Explosives bring down California generating station.

Two units were demolished at California generating station yesterday to make room for two new replacement units.

The demolished units at El Segundo (where, as hip-hop fans know, A Tribe Called Quest mislaid their wallet some years ago) were retired in January 2003. The company is making way for two new, highly efficient replacement units, scheduled to go online in 2013.

The new units will be gas fueled and can be on-line in 10 minutes, providing backup support for solar power and other renewable energy sources.

Flurry of recruitment activity as industry gears up for 2011.

Our sister website demolition-jobs.co.uk is an oddly transient beast. One day it is lying dormant like some long-dead volcano; and the next it erupts into furious activity.

And strangely, when most of the UK demolition industry should be concerning itself with the Arctic conditions and the impending excesses of the Christmas party season, the site has just had one of its unexpected flurries of activity.

So, if you’re looking for a new job as an Estimator, Plant Operator or Demolition Supervisor for the New Year, pop over there now and take a look.

Work underway at grain site where two men died.

A grain elevator annex in north-central Kansas where two workers were killed earlier this year is being demolished.

Agco Inc. manager Dan Bernard says contractors began the work at the Russell facility last week and hope to have the 19-bin annex demolished within 30 days. Each bin holds about 22,000 bushels of grain.

Two of the bins collapsed June 24, burying two employees under concrete, reinforced steel and wheat. It took several hours for authorities to find the bodies of 21-year-old Max Greve, of Hays, and 19-year-old Sean Banks, of Russell.

Read more here.

New job listing on demolition-jobs.co.uk for demolition supervisor.

A leading demolition contractor in the South East of England is actively seeking a new demolition supervisor for an immediate start on a new project it has secured.

The successful applicant will have a minimum of five years demolition supervisory experience, and hold a Demolition Supervisor Gold Gold.

Full details on this exciting job opportunity (and many more besides) can be found here.

A 120 percent difference between high and low bid is now considered the norm?

Here at DemolitionNews, we prefer to merely present you with the news and leave our personal feelings strictly for our comment articles. But, in this instance (which highlights just how far the US demolition industry has fallen during the recession), we’re going to make an exception. Our comments are in italics:

Bids opened on Wednesday for the Chalmers Mill demolition held no surprises, said officials involved with the long-anticipated Amsterdam project.

No surprises? That’s a good thing then. All is going according to plan.

The project has garnered so much interest from contractors that an additional walk-through was held and the deadline for bids pushed back two weeks.

Lots of interest? Work is scarce so no alarm bells.

A dozen vendors submitted proposals to the city, ranging from Ritter & Paratore Contracting Inc.’s low bid of $1.6 million to a high bid of $3.5 million from Albany-based Cristo Demolition Inc.

Erm, you do know that’s a 120 percent difference between the low and the high bid, right?

“They were right in the range that we’d anticipated,” said Saratoga Associates President Dan Shearer. “Our construction estimate was $2.347 million and I think that’s about where the mean came in.”

Wait one cotton-picking minute. Even your own estimates put this at $1 million more than the low bid. Doesn’t that worry you at all?

“I actually thought that they’d be in the $2 to $3 million price range,” said Department of Public Works General Foreman Ray Halgas. “With the downturn of the economy … you notice a lot of contractors bidding on a lot of jobs.”

REALLY? Well we can see why they pay you the big bucks Mr Halgas.

When the site was originally planned for demolition it had an estimated price tag around $4 million.

Where’s your economic recovery now, Mr President?

Read more here (if you can bare to).

Workers find drugs and ammunition during demolition of old jail.

The differences between the UK and the US demolition industries has been a constant theme here on DemolitionNews ever since we first opened our online doors. Over here, demolition contractors have almost univeraally embraced high reach excavators while in America, the wrecking ball is still a common sight. US contractors are in constant danger of falling foul of OSHA while UK contractors are ever-watchful for the HSE. And don’t even get us started on recycling rates.

But we have just found a story that, perhaps better than any, highlights a fundamental difference between these two great nations.

Workers in Nashville (that’s the one in Indiana) have uncovered a stash of seized drugs and ammunition during the demolition of a former country jail. Nothing unusual in that, I hear you say; UK demolition workers are uncovering unexpected stuff all the time.

True enough. But, having uncovered a stash of drugs including a tub containing around 10kg of marijuana, I am not sure that many demolition workers would have been quite so honest about their discovery. In fact, experience suggests that the first a UK employer would know about such a discovery would be their workers’ glazed expressions, the sound of Bob Marley songs wafting gently across the site, or a serious case of the site canteen munchies.

Demolition of the “Tombstone at Ground Zero” just a month away.

More than nine years since it was damaged beyond repair by the collapsing World Trade Center, crews are finally almost done dismantling 130 Liberty Street, the last standing remnant of Sept. 11 destruction.

Officials of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the agency that owns the former Deutsche Bank Tower, say the last three remaining floors of the building will be torn down by mid-January.

“It’s actually quite stunning how low the building’s gotten,” said Josh Rosenbloom, LMDC’s Director of City Operations, noting that the once-40-story tower has been reduced to a height of less than 40 feet.

The agency had earlier predicted that the demolition would be finished by year’s end. But a crane malfunction in late October and difficulty cutting through reinforced steel and concrete on the sixth floor cost crews several days of work time on the site. Rosenbloom said there had not been any further delays in the last month, and that the agency now says the last steel columns slated for extraction would be gone around 15 January if weather is not an impediment.

Read more here.

New video captures entire demolition process at Get Carter car park.

The demolition of the “Get Carter” car park in Gateshead is a story that we followed with considerable interest from the outset. And it seems only fitting that we should round things off with an absolutely top-notch video that captures the entire demolition process by Thompsons of Prudhoe from beginning to end.

Gateshead Car Park Demolition from Thompsons of Prudhoe on Vimeo.

JCB to auction limited edition backhoe in aid of Help for Heroes charity.

UK construction equipment giant JCB is offering someone the opportunity to own a piece of history while doing some good for one of the most important charities around.

The company is auctioning a JCB 3CX Eco Contractor backhoe loader – suitably decked out in Union Jack livery – with proceeds going towards the creation of four Personnel Recovery Centres. These provide, in partnership with the Services and other Service charities, ongoing training and support for the wounded after Headley Court.

Help for Heroes is all about ordinary people doing extraordinary things to help give wounded UK Servicemen and women the support they so greatly need and deserve. Millions of people have ‘done their bit’ since the launch in 2007, doing everything from sponsored parachute jumps to cake sales, marathons to climbing thousands of feet up some of the tallest mountains in the world. It is now the turn of JCB to give something back to the brave Servicemen and women.

The auction runs through to the 21st December 2010. More details can be found here

Louisiana reports demolition of hurricane damaged homes is behind schedule.

The Baton Rouge board charged with demolishing and disposing of hurricane-damaged homes bought by the state won’t be able to finish the work on time or within the current budget.

That’s according to Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera, who reviewed the program overseen by the Louisiana Land Trust.

The trust is in charge of dealing with more than 10,400 properties acquired through the state’s Road Home Program after hurricanes Katrina and Rita – either by demolishing them, auctioning them off or transferring them to local control.

Read more here.