Sounds about right. Must admit, on the incredibly long list of things-I-should-know-but-didn’t, was the fact that such demolitions involve a bunch of brave/dim people going in and physically cutting supporting steelwork before the explosives are used. Personally I’d take a chance on using more explosives…
They try to keep the explosive amount to an absolute minimum. It’s mostly what blows the debris around. So the less you use, the tidier the pile of rocks you end up with (and the fewer complaints from people who have to dig lumps of cooling tower out of their flower beds).
VB
Even if I was in the blast zone, I’d prefer a few broken windows to a bunch of dead and crippled guys, but I can see I’d prolly be in a minority with that. 
They were just over-confident. The fact is that demolitions happen too infrequently and are too different from one another for engineering calcs to be very reliable. The problem this time was that while they had accounted for the 600 tonne weight of the boilers themselves, they hadn’t accounted for the fact that the things were suspended on the mother of all spring systems, to stop combustion vibrations shaking the building. It may have been that the pre-demolition works excited some sort of resonance in the spring system which brought the place down. No-one was crippled (except mentally, perhaps). One guy was hit by the edge of the building. The other three were very deep inside it.
VB
Should have got these guys on the job!
Today I will mainly be waiting for my garden fence to blow down.
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Gonna be a lot of that today… In Norfolk today, so wondering what we’ll get home to…
Quite pleased to see no roof slates from the neighbour’s houses in our back garden. We had a couple the first year we moved in here. I was expecting a slate to hurtle through the new glazing at the back of the house so I’m pleasantly surprised thus far.
Brace yerself - it’ll go on all day, and much of tomorrow, and is set to get worse yet… Plenty of time for rusted-out slate nails to give-up the ghost…
We’ve had a bit of rain sneak in this morning… hoping it eases off now, but the drive to Glasgow this eve might be too interesting
A tree has been ripped apart next door …… a real shame.
Our cat seems to not be interested in going outside
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Stay safe Paul the rain is nearing horizontal at the moment up here.
Urgh…
It’s the bit over shap then the borders that are the worst bits, they’re so exposed
I’ll see what the forecast is before I set off. It’s eased off massively down here now so I’m hoping it’s going south
Similar here. Except it feels like the house is gonna blow down. 12ft x 4ft 6 sash windows make a hell of a noise.
2 panels of ours have gone 
one fence panel gone here.
Trying to decide where to take the dogs for a walk. It’s all trees round us which is a bit scary in this weather.
It sunny now 
but still
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