900+ flood damaged properties earmarked for demolition in restarted demolition programme.

It is news that will gladden the heart of at least one pink-clad, New Orleans-based demolition lady. Two years after the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) quit paying to demolish New Orleans homes and businesses damaged by Hurricane Katrina, the agency has agreed to restart the program, with more than 900 properties already on the teardown list.

Aides to Mayor Mitch Landrieu said this week that they’ve convinced the Federal Emergency Management Agency that the additional dilapidated properties should be razed at the agency’s expense because they are located near the more than 1,600 buildings that FEMA paid to tear down between December 2007 and March 2009.

A FEMA spokeswoman confirmed that the agency has agreed to finance the demolition of at least 910 properties that were deemed eligible for the program years ago.

“They remain eligible as a result of a recent reassessment performed by FEMA” that found the properties unoccupied and posing health and safety hazards, spokeswoman Paddy Buratto said in an email message.

City officials also plan to seek FEMA reimbursement for some of the 806 properties that the city has demolished using federal block grants, said Jeff Hebert, Landrieu’s blight czar.

“If those are covered, the city gets those dollars back to apply to other projects,” Chief Administrative Officer Andy Kopplin said. “We are going to get as aggressive as we can be.”

Read more here.

Blaster didn’t know how close trailer park was; failed to use blast mats.

The Yukon government is asking for a new trial almost a year after being found guilty of permitting a dynamite blast that sent rocks crashing into homes in a Whitehorse trailer park.

Blaster Peter Hildebrand, who pleaded guilty to conducting an unsafe blast, told the original trial judge he had no idea how close the trailer park was to the blast site, and said as much on the plans he submitted to the government overseer.

No blasting mats were used on the site, as required by the government’s own regulations, the court heard, and the blast conducted that day was the largest Hildebrand had ever attempted.

As Faulkner said in his decision on the case, it was a miracle no one was injured when dozens of rocks rained down, crashing through one family’s living room ceiling, destroying fences and smashing the limbs off trees.

Read more here.

Accident investigators focus on processes; Rusch set to be exonerated.

It is just over two months since the accident that killed Ad Swanink, robbing the demolition industry of one of its true innovators and tarnishing the largely unblemished reputation of the high reach excavator industry in a tragic split second.

DemolitionNews understands that the machine itself – so long the subject of analysis and conjecture – has now been released by the coroner who is awaiting the findings of a more detailed health and safety report. However, the fact that it has been released certainly suggests that the machine and, more specifically, its manufacturer Rusch are set to be exonerated and that the accident was most likely caused by human error as we had previously reported.

Although it would be misguided to speculate on the eventual findings of the health and safety investigation, we further understand that the machine’s collapse was not a single action but may have occurred in at least two stages, and that Swanink may have returned to the machine up to two minutes after an initial and partial collapse.

Whatever happened on that fateful day and regardless of the outcome, we sincerely hope that Rusch receives a formal exoneration from the investigators. To lose one industry innovator in this accident is tragic; to lose another by association would be a travesty.

Demo Diva Simone Bruni launches TV advertising campaign.

She may not be the world’s best, biggest or best-established demolition contractor. But Simone Bruni could teach her larger, longer-established peers a thing or two when it comes to marketing and media exposure.

Not content with her occasional starring role here on DemolitionNews, her appearance in the international demolition press, and the launch of her own radio show in her native New Orleans, Bruni is now taking her unique marketing message to the masses via a new TV advertising campaign.

And we can exclusively bring you the first of her new ads.

Demolition imminent on vast Scottish factory that was never commissioned.

The vacant factory at Halbeath was taken over by the Shepherd Offshore Group in November last year and on Monday night the English renewables company confirmed it will be brought down in a matter of weeks.

The group, fronted by former Newcastle United FC chairman Freddie Shepherd, said they have to demolish the million-square-foot site as it was “never commissioned” and they have been in talks with a view to a company taking over the running of the site.

Hyundai had intended to build a semiconductor plant but this never materialised, despite it spending around £80 million installing utilities at the Dunfermline site. Motorola took it over, promising around 1,350 jobs, but again this fell by the wayside. Then US high-tech firm Zoom Diversified expressed interest, with the prospect of bringing around 1000 jobs, but it dropped its proposals for a solar cell operation. The Scottish Government had offered £10 million to Zoom through Regional Selective Assistance.

The Shepherd Offshore Group bought the site last year and is progressing its plans. A spokesman said plant and machinery had now been auctioned and the way is clear for the site to be demolished.

“Hopefully this will give us a good indication of what lies in store,” he said. “It is basically the pain before the gain. We will be taking the building down. It is a bit strange, as the building was never commissioned. We’ll basically be knocking it down and rebuilding it. People will look at it and see that as a bit unusual but it’s not a warehouse.”

Read more here.

A follow-up on the Danny Shields appeal.

Just over a month ago, we carried a story on the fact that we were backing an appeal to raise funds for a demolition man, Danny Shields. The campaign was started by the team at Armac Group, the company that employed Danny, and has received a considerable amount of backing from the demolition sector as a whole.

Yesterday, we received a lovely letter from Danny’s mother and father, thanking DemolitionNews and its readers for their support and to update the situation with Danny’s treatment. We have reproduced the letter below:

On the 21st of February you featured an article in your weekly news regarding our son Danny Shields, who had been involved in nasty car accident whislt working for Armac Group. The article was forwarded to you via Armac. The story explained that Danny had suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury, and you also posted the heartfelt letter I wrote explaining the story so far.

Kind Regards
Derek & Georgia Shields

Pomp, pageantry and procrastination mark beginning of military hospital demolition.

Before a wrecking ball was ceremoniously dropped atop a five-story military hospital at March Air Reserve Base to eventually make way for the 58 hectare (144-acre) March LifeCare medical campus, former state Assembly speaker and San Francisco mayor Willie Brown told a few hundred people gathered to watch that he wants to see President Barack Obama at the campus when the first building is complete. He described the project, being developed by Don Ecker’s March Healthcare Development group, as “something extraordinarily unique.”

Following 17 speeches – with the singing of the national anthem and a flyover formation of three small military planes providing breaks in between – the wrecking ball punched at the roof four times, raining bits of the ceiling down in one room on the fifth floor, before finally breaking through.

All the while, a live band played John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Crumblin’ Down” with the refrain, “And the walls, come tumblin’ down.”

Read more or watch a video of the interminable speeches here.

Police investigate after demolition worker is killed by falling roof beam.

One man was killed while dismantling a large vacant industrial building in the 1500 block of Webster Street in Dayton on Monday afternoon.

A four-man crew was working inside the building shortly after 2 p.m. when a steel roof support beam fell on the man, killing him instantly, Dayton Police Sgt. Chris Weber said. The men were using an acetylene torch to cut the beam when it gave way, he added.

The Montgomery County Coroner’s Office identified the man as Kevin L. Hughes, 40.

The building has no roof and police are investigating whether the crew had permission to be in the building. It appears the crew was hired as a subcontractor, Weber said, although the exact details are not clear.

Read more here.

Partially demolished and scuppered vessel dictates extreme measures.

The Coast Guard and environmental regulators have moved to Plan B for getting the derelict barge Davy Crockett out of the Columbia River: building a temporary $1.4 million coffer dam around the rusting wreck and removing it piece by piece.

Coast Guard officials had hoped to tow the barge in two big sections for out-of-river dismantling in a shipyard. But with bunker fuel and other contaminants on board, shipyards balked at the potential environmental liability, said Capt. Daniel LeBlanc, commander of the Coast Guard’s Portland-based marine safety unit.

Environmental regulators and river watchdogs favored a shipyard approach — the 431-foot converted Liberty ship from World War II has already leaked lubricating oil, fuel oil and some diesel at unknown volumes into the river, including small amounts of toxic PCBs.

But Oregon and Washington have signed off on the coffer dam, essentially sheet metal pilings lined with silt barriers to keep contamination contained. The dam will take four weeks to build, the Coast Guard predicts, with work starting as early as Friday.

Read more here.

Court ruling means planning permission required for major building demolition

UK developers will need to get planning permission before demolishing some buildings following a landmark judgment in the Court of Appeal, reports Property Week.

The court ruled in a case involving heritage body Save Britain’s Heritage and the secretary of state for Communities and Local Government. The verdict introduces new controls over demolitions of buildings and structures under UK planning law.

The case involved a decision by Lancaster City Council to authorise the demolition of the historic Mitchell’s Brewery building without prior approval. The building has since been listed but the case has remained live as Save Britain’s Heritage sought a landmark ruling, following an initial defeat in the High Court last year.

The judgment brings all demolitions within the scope of a European directive – the environmental impact assessment directive – and any proposed demolition that is considered to have significant effects on the environment will be subject to the environmental impact assessment process.

This invalidates more of the secretary of state’s ‘demolition direction’, which exempts demolition from planning control.

William Palin, secretary of Save Britain’s Heritage said: “This is a crucial judgment which will have far reaching effects on the way that local councils deal with demolitions of all types of building. It confirms that the government’s interpretation of this important European Directive has hitherto been too narrow and has wrongly excluded demolition from its scope.

We have been arguing for years that it is absurd that a developer can escape the directive by separating demolition from development when it is clear that demolition can and does have serious impacts on the environment.”

read more here.