Landmark Tower Implosion

This morning at 7:45AM a 30-storey office tower located two blocks from my downtown Fort Worth apartment was imploded in all of 15 seconds. It was amazing.

The Fort Worth Police, who seem inept at crowd control and oblivious to people who actually live downtown, decided to expand the safety perimeter at the last minute such that my apartment was isnide the red zone. However, they didn't post any signs inside the building so that at any moment, redsidents could walk out the front door and find them selves inside the red zone, a half block behind the police lining the perimeter. Amy's MINI actualy ended up spending the morning parked inside the red zone. But anyway...

Amy and I watched the explosion from the small crowd gather at the corner of 7th and Lamar. We had a decent view of the Landmark Tower, which is surprisingly difficult to see with all fo the surrounding buildings. We couldn't hear any warning sirens or countdown from the command posts several blocks across downtown. I just heard somebody yell out "One minute!" over the din of new helicopters circling overhead and grabbed my camera into the ready position in tiem to hear the first set of staccato charges going off inide the building.

For the first several seconds during the loud staccato charges there was no visual clue of anythign going on in the building. Then a series of louder charges could be heard and the building slowly started to list to the northwest, towards the unoccupied portion of the block which had been excavated to contain the debris. As it fell I used rapid fire mode on my camera to snap pictures at a rate of five frames per second (I'm still sorthing through the photos). It was incredbible to see such a tall ediface slowly fall to the ground. The sound was not nearly as loud as one would expect after the first large charge that took out the northwest corner of the building were set off.

As the building sunk behind the Fort Worth Club, the void in the sky rapidly flled with an expanding cloud of dust and debris that raced down 7th Street towards us. Debris littered the ground as far as Taylor Street but in the last block the cloud dissaipated as it swirled around my apartment. It was still dense enough, however, that dust and the smell of cordite hung in the air in my apartment when we were allowed back in some 20 minutes after the implosion, and Amy's MINI was littered with tiny bits of insulation and wallboard that had been carried aloft from the blast site.

I have some pretty good pictures that I need to post soon.