Canadian capital makes ready for its biggest-ever controlled explosion.
The biggest blast in the Canadian capital’s history happens this Sunday when a US demolition team blows down the Sir John Carling Building into 40,000 tonnes of rubble.
The obsolete federal office tower overlooking Dow’s Lake is to take a spectacular plunge from the city’s skyline at 7 a.m.
Eric “master blaster” Kelly of Advanced Explosives Demolition Inc. of Idaho will push a button detonating about 400 kilograms of dynamite in an intricate sequence of small, controlled explosions within the 11-storey structure.
According to Kelly, this job will be no push over. “THis is a tough one,” he says.
“This is a heavily-reinforced building,” says Kelly, gazing up at the 40,000-square metre edifice, stripped bare of everything from wiring to asbestos. It’ll take about 2,000 high-explosive charges to knock it down in a precisely-planned feat of engineering.
The surrounding area is open Experimental Farm property, except for one critical obstacle. Just metres away, on the northwest side, sits a small, one-storey former cafeteria building known as the “West Annex.” It’s a heritage site the government wants protected.
So Kelly has to get the tower to fall to the southeast, just enough to miss demolishing it.
Kelly estimates he has “shot” close to 1,000 structures in his 35-year career. Things haven’t always gone as planned, but no one has ever been hurt.
“I’ve been doing this 35 years and if you find any blasting company – I don’t care if they shoot rocks, stumps or whatever – who says they didn’t have something that didn’t go the way they like, they’re liars, they haven’t been in the business long enough,” says Kelly.
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