Two multi storey blocks of flats which were built in the 1970s were demolished today in Dundee. I walked past them not that long ago and wondered how on earth they were going to manage to get rid of them without damaging St Martin’s Episcopal Church, which stands in between them.
Have a look here if you want to see the demolition, apparently the church was very slightly damaged. But it’s an impressive feat by the experts. The film doesn’t really give you the idea of how tight the space is.
Wow, that would have been amazing to watch in person! It seemed very risky for the church so I’m glad to hear there was only minor damage.
I was very worried about they way the building on the right toppled over at the very end. But I gather very little collateral damage occurred. I think Dundee’s skyline looks much better without them. I’m not a fan of high rises for working in or living in. I worked on the 32 floor of One Financial Center in Boston and it sometimes made me nervous, especially in high winds!
No explosives would be required to get rid of the awful, abandoned building around us that we’re battling about, although sometimes I think I’d like to use some on it!
Anbolyn and Joan,
You might like to have a look at my eldest son’s video of the demolition. It’s quite shoogly (shaky) and as you can see and hear, it was very windy too. Duncan thought that something had gone badly wrong as the top 5 storeys or so of the right hand building didn’t seem to collapse as expected, but it turned out fine. You can her Duncan OMG-ing! I couldn’t even go up a building that high Joan.
Tell Duncan that’s a great video. I watched it and then showed it to Jack. He said to tell you that Duncan has a Scottish accent, as if you might not have noticed!
I can’t believe there were no / few damages to other buildings. I would think the crash of all that weight would crack a few windows. And all that dust!
Joan,
Yes, unlike Scottie in Star Trek, we have real Scottish accents! Duncan has a similar accent to ours, the female voices you can hear are all Dundonian accents, quite different, to our ears anyway. I think a few windows might have been cracked and they took the precaution of wrapping the church organ in layers of plastic, it would have been a horrible job cleaning that out!
It never ceases to amaze me how they do that! Looked like when the twin towers came down, all that dust! Think of the clean up!
Peggy Ann,
I know, that dust looks like it would still be settling weeks from then!