St Lucia police investigate after single gunshot kills worker.

St Lucia police report that a 48-year-old man was shot and killed over the weekend while he was demolishing a private unoccupied house in La Clery, just on the outskirts of the capital.

They said that Marius Polidore was part of a group of men who were hired to demolish the house when he was shot on Saturday night.

The police said that Polidore was killed by a single gunshot to his upper torso. They said that no one has been arrested in connection with the 16th murder so far for this year.

Read more here.

UK contractor uncovers second unexploded WWII in three months.

The team at Wring Group must be experiencing a severe dose of deja vu this afternoon, after uncovering an unexploded World War II bomb on the same site that threw up a similar bomb back in November.

The company unearthed the latest bomb while working at a building in Notte Street, in Plymouth city centre.
A 100m cordon has been set up around the street and city’s Holiday Inn has been evacuated. The Holiday Inn was almost at capacity with most of its 190 rooms booked.

Officers have established a command centre in the Guildhall car park nearby. Police on the scene have told the BBC that the device found on Wednesday was the same size and from the same era as the previous ordnance.

An Explosive Ordnance Disposal team has been notified, and it is thought that the bomb may be exploded at sea as soon as tomorrow.

Read more here.

Centre span falls to explosives in advance of second blast on Friday.

The bridge, which connected N.D. Highway 66 with Minnesota Highway 11 over the Red River east of Drayton, N.D., was imploded shortly after 8 a.m.

The old bridge, which often was threatened by flooding, was replaced last fall with a 4,090-foot-long bridge that is considered the second longest in North Dakota. The Four Bears Bridge over Lake Sakakawea near Fort Berthold, N.D., is about 400 feet longer.

“There were no problems. It went off without a hitch,” said Richard Sampson, project engineer with the North Dakota Department of Transportation.

Spectators were kept more than a quarter-mile away, as a demolition crew blew up the center portion of the steel-truss cantilever bridge, each end falling to the ice and shoreline.

Most of the charges were placed in the center portion of the bridge, to keep the ends of the bridge from breaking through the ice, according to Joel Myers, project engineer with Lunda Construction, the Wisconsin company that built the new bridge.

The two piers will be imploded Friday. The remaining steel girders will be dismantled and hauled away to be recycled.

To read more and to view a video of the implosion, please click here.

Worker pinned under falling debris “doing fine”.

A little under a week ago, we reported on a demolition worker being critically injured on the Technical High School project in Springfield. Thankfully, this demolition worker is made of pretty tough stuff as he’s back home and says he’s “doing fine” according to local newspaper reports.

Considering that just four days earlier the 51-year-old construction worker fell 12 feet and was pinned under a 7-foot by 4-foot slab of concrete during the demolition of the former Springfield Technical High School on Elliot Street, the most remarkable thing is that he is still around to feel anything.

McMurray was in critical condition at Baystate Medical Center and for a time was in medically induced coma in the hospital’s intensive care unit. He was released Saturday and is now resting at his home in Wallingford, Conn. He suffered several cracked ribs and a broken right wrist.

Read more here.

Supplier makes impassioned plea for help with insurance claim.

It is never good to see a demolition company fail, but it’s even worse when that company’s collapse threatens the livelihood of innocent suppliers. Which is why we are trying to help Yorkshire-based generator rental specialist Power-Rite to track down a pair of former Controlled Group employees who might just be able to save the company from an avoidable £20,000 loss.

Power-Rite’s Shaun Hymes says that one of his company’s generators was on Controlled Group’s Kingston House site in Liverpool when the contractor’s business collapsed but apparently went missing before administrators carried out a full inventory check. “The administrators are saying it was not on site so, in addition to losing £10,000 in revenue, I am also a £10k generator down.”

Hymes says that Controlled Group’s administrators have suggested that he claim for the loss of the generator through his own insurance, but Hymes says that his insurance excess is actually greater than the value of the equipment.

“I am trying to contact someone from the former Controlled Group who could help me prove the generator was on site when the company collapsed,” Hymes continues. “If anyone can help me to verify this, please get in touch.”

Power-Rite’s full contact details can be found here, and Shaun can be emailed direct at shaun@power-rite.co.uk.

DemolitionNews backs Armac Group’s fundraising for employee hurt in horrific accident.

We know times are hard, that work is scarce and that profits are all but non-existent. But we also know that the demolition industry is notoriously generous, particularly in its support of its own.

Which is why we’re calling on you to lend your financial support to an important fundraising initiative. Organised by Armac Group, the fundraising is to aid Danny Shields, one of its promising young employees who was injured in a road accident while on duty for the company.

You can read Danny’s full story here but we’ll warn you in advance – It is written by his mother and is deeply moving.

So where do you come in? Quite simply, we want your money. But we’re also pleased to offer something in return.

Any company or individual making a contribution of £20 or more to the fund will be given a FREE LISTING on our Business Directory (normally priced at £50). Furthermore, as we will be working with the Armac Group and following the progress of this fundraising closely, we will also highlight here on our front page any companies or individuals that have made a contribution, no matter how small.

To find out how to make a pledge, please visit the Pledge Appeal page on the Armac Group website now.

As we said at the beginning, we know times are hard. But we would ask you to dig deep to help this brave individual. Give the fund a little, and we’ll do our best to give you a lot in return.

Never mind what your careers advisor says, demolition is not always a bed of roses.

We openly admit that we’re susceptible to a touch of the Monday Morning Blues here at Demolition News Towers. A weekend of quiet reflection, followed by the compiling of our This Week in Demolition email newsletter generally just leaves us on the verge of a Falling Down moment.

So rather than stewing quietly to ourselves, we thought that this week – by way of a change – we would vent our collective spleens to shed some light on the true pros and cons of a career in demolition.

Demolition Pros & Cons

But this is by no means a definitive list. So we are throwing it open to you to use the comments area below to tell us what’s great (and what’s not so great) about a life in demolition.

We look forward to reading your contributions.

UK failed to transpose EU legislation into British law.

The European Commission has requested that the UK amend its regulations on asbestos at work because they do not comply fully with the parent EU Directive, reports Safety & Health Practitioner.

Delivered in the form of a reasoned opinion under EU infringement procedures, the Commission wants the UK to change provisions in its legislation that exempt some maintenance and repair activities from the application of the EU Directive on the protection of workers from asbestos.

It follows a complaint received by the Commission that Article 3(3)(a) and (b) of the asbestos Directive 2009/148/EC has not been correctly transposed into UK law. Article 3(3) offers the possibility for an exemption from three obligations set out in the Directive for activities that involve only sporadic and low-intensity exposure to asbestos – for example, in the case of some maintenance and repair activities.

However, in the Commission’s view, the UK law omits specific parts of Article 3(3)(a) and (b), and so widens the scope of the exemption. The Commission says the UK legislation focuses on the measurement of exposure to asbestos but not enough on how the material can be affected by the work involved. The Directive deals with both exposure and the material.

The UK now has two months to bring its legislation into line with EU law, or risk the matter being referred to the EU’s Court of Justice.

Read more here.

Revealing failure to disclose “green demolition” option skews Newark bid process.

There is just so much wrong with this picture that we scarcely know where to begin. Of course, the most obvious shortcoming is the fact that low bidder Steve Roberts was planning to undertake the demolition of two buildings for less than the next nearest bid was planning to charge for two.

But that, apparently, is merely the tip of the iceberg. And the two-thirds that lurk just below the surface perhaps says more about the US demolition industry’s attitude to the environment than it does about the failings of the bid process.

A report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development says that the reason for the disparity between the low bid and the other six bids on the shortlist was that the city knew the low-bidder planned to defer some if its cost by recycling brick and foundation stones, therefore minimising disposal costs.

“There was no indication that the city afforded the other bidders the same opportunity,” Jorgelle Lawson, director of the HUD Columbus field office’s Community Planning and Development Department wrote in the letter. “Based on this information, we believe this is a clear violation. … The city failed to provide all bidders with the fact they could use ‘green’ demolition. This failed to allow free and open competition.”

In the city’s 11 February response, it stated that the city did not require the “green demolition,” but the low bidder, Steve Roberts, opted for that form of disposal.

Did not require “green demolition”? In this day and age?

It is difficult to know just who is more at fault here: the city for failing to prescribe environmentally-sound disposal methods; or the demolition contractors for continuing to identify demolition arisings as a waste rather than a potentially valuable resource.

Compare that to the UK and other parts of Europe where it is not unusual for the demolition contractor to “buy” the demolition contract in order to access the valuable materials contained within a structure, and it’s clear that the US still has much to learn about what green demolition really means.

Read more here.

Ongoing clearance of Scottish skyline continues with latest implosion.

Greenock tower block Octavia Court was reduced to rubble in just a few seconds, demolished in a controlled explosion for River Clyde Homes at 2.30am today.

Around 10 kilogrammes of explosives placed at 500 points within the empty block of flats in Sinclair Street were enough to bring the structure down.

Crowds watched from Lady Octavia Park as the explosions boomed out across Greenock. River Clyde Homes said that the location of the building made it cheaper and more convenient to demolish with explosives although the operation had to take place overnight when trains weren’t running on the nearby Wemyss Bay railway line.

A large area around the flats had been sealed off and the residents of the nearest homes were put up in a hotel during preparations on Saturday.