Initial analysis suggests unseen crack may have caused stack to fall wrong way.
Although her company is still on site analysing the fallout from yesterday’s failed smokestack implosion, Advanced Explosive Demolition president and owner Lisa Kelly insists that the explosives detonated correctly, but an undetected crack on south side of the tower pulled it backward.
In an interview with the Dayton Daily News, Kelly says: “It’s property damage and it’s not life,” she said. “That’s the most important thing — that no one was injured.”
Demolitions are a highly technical process. “(But) it’s not without some uncertainty,” said Tim Suter, FirstEnergy manager of external affairs.
All of the debris landed on the FirstEnergy property and none of it went into the Mad River or onto the nearby railway tracks. An estimate of the cost of the damage wasn’t available Wednesday.
Suter said he hasn’t seen anything like it before. “Fortunately no one was injured,” he said.
FirstEnergy has worked with the demolition contractor, Advanced Explosives Demolition Inc., on other jobs, Suter said, and a lot of preparation went into the project.
“They’ve taken other towers twice the size of this one down without anything going on,” he said.
The Idaho-based, family-owned company has been featured in a series on TLC, according to its website. They travel the country with their children doing demolitions. The AED website says that Eric Kelly has “a perfect safety record of no accidents in 27 years.”
“Nobody’s happy with things that go wrong in life, and sometimes it’s out of our hands and beyond anybody’s prediction … We’re all extremely thankful no one was injured or hurt,” Lisa Kelly said.
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