Or how mass media haven’t got a frickin’ clue about demolition.
This time last week, as you may recall, a team of demolition and explosives engineers from Birmingham’s DSM Demolition carried out the explosive demolition of an 18-storey tower block in the company’s native city.
It was a textbook blast. The structure collapsed within its own footprint, precisely as planned. The building fragmented to facilitate a rapid clean-up and efficient recycling, as planned. The force of the blast was contained, again as planned. The exclusion zone served its purpose and ensured – as planned – that no-one was hurt or injured.
When the dust settled, onlookers, fellow demolition experts and the trade media gave the blast an unequivocal thumbs up. It was, we all agreed, a job well done.
And then the wider media pitched up, determined not to let the facts stand in the way of a good story. Instead, reporters working for “news organisations” that are big enough to know better, went for the ludicrous, sensationalist claptrap route.
Video footage showing a couple of DSM Demolition workers jogging away from an approaching dust cloud was repurposed. This was not, the national media claimed, two guys keen not to inhale 40 years of dust into their lungs. Oh no. This was, in fact, “bungling demolition workers that had stood too close to the collapsing building” and who were now “running for their lives”.
There are just so many things wrong with these claims, I scarcely know where to begin. But let’s start at the top.
You, the person that wrote this preposterous claim. Yes you, the guy that has just graduated from journalism school and who has never set foot on a demolition site. How in the Blue Hell do you know that they had stood too close? Were you actually there? Did you check the calculations used to plan the exclusion zone? Oh, and have you heard of this weird thing called “the wind” that has a nasty habit of moving dust about the place in a pretty unpredictable fashion?
If the answer to any (or, more likely, all) these questions is no, then please go back reporting on cats stuck up trees, visible signs of celebrity face-lifts and the sexual mores of the political elite and leave the demolition reporting to the people that know what a professional blast looks like.
