“Tank” used to demolish Minnesota home.
The demolition industry has worked tirelessly for many years to be taken seriously as a professional, highly-trained and highly-skilled part of the construction sector. It has devised methodologies and working practices that have been tried and proven around the world. And it has developed highly specialised equipment to get the job done quickly, efficiently and above all safely.
So the last thing the business needs – particularly when work remains hard to come by – is for people to get the impression that demolition simply requires a mix of brute force and ignorance….and an armoured military personnel carrier.
But that didn’t stop a company in Kasota, Minn., taking home demolition to the next level when they used a tank to raze an abandoned house.
The 150-year-old home had been slated for demolition on Monday, but the owners decided to spice things up and called in a British FV432 armored personnel carrier owned by Drive-A-Tank. The local company typically caters to individuals interested in military tank driving and car crush adventures.
MarKessa Baedke-Petersen, event coordinator for Drive-A-Tank, told The Huffington Post that her company did not think twice about the request.
“You pay us enough money and we’ll destroy anything with our tanks,” she said.
So on Saturday the small city of Kasota, located about 70 miles southwest of Minneapolis, nearly doubled in size when Baedke-Petersen and her outfit rolled into town. Once on scene, they set about making sure everything was ready for their mobile wrecking machine.
“The basement had to be filled with wet sand, because we did not want the tank falling in. We also had to go through and make sure the electricity was disconnected and all the pipes were shut off,” Baedke-Petersen explained.
Once the all-clear was given, Tony Burglum, Drive-A-Tank’s owner and operator, drove the 15-ton behemoth through the two-story home. It took about four passes for him to completely destroy the structure.
Read more here, or view the video below:
