a tree, but never anything that could disintegrate.

In crowded areas, they sometimes take brick smokestacks down by hand, since there is no good way to ensure where they are going to drop. There used to be a tall stack behind the 108 year old building I work in, for the coal furnace they used to have. They took it down a course at a time.

[Kurt Ullman]

Watch the detenators (or whatever it is called) I think on History or Discovery Channel. The pros use cabling all time to help control the fall. Since I did not know there was going to be a test, so I did not listen to the explanation of the physics (grin).

[Kuskokwim]

Undetected crack caused tower to fall wrong way, demolition company says:

[Robert Green]

I've read that the Teamster's pension funds performed remarkably well and that few ever welshed on a Teamster loan until Hoffa was forced out and Federally appointed trustees took over.

I'm sure some of the remains found in the World Trade Center ruins were not from 2001 but from when the building was built. The construction industry in NYC was (and probably still is) totally mobbed up. Turns out the building inspectors were on the Mafia payroll as well, at least according to a story I read about all the concrete failures plaguing the city, like the new walkways at Yankee Stadium. There are too many other cases to bother citing them all but this search will give you an idea:

But here's a good start, a little old, but a good summary and I doubt much has changed:

Fans of the Sopranos have seen a lot of these schemes close-up.

-- Bobby G.

[EXT]

or

If they didn't know about the crack before they knocked it down, when it was still in one piece, how could they tell that it was there after it was all smashed -- sounds like excuse number one in the demo handbook for failures.

[Tony Miklos]

I wonder just how they determined that "an undetected crack on the south side of the tower pulled it backward"?

[Kurt Ullman]

These guys don't just blow things up, they blow them up, down, sideways. They know where they placed things and how the blast was supposed to work (shaped charges, etc). They should be able to look at the debris and see what is not supposed to be there. Not really all that hard to do.

[Red Green]

Kuskokwim wrote in news:1mymqdjl414zs$.ipwkj31aqd33$. [e-mail]:

There are some questionable things in the article.

- ?Oh no.? Those were some of the last words

- and I thought, ?Holy cow? .

But there accuracy as well.

- ?It was definitely a sight to see,?

-?We just ran,?

:-)

[Robert Green]

Demo's obviously tricky business. I saw a great little snippet on TV of guys who were felling a very large tree. All that was left was the trunk, some 25' worth by at least 2' around. It was so well tied to other nearby trees that when the final cut at the base was made, the tree bounced UP, and then down again several times, like a giant pogo stick, smashing a nearby shed to pieces in seconds and sending the crew running for their lives as this huge, massive tree trunk bobbed up and down, moving a couple of yards with each "stroke."

As others have noted, although the stack looks stable, I'll bet a) there wasn't much to tie to, and b) as you note, with an old brick structure with bad mortar, crumbling is pretty hard to control. I recall watching video of a stadium demolition where they had underestimated the size and power of the debris cloud. You see the stadium collapse, and then, a few seconds later you hear screaming as a huge black cloud of dust moving *very* quickly enveloped the cameraman and all those standing next to him.

-- Bobby G.