At least 128 buildings to be demolished in post-quake Christchurch clean-up.

The face of Christchurch is about to change, with Civil Defence confirming at least 128 buildings in the city centre will have to be demolished and more may follow.

At yesterday’s media briefing, the director of planning and transition for Civil Defence, Warwick Isaacs, said 128 buildings will be demolished, 37 require partial demolition and 12 will have to be made safe.

Another seven “critical buildings” would probably have to come down.

These are: the Rolleston Court apartments, New Zealand College of Early Childhood Education, Community House, BDO Spicer Christchurch, the Hotel Grand Chancellor, Harcourts Grenadier and Kenton Chambers.

Isaacs said the critical buildings were “generally” over five storeys tall, on an important thoroughfare, and posed a danger to other buildings.

Other buildings, including high-rise towers, may end up joining the critical list.

Some work on critical buildings was imminent, while further planning would be needed for the high-rise buildings such as the Hotel Grand Chancellor.

Isaacs had no update on how the leaning hotel building would be handled.

Some of the high-profile buildings on the list for demolition are: The Press building, part of Christ’s College, the Caledonian Hall, and St Paul’s Church.

Read more here.

Police detain a demolition manager in connection with the death of a holdout evictee.

Authorities in the northeastern Chinese city of Changchun have detained the manager of a demolition company after a 50-year-old protester was crushed during demolitions at a film studio renowned for its revolutionary movies.

Liu Shuxian, 50, died at the weekend during the demolition of the No.4 accommodation block at the Changchun Film Studios, which began at around 11 p.m. on Saturday when more than 20 earth-movers manned by more than 100 demolition crew arrived at the building.

The demolition gang removed a group of holdout evictees from the site before continuing to demolish the building, leaving Liu trapped inside.

“I cannot get out,” she told a friend in a phone call made shortly before her death. Liu’s body was dug out on Monday after her family called the police.

Wang Haibin, manager of the Changchun Donglin Demolition Co., was formally detained by police on suspicion of “illegal demolitions” leading to the death of evictee Liu Shuxiang, official media reported on Thursday.

Read more here.

Norwegian demolition man stands accused of stealing entire tower block

DemolitionNews has been granted exclusive access to leaked court documents relating to a case pending in Norway in which a contractor stands accused of stealing a tower block he had been employed to demolish. The local authority claims that the contractor dismantled the block and has subsequently reassembled it at the rear of his own house.

According to the local authority, contractor Olaf Ropli was chosen specifically for the high levels of recycling he had promised as part of his tender submission. “The contract to demolish the block attracted a total of seven bids, and there was very little to choose between them in terms of price,” says Morten Pedersen of the Molby prefecture. “But Ropli assured us that he could achieve a recycling rate of 100 percent.”

Pedersen says that the local authority’s concerns were first raised when the demolition of the six-storey block took several months longer than anticipated. “One of our building inspectors visited the site and was surprised to see the building being cut into pieces. Admittedly, we are not demolition experts but we had never seen a method quite like it,” Pedersen continues. “But when we challenged him, he said it was all part of his recycling process. It was only when one of our waste management employees reported that Ropli was dumping a large number of empty industrial adhesive containers on an almost daily basis that we began to realise just what his recycling method entailed.”

In what could be a landmark case, Ropli claims he was well within his rights to recycle the arisings from the site as he saw fit. “The local authority made no stipulation on how the materials could or should be recycled, nor did they place any time restrictions on the contract. I have a large family and plenty of land so this seemed like an ideal solution for everyone.”

The relocation of the tower block was not without its problems however. “The first issue was one of storage,” Ropli says. “For obvious reasons, we had to dismantle the building from the top down but we couldn’t start to reassemble it until we had the ground floor sections delivered. You would be surprised just how much room a tower block takes up.”

And the problems didn’t end there. “It soon became clear that our expertise lies in deconstruction and not construction. Taking the building to pieces was easy; putting it back together again was a nightmare, particularly matching the wallpaper,” he says. “At one point, we had an elevator shaft and an interior stairwell on the outside of the building. With hindsight, we probably should have numbered the sections.”

Ropli says he plans to fight the case and believes that, in addition to the shortcomings and loopholes in the local authority’s tender process, he holds a humanitarian trump card. “My children and some of their friends have already moved into the tower block so the local authority is effectively fighting to render people homeless. If there is any justice in this country, that will simply not be allowed,” Ropli concludes. “This is a test case and one that could impact upon European law. I am fighting this case not just for me but for the entire demolition industry.”

Industry veteran David Sinclair faces biggest challenge to date; rebuilding Haiti.

As a former president of the National Federation of Demolition Contractors and the European Demolition Association, board member of the National Demolition Association and a fellow of the Institute of Demolition Engineers, David Sinclair is one of the best-known and most-respected figures in the global demolition industry.

But after 45 years at the cutting edge of the demolition business during which he has worked successfully on three continents, Sinclair is about to face his biggest-ever challenge; drawing up a demolition master plan to help the United Nations tackle the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Haiti.

In this exclusive interview, David Sinclair looks back over his formative years in the demolition business; and ahead to his new role as the UN’s new demolition engineer and consultant. Click play below:

Local historians and preservationists plan to fight proposed demolition.

A week after a local historic group labelled the Colwyn Bat Pier “a tawdry apparition from the past”, the National Pier Society has vowed to fight any attempts to demolish the structure.

Historian Graham Roberts is president of the Civic Society and has this week been criticised by the National Piers Society. Roberts, who has had several books published on his home town, claimed the pier was detrimental to the regeneration effort and that spending millions on its restoration was not justifiable.

Chris Wyatt from the National Piers Society claimed Mr Roberts’ comments were galling. “I found the whole tone of Graham Roberts’ statements completely at odds with the philosophy of the Civic Society movement,” he said.

“His statements – such as ‘You can’t live on nostalgia’ – might be expected from someone with no interest in Wales’ heritage, but coming from the president of a civic society, the majority of whose members we are led to believe are of a similar opinion regarding the pier, leads one to question whether they might be more comfortable in a different organisation altogether.”

He added: “This must be particularly galling for the people of Colwyn Bay who have been fighting very hard to rescue their pier in the face of the extremely difficult situation surrounding its ownership.

Read more here.

Older structures to be razed as efforts continue to sell Welland site

John Deere – world famous tractor manufacturer and supplier of hats to blues guitarists – has applied to the city for demolition permits for its Canal Bank St. property.

Mayor Barry Sharpe said older buildings are to be razed, although permits have yet to be issued. “They want to clean up the site to make it more attractive for a purchase,” said Sharpe.

John Deere continues to wind up operations at its Welland Works site. The removal of buildings will ultimately depend upon the needs of prospective purchasers, said economic development manager Dan Degazio.

As various buildings are removed, John Deere will continue to perform its due diligence and commitment to remediating and improving the site, he said.

John Deere and the city are continuing a dialogue about the site.

Read more here

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.