The NFDC’s London & Southern region did itself proud on Saturday night.

Under normal circumstances, even the most demolition-related social event would fail to make the pages of DemolitionNews. However, Saturday night’s National Federation of Demolition Contractors’ London & Southern Counties region Xmas Ball, held at the prestigious Royal Lancaster Hotel in London’s West End, certainly merits a mention.

Organised by L&SC regional chairman Martin Wilson, Nikola Oakey and the team at Lawson Group, the event attracted more than 400 people for what was a great mix of old-style soul music, marching band pomp and ceremony, excellent food and more than a drop or two of alcohol (well, at least those that hadn’t drawn the short straw as nominated driver!)

Through some bizarre quirk of planning, DemolitionNews found itself on a table hosted by NFDC president David Darsey and his lovely wife Sarah, and sat beside the new IDE president John Woodward and his equally lovely wife Jill.

A variety of raffles and charity auctions raised well over £20,000 for Martin Wilson’s nominated charity – Help for Heroes, and ensured that the evening was as generous as it was enjoyable.

So, heartfelt congratulations to Martin Wilson, Nikola Oakey and everyone else involved in the planning and execution of a fabulous night.

Partial implosion marks beginning of major renovation works at Amon Carter Stadium.

A portion of TCU’s Amon Carter Stadium was imploded on Sunday to make way for a massive renovation project.

After a series of explosions at about 8:20 a.m., it took just seconds for the west grandstand of the Fort Worth landmark to fall.

The demolition is part of a $105 million renovation project that will create three-tiered seating, two-dozen suites, a 20,000 square-foot club level, as well as a new press box.

Read more here, click here for an excellent photographic sequence, or view the video below:

Demolition underway at Transbay Terminal as “Big Red” takes centre stage.

Is the wrecking ball a throwback to the demolition of yesteryear? Perhaps. Is it the most effective form of demolition? Perhaps not. Do we still love them? Damn right we do. Why is why we were so taken with these fantastic photos from the demolition of San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal

We have included one shot here; but click here to see the rest and to read the accompanying article.

Is the explosive demolition sector engaging in a mutually assured destruction?

The subject of the Ohio smokestack that fell the wrong way is a story that just refuses to go away. Still the subject of conversation and discussion here in Europe, the story is now attracting a similar level of debate in the US where it is the subject of our latest Demolition Digest blog post.

However, the longer it goes on, the less the story is about a problematic demolition and the more it becomes about the way in which those problems are being exacerbated and perceived.

When we featured Eric Kelly’s comments on Monday this week, the story quickly became the most visited on the website for some considerable time. But with the promise of an independent engineering report that is expected to, at least partially, exonerate Kelly and the Advanced Explosive Demolition team, the short-term damage to Kelly’s reputation is likely to be replaced with the long-term damage to the blasting sector.

As we have stated previously, the demolition business is highly competitive and, at times, verging on cut-throat. The fact that some of Kelly’s competitors have sought to make mileage from this perceived failure comes as no surprise.

But are these companies not in danger of undermining their own livelihoods by calling into question the very way they make a living?

Try putting yourselves in the position of a prospective client with a smokestack to demolish. Do you really want to entrust that demolition to a method that can, occasionally, go awry?

It is not as if the client doesn’t have a choice. Between high reach excavators, top down methods and even helicopter-mounted attachments, explosive demolition is not the only game in town. And the constant questioning of this particular method may merely serve to sow the seeds of doubt in the clients’ mind.

Furthermore, while we certainly aren’t sounding the premature death knell for explosive demolition, surely it is already destined to become an increasingly niche demolition method?

As the world becomes more environmentally-aware, and selective recycling and the associated waste segregation becomes a key driver of future workload, explosive demolition is already in danger of becoming marginalised like manual demolition and the wrecking ball before it.

The one thing it doesn’t need right now is to be undermined by the very purveyors of what remains a proven and, in the right circumstances, economically-sound and ostensibly safe means of demolition.

Pickaxe blinds teenager on demolition job, reports Construction Enquirer.

A demolition firm has been fined £8,000 after a teenager was blinded in one eye while helping to demolish a mill in Tameside.

The 19-year-old was using a pickaxe to lever up wooden floorboards at Hyde Mill, on Ashton Road in Hyde on 8 September 2009, when he was hit in his left eye by a splinter.

Dovestone Contractors Ltd, which has an annual turnover of £2.7 million, was prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive after it failed to ensure the teenager wore goggles or other eye protection.

Read the full story here.

Mystery surrounds death of Shanghai demolition protester.

The latest tragedy in a string of bloody cases of forced demolition in the country occurred on Tuesday in Shanghai, when a 49-year-old man died while trying to protect his house.

The victim, Zhou Daming, was “besieged” and “pushed” by a group of 20 men who came to notify him of the impending demolition of his house, located in downtown Shanghai’s Huangpu district.

When the men dispersed, Zhou was found lying unconscious, said witness Zhou Juhua, the victim’s sister.
The man died half an hour later, despite emergency treatment by the nearby 120 medical emergency center, his sister said.

It was not clear whether the demolition squad beat the man, as he had no obvious injuries, she said.
The possibility that the man, who suffered from high blood pressure, might have died from a sudden rise in blood pressure due to stress or anger could not be ruled out, she said.

Read more here.

Radical approach could demolish plant that has stood idle for 12 years.

The twin-unit nuclear reactor known as Zion Station has been in limbo for more than a decade, and Commonwealth Edison, now part of Exelon, paid about $10 million a year to baby-sit the defunct reactor.

But the company could not afford to tear it down: the cost of dismantling the vast steel and concrete building, with multiple areas of radioactive contamination, would exceed $1 billion, double what it had cost to build the reactors in the 1970s. Nor could Commonwealth Edison walk away from the plant, because of the contamination.

Now, though, the company is trying out a radical new approach to decommissioning the plant that promises to make the process faster, simpler and 25 percent less expensive — instead of hiring a contractor, it has turned the job and the reactors over to a nuclear demolition company that owns a nuclear dump site. The cost will be covered by the $900 million that Exelon accumulated in a decommissioning fund.

If the approach is successful, it could have implications for 10 other nuclear plants around the country that are waiting to be decommissioned, and for the 104 reactors that are still in operation but will eventually be torn down. It will also save money for electricity customers, who often end up paying for the cleanup of nuclear plants through their utility bills.

Read more here.

As the cold snap bites, is demolition braving the snow and ice.

Demolition workers are not so fortunate. With late completion penalties now commonplace, many demolition contractors are continuing to work through the cold snap, often braving hazardous driving conditions merely to arrive at a site that is at a standstill.

So we want to hear your stories and see your photos. Did you sleep in the car to ensure that you were on site on time? Are you wearing five layers of clothing and still feeling the cold? Have you temporarily set aside destruction to carry out the construction of a site snowman?

So long as your story or photo is demolition-related and the theme is cold or snow, we want to hear about.

Send us what you have by email: manthony@markanthonypublicity.co.uk or via SMS on (UK) +44 7973 465166.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Eastern Skyway pier heads for demolition after two year closure.

Officials say they expect partial demolition of the eastern Skyway piers to begin early next summer. A total of 61 sections of the piers on both the north and south side of Tampa Bay will be removed as part of the project. The work will take about 10 months to complete and will cost an estimated $4-million.

The eastern Skyway piers have been closed for nearly two years now due to safety concerns while the parallel western piers remain open. Originally the piers were part of the approach to the old Skyway bridge.

The Florida Department of Transportation says eventually a decision will be made about the western piers as well. They are popular places for anglers but are aging.

“Basically if we did routine maintenance on that, that could last another five to 10 years and if you did a major rehab on it it could last longer. However we don’t have the funding for a major rehab on that so you have to keep that in mind,” said FDOT spokesperson Cindy Clemmons.

Read more here or view the video below.

Work suspended after radiation is discovered on workers’ boots and clothing.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is investigating whether the release of radioactive material into the air and water at a Cold War-era atomic power laboratory in upstate New York violated federal laws.

The investigation stems from the open-air demolition of an old research building at Knolls Atomic Power Labs near Albany. On Sept. 29, radiation above safe levels was discovered on workers’ boots, and demolition work there has since been suspended.

Read more here.