Blast drops bridge with no replacement in sight.

About 200 very chilly-looking local residents turned out for the implosion of the St. Jean Baptiste Bridge on Saturday.

The blast went off about 9 a.m. and the bridge immediately sank into the Red River. Rakowski Cartage and Wrecking is in charge of the demolition and clean up.

The bridge spans the Red River. The town of St. Jean Baptiste is now cut off on the east side. People have received no word from the province yet on whether they will receive a new bridge or how long it might take to replace.

The bridge was built in 1947. Its piers had become unstable.

The demise of high reach innovator Rusch marks the end of an era

There was a time when it seemed like the party would never end. Work was plentiful, margins were healthy, and the global demolition industry looked ever upward. It was a trend that was marked most notably by the race for the biggest high reach machine; a kind of mechanical penis envy that saw machines rise from 30 to 60 and ultimately to 90 metres in just a few short years.

But the party did end. And so began the hangover.

The global recession invited upon us by greedy bankers and misguided politicians served up a large-scale reality check to remind demolition contractors that size doesn’t matter anywhere near as much as utilisation levels.

And the Rusch TUHD90, all 90 metres of it, personified that hangover. Lauded as an engineering triumph upon its launch, the machine ultimately did less work than a benefit scrounger. Engineering issues, a long-running wrangle between manufacturer and customer, a dearth of contracts requiring 90 metres of reach, and a scarcity of operators sufficiently competent to handle such a monster combined to make the TUHD90 a sad and overly ambitious mobile memorial to those heady pre-recession days.

Certainly, the TUHD90 was not perfect; far from it. But that is the nature of innovation. That is why the iPhone was not the first ever mobile phone; and that is why very few of us still drive Model T Ford motor cars.

Every field of human endeavour requires a person to push the envelope; someone bold, brave and even foolhardy enough to go where no man has gone before. Ruud Schriejer of Rusch is just such a man.

Want proof? While most of us looked on in horror as the BP Deepwater Horizon platform spilled millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, Schreijer was at his drawing board devising a submersible demolition shear that could shut off the gushing pipeline.

Sadly, with innovation comes risk. And although the machine that unexpectedly shed its counterweight killing fellow pioneer Ad Swanink back in January 2011 was not the same machine that originally rolled out of the Rusch factory, the mud stuck and the Rusch name was tarnished, perhaps irrevocably, from that moment on.

The company did bounce back with the launch of the RS 4500 high reach, a machine that promised to move Rusch from bespoke modifier to “volume producer” status. But, even though the machine was a contender in the 2012 Demolition Awards, the high capital cost price of the unit coupled with an ongoing global recession was ultimately to sound the death knell for the company that had come to prominence in markedly better times.

When the gates close for the last time on Monday, Schreijer and his family will have lost their business, and some very talented designers and engineers will have lost their jobs. And the industry will have lost another innovator and pioneer.

Demolition will be poorer for their demise.

Maker of world’s largest high reach excavator succumbs to economic pressures.

Rusch, the manufacturing company behind the largest high reach excavator ever to grace a demolition site, will close the gates of its factory for the final time on Monday.

The company, which first made the global demolition headlines with the development of a 90 metre high reach, has been the subject of intense speculation for more than a year.

However, earlier today, managing director Ruud Schreijer confirmed to DemolitionNews that the rumours were true this time and that Monday will mark the company’s last day.

The reasons behind the decision have not yet been made public, although a general slowing of the global demolition sector and – although exonerated – the fallout from the accident involving the 90 metre TUHD90 machine that killed Ad Swanink will certainly not have helped the company’s fortunes.

There were hopes that the company had put those troubles behind it with the development of the RS 4500 high reach, a machine that was a contender in last year’s Demolition Awards. But saddled with a high cost price in the midst of a global recession meant that the new unit was slow to find favour.

“It is a pity we could not prove to the industry that the RS 4500 is a good machine to make money with, despite the high purchase price,” Ruud Schreijer says. “We have tried and we lost.”

Charleston Department of Highways forced to change bridge demolition plans.

The Dick Henderson Bridge will go out with a bang after all.

The state Division of Highways announced that it has changed its demolition plans for the remaining portions of the Richard “Dick” Henderson Memorial Bridge, which used to connect the cities of Nitro and St. Albans.

Crews from Kokosing Construction had been slowly dismantling the bridge’s steel superstructure. They removed the first portion of the bridge’s center last Thursday.

But division spokeswoman Carrie Bly said that as crews began cutting into sections of the bridge closer to the river bank, they realized they needed to change their plans.

“The remaining steel was heavier than they anticipated and it’s too heavy to lift,” Bly said.

Kokosing workers now plan to shoot explosives onto the remaining portions and blast them apart.

Read more here.

Franchisees left in the dark as hydraulic hose provider calls it a day.

DemolitionNews can exclusively reveal that BMI Hose (UK) Ltd, the hydraulic hose replacement company, has closed its doors.

Phone calls to the company’s Wolverhampton headquarters are going unanswered and the dozen or so franchise operations that stretch from Bristol to Glasgow are in the dark about their futures.

When we asked an unnamed spokesman at BMI Reading about rumours of the company’s demise, he answered simply: “You probably know more than we do. All we know is that they closed their doors yesterday and nobody has heard from the since.” Another at BMI London – which is not a franchise – confirmed that BMI Hose UK had gone into receivership.

Social media networks have reacted quickly with numerous independent hose replacement companies offering to help customers in light of BMI’s sudden disappearance.

BMI Hose opened for business in August 2007. In November of the same year, the first service centre opened in Dudley. This was quickly followed by BMI Newcastle-upon-Tyne, BMI Reading, and BMI Bristol which all opened in early 2008. In September 2008, the company acquired Hiflex Fluidpower to become the UK’s second largest provider of emergency on-site hose replacements behind Pirtek.

Story Update Here

Caterpillar Work Tools video extols virtues of versatile attachment.

This new video from the mighty Caterpillar takes a closer look at the use of sorting grapples in a demolition and recycling environment by looking through the eyes of David Bahm of Kansas-based Bahm Demolition.

Experienced demolition folk will probably not learn a great deal about working methods, but the footage is high quality, and Bahm offers some great insights into how – together with his daughter – he runs his business.

Writer and filmmaker documents gradual demolition of Passaic Bridge.

Despite the heady circles in which we move, it is unusual that we receive an email from a writer/filmmaker to tell us about a new project. But then, Wheeler Antabanez’s obsession with the piece=-by-piece demolition of the Passaic Bridge is not particularly usual either.

He has sat in the freezing cold of the early morning, and drawn the ire of the contractors for straying too close to the blast zone. It begs the question: Why go through the trouble?

It’s because Antabanez is filming a movie and writing a book about the Passaic River. “Anytime something like this is going on, I’m definitely there,” he said.

The Caldwell resident has been exploring the river for years since purchasing a 70-horsepower speedboat. His adventures led him to write a special issue in Weird NJ called “Nightshade on the Passaic.” The film and the book will pick up where “Nightshade” left off.

But Antabanez left the boat in Kearny while filming and photographing the bridge demolition. He wanted to shoot from solid ground to get steady images.

His efforts—and his tendency to dress in dark clothes—aroused the suspicions of the demolition crew on the second-to-last blast day.

“I was all ready to take a shot and I had my camera set up, and they came in saying ‘You can’t be in the blast zone,'” Antabanez said.

But the workers let him leave his cameras in the blast zone, and they recorded what Antabanez thinks was the biggest explosion of the series. “It looks like a big shrouded ghost head coming up,” he said of the blast.

And he made peace with the demolition crew. In fact, the blastmaster asked Antabanez for copies of his videos.

Read more here, and view Antabanez’ compilation video below.

B&B Demolition goes hunky in TV advert.

Here at Demolition News Towers, we often tread a fine line between good humoured and accidentally sexist. And, on the one occasion that we overstepped the mark with a Playboy TV video featuring a bunch of scantily-clad (and unclad) girls going about their daily demolition business, readers were quick to tell us the error of our ways.

But, partly to redress the balance, partly in recognition of the number of women now making inroads into demolition, and partly because we actually found it quite funny, here’s a demolition company’s TV advert featuring three guys from the hunkier side of the demolition business. Quite what health and safety types will make of their lack of PPE and near-naked torsos is anyone’s guess. But, judging by the reaction of the ladyt in the ad, that’s probably a small price to pay.

Ladies, enjoy.

Almost a mile of concrete viaduct demolished in 24 hours, thanks to LaBounty shears.

What follows IS a LaBounty corporate video and, under normal circumstances, we would steer clear of publishing what might be construed as an advertisement.

But this mini-epic follows the demolition of Doyle Drive – almost one mile of heavily reinforced concrete viaduct on the approach to San Francisco’s famous Golden Gate Bridge – in just 24 hours by Ferma Corporation.

Not only is it a staggering engineering feat, watching it on a day when Demolition News Towers is snow-bound just makes us want to book a flight to warmer climes. Enjoy.

LaBounty_Doyle Drive Demolition from partheinc on Vimeo.

Before we condemn the HSE’s FFI scheme, we need to look at the bigger picture.

We have all seen the headlines before: Christmas trees banned for health and safety risk; school football condemned by HSE; Breathing: The Hazards – The HSE report. And we all know them to be Daily Mail-style scaremongering with no basis in truth whatsoever. Indeed, in a rare moment of levity, the Health and Safety Executive now publishes these stories itself and then dispels them as “elf and safety myths”.

So, with that in mind, are we misjudging at the news that the Health and Safety Executive recouped just under three quarters of a million pounds in the first two months of its Fee for Intervention scheme?

Like many others in the trade press, I was quick to point an accusing finger at the HSE over its targeting of construction and the fact that it was doing so when the industry was already down for the count.

But, in truth, that is missing two important points:

1. The construction industry is targeted by the HSE for a reason – in 2012 alone it managed to kill 49 of its number and injured many, many more.
2. The very fact that construction companies received so many contravention notices in the first two months of FFI’s existence merely underlines the fact that some construction and demolition companies are still putting the lives and well-being of its employees and the public at risk on a daily basis.

As the HSE’s programme director – Gordon MacDonald – said when the scheme came into force on 1 October 2012: “Firms who manage workplace risks properly will not pay. But it is right that those who break the law should pay their fair share of the costs to put things right – and not the public purse.”

That is a difficult standpoint to argue against. So too is the timing of the scheme’s introduction.

Many – myself included – cited the fact that construction and demolition was in the grip of the worst recession in living memory and that has only deepened since FFI came into being. Surely FFI was the financial equivalent of kicking a man when he’s down, and stealing his wallet in the process?

Possibly so. But when the vagaries of the UK and global economies have backed the industry into a financial corner, work is being won more than ever before on the basis of pure cost. And there remains an element within construction and demolition that will see additional risk and less safety measures as a small price to pay to win much needed work.

Yes, the construction and demolition industries are being targeted. And yes, that is going to cost some companies money. But before we accuse the HSE of thinly-veiled cash generation, we need to get our own house in order.