(Last year we saw the crane and wrecking ball working on some of the other towers, and Abe later said "Remember that nutcracker that was wrecking the buildings?")Seb, Ky and I watched the wrecking ball work on this tower (U Hall, I believe it is, Allison) for about an hour this morning while Abe was at preschool. It was very interesting!! We enjoyed Philip's construction pictures on his site, so I thought I'd post a few of our own for those who are unable to observe in person. :)
Sebby loved watching the wrecking ball "boom" into the building, of course. He did say to me reassuringly several times, "Wrecking balls don't wreck cars, no, no! And they never wreck people!"
This is the view from the other side (north side) of the building. Most of the work was going on on the south side while we watched.
This picture (click to enlarge) helps show the scale of the wrecking ball. It looks like it's about half as tall as one floor. So, 5 feet high, maybe?
The ball doesn't swing out laterally like a sledgehammer, as you might expect. It just gets hoisted up and then crashes straight down. Unless he has a video camera on the top or something, I assume the crane operator can't see where he is hitting. We saw one man keep running back and forth from the front of the building to the back, where the crane cab was. I think he was telling the crane operator if he was hitting the right spot or not.
The ball would hit straight down onto the ceiling of one floor, and after a few crunching repetitions, we'd see the ball smash straight through and down to the next floor. In the picture above you can see the bulge as the floor gets ready to collapse. Of course with each hit, debris and rubble and dust would rain down.
Here you can see the main brick outer wall beginning to buckle.
With the next hit, it buckles further.
A large segment cracks and falls off.
Another crash onto the remaining segment . . .
And the entire wall collapses.
It was fascinating! We'll be going back for another look soon. :)
Nice arrows! :) I wish I could have seen this, but I'm glad Seb did.
ReplyDeleteDid I tell you that we got April Fooled regarding the demolition of this building?
ReplyDeleteJoel's cousin Ammon was in town, so we all went to the Bean Museum with our kids. Joel's cousin, Paul, a freshman, said he'd seen flyers all over campus that they were going to implode the last DT tower at 5 p.m. It was almost five then, so we all headed over there to let the kiddies watch. Five o'clock rolled around and there weren't even construction workers around, and it was only then that we realized that it was April 1st. Sweet trick, huh? There were like 100 other BYU students there, too. All Paul could say, as the kids are crying about it (really) was, "Where's the free popcorn? The flyers said there'd be free popcorn."