Chimney stacks once lined many city skylines across America and Europe and became extremely popular during the 1800’s Industrial Revolution, which began the shift from hand made products to machine made. Also known as flue-gas stacks, the chimneys are used as an exhaust method for industrial furnaces, steam boilers, and other similar heat and smoke producers. The concept of the flue-gas stack was developed in the mid-1600s, before the concept expanded some 200 years later.
As American and European industries have started to move away from industrial manufacturing, many chimney stacks have begun to be demolished for new development. Last year, two Scottish power station chimneys were demolished simultaneously in a video that made our list of best demolition videos of 2015. The current tallest chimney in the world is in Kazakhstan, standing at 1377 feet (419.7m) and was built in 1987, the United Kingdom’s second largest chimney used to be the Chimney of Grain Power Station, before a week ago. Built in 1979, the Grain Power Station Chimney stood 801 feet tall (244m) in Kent, England and weighed approximately 44,000 tons (40,000 tonnes). The power station that it accompanied was closed in 2012, in order to make use of a new onsite gas-fired power station.
You can check out some incredible drone footage, shot by Luke Sanders, of the demolition that turned the chimney into a big dust pile below:
Full story: Landmark Kent power station chimney blown up in tallest concrete demolition job carried out in UK | The Telegraph
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.