Cement giant announces imminent decommissioning and demolition of site.

With demolition work drawing to a close on the Lafarge cement works in Northfleet, Kent – formerly Europe’s largest demolition project – plans are being made to decommission and demolish another Lafarge facility, this time at Westbury in Wiltshire.

Cement manufacturing at the site was fully mothballed in February last year. The company is now working with the council to consider future uses for both the site, and the chalk and clay quarries which supplied raw materials. The distribution depot will remain at the site, and jobs there and in logistics will not be affected.

Erdogan Pekenc, the company’s managing director, said: “We are aware that there has been some speculation about the works, so we are making an early announcement of our intentions.”

The company will also consult with the Ministry of Defence which owns the land where the chalk quarry is located.

Read more here.

Demolition crew takes down more than planned

According to the beautifully-named Beaver County Times newspaper, federal authorities are investigating a Wednesday afternoon demolition accident that took out some power lines in Aliquippa.

Aliquippa Police Chief Ralph Pallante said workers with Parchman’s Hauling and Excavating of New Castle had started demolishing the old Neighborhood Legal Services Inc. building at 266 Franklin Ave. when bricks fell from the building, taking power lines down with them. “They needed a 10-foot clearance and didn’t quite have it,” said Pallante, who blocked off traffic on Sheffield Avenue between Cochran Street to School Way.

Aliquippa fire officials and a safety specialist with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration were called around 12:30 p.m. because of live wires behind the building on Sheffield Avenue.

Robert Szymanski, area director for OSHA’s Pittsburgh office, said no workers were injured when part of the rear wall came down. He said OSHA officials responded because there were a number of safety issues that needed to be addressed. Depending on what OSHA finds, it could impose fines on Parchman’s. “It’s too early to tell, but if there are violations where people could have been injured, there will certainly be proposed penalties.”

Read more here.

Canadian police arrest man accused of selling stolen fixtures and fittings.

It’s not been a good week for Canadian demolition. Not content with “going viral” with the wobbly building video from Vancouver, the industry is now associated with a fraud.

A man posing as a demolition worker in what police say is an elaborate attempt to hock house fixtures and decorative flagstone from homes under construction has been arrested.

Investigators received a complaint in September about a fraudster posing as an employee of a demolition company.

The man was offering buyers the chance to purchase items at unoccupied Forest Hill homes under construction, though he has no connection to the property, investigators say. He is currently facing charges related to one case in which $69,000 worth of flagstone was stolen from one site.

“He meets legitimate people that are interested in buying and they don’t know that this guy doesn’t have the right to sell it,” said Detective Constable Craig McFarquhar, days prior to the man’s arrest.

Read more here.

Midtown Plaza set to fall as Ontario wins contract.

Ontario Specialty Contracting Inc. has been awarded the demolition and site preparation contract for downtown Rochester’s oft-discussed Midtown Plaza project.

Ontario Specialty bid $9.6 million for the work. The contract was awarded Tuesday by the Empire State Development Corp.’s board of directors.

The Midtown Plaza is being razed to make way for a $90 million project anchored by the headquarters Paetec Holding Corp. and the Rochester Broadway Theater League’s performing arts centre.

Read more here.

Just receiving reports of fire at demolition site in Shrewsbury, UK.

A fire has this lunchtime broken out at the scene of the Shrewsbury explosion in January.

Smoke can be seen rising above Shrewsbury town centre from the site on the corner of Bridge Street and Smithfield Road. Shrewsbury police are asking motorists to avoid the town centre, whilst the fire is dealt with.

Further news updates can be found here.

We know many demolition professionals that would work here free of charge!

For many people, the word demolition conjures images of rubble, mud and dust. But not on Bantayan Island in the Philippines where a series of illegal beach structures are scheduled for imminent demolition.

It is our firm belief that a contract of this magnitude and complexity merits a visit by DemolitionNews.com for an in-depth report lasting, oooh three weeks at least. If anyone would like to sponsor our trip, please PLEASE drop us a line.

Read more here.

DemolitionNews Forum opens new discussion area.

The DemolitionNews Forum was designed with one purpose in mind; to encourage demolition professionals to discuss industry issues with like-minded individuals. But we’re also mindful of the fact that our readers are spread all over the world and may not actually know each other.

So we have created a new “All About You” area to allow readers to introduce themselves. Here you can tell people about yourself, your company, yuour hopes, fears and aspirations. And, as you’ll need to choose a username, you can do so largely anonymously.

So please hop over to the All About You area now and let’s get chatting.

Why have ethnic minorities failed to scale the global demolition corporate ladder?

OK, before I begin, I’d like to make two things very clear. 1. What I am about to say may not be viewed as politically correct; and 2. I would dearly love to be proven wrong.

Now, on with the question.

During the past two years, I have been lucky enough to travel to more than a dozen different countries on both sides of the Atlantic and it has slowly dawned on me that the upper echelons of the US and European demolition industries are almost exclusively Caucasian

Now I am not suggesting that the global demolition business is operating a covert apartheid policy; I realise that a large proportion of demolition companies are family concerns with a history and ethnicity that pre-dates racial integration and political correctness; and I also realise that so-called ethnic minorities are well represented at site level.

But how is it that virtually no black demolition professionals are present within the upper echelons of this industry?

Have Your Say. We’d love to get your take on this subject so we have set aside a discussion area over at the DemolitionNews Forum. Just click here and let us have your thoughts.

Police investigate following grisly discovery in Finnish chimney.

Workers at a factory being demolished in Vantaa, Finland have turned up a mummified body stuck inside a chimney. He was born 1953 according to information in his wallet. He had gone missing in 1991, and by the early 2000s he was pronounced dead.

Workers were tearing down the chimney Sunday when they made the gruesome discovery. According to Juha Juurinen, a criminal investigator, “The police are investigating whether the man was placed in the chimney or went there himself.”

Read more here.

Video captures Vancouver double collapse from a different angle.

The dust is barely settled and the investigation is only just underway. But a new video of the double near- miss in Vancouver last week shows just how lucky demolition workers and pedestrians were to remain uninjured in the unplanned collapses.