The Avondale Mill Smoke Stack in Pell City, Alabama stood tall for over 112 years before it was set to be demolished last week. It’s accompanying mill, which measured 225 by 640, closed in 2006 and was demolished for scrap 2 years later. The smoke stack gave crews a bit of trouble, as it took 3 attempts to take it down, with the last one almost killing the excavator operator in the process.
After two attempts at imploding the 158 foot tall, 2.6 million pound smoke stack, crews had no luck taking the structure down. ON the third attempt, they brought in an excavator to weaken the base to tip it over. That process worked, but the tower fell directly onto the excavator, with the operator still inside. There was a moment of panic as several onlookers rushed to the get the man out of the cabin, but, in the end, the operator escaped without a scratch.
The operator, Tim Phifer, told WIAT news, “the cab was made for that thing to turn over on top of it, I was safer inside the cab than coming out of it.”
The day following the collapse, OSHA launched an investigation to see how the incident could have been avoided.
The video below, uploaded to Youtube by Kevin Anderson, shows drone footage and an amazing view of the demolition.
Full story: VIDEO: Pell City smokestack collapses on excavator | WIAT News
2020 was a stressful year, so let’s decompress a little bit by reviewing some of the most fun demolition videos from the past year. A demolition that broke a 22 year old record highlights the bunch and I also stretch what the definition of “demolition” is a little bit, because I think the video is so cool. Don’t @ me.
Without further ado, here are the top 7 demolition videos from 2020:
Demolition by implosions videos are obviously fun to watch, but the actual process creates an insane amount of dust. The challenge becomes hoe do you douse an enormous structure that falls within seconds with enough water to control dust effectively? The answer might be more explosives…
After finally beginning the demolition of the partially collapsed Hard Rock Hotel in New Orleans, Louisiana in May of this year, the remains of 2 of the 3 workers killed in the incident are still trapped within the building. After working for several weeks to clear a safe path to retrieve the bodies, a lawyer from the development team of the project provided an update recently.
From 1988 to 2017, the Palace of Auburn Hills was home to the Detroit Pistons of the NBA. On July 11, 2020, it was imploded into smithereens, ending a fantastic run for the historic arena.
Power plants are facing demolition all over the world as country’s move away from less environmentally friendly power sources and abandon older facilities. The good news, for us, is that we get some pretty awesome demolition videos out of the shutdowns.
A couple of weeks ago, we followed the very amusing story of the Leaning Tower of Dallas. For those unfamiliar, it all started as an innocent attempt at a building implosion, but ended up becoming an internet meme, a tourism landmark, and the subject of a petition to turn it into a monument. Well, the big joke is over, as what remained of the tower has finally fallen.
Crowds typically swarm to the site of a building implosion; it can be more exciting than a firework show. Sometimes, though, spectators get the thrill of seeing the process not go quite as planned. Dallas residents got tat thrill over the weekend, when an implosion of a high-rise building in Uptown Dallas refused to come all the way down.
We recently posted our list of the Top 7 Demolition Videos of 2019 and it seems as though we now have the first entry for the 2020 list. This video comes from a familiar face: Controlled Demolitions, Inc. (CDI).
In November of last year, the 546 foot tall Mina Plaza in Abu Dhabi officially broke the world record for tallest demolition by explosion, supplanting Hudson Department Store in Detroit, Michigan, which held the record for 22 years.