Athlone Cooling Towers Implosion

www.fullcirclemag.co.za

On Sunday 22 August 2010 the landmark Athlone Cooling Towers on the side of the N2 in Cape Town were imploded. The towers had been inactive since 2003 and the city council decided they were a waste of space and had to come down.

Implosion time was set for 12 noon, and Full Circle thought it would be a great idea to get an 'aerial' view of the implosion from the top of Devil's Peak. Unfortunately the weather had other ideas and two cold fronts blew through Cape Town in close succession.

We thought Sunday could be a post-frontal day with squalls blowing through but clear weather in between. So there was a chance that we may still be able to get a really unique video from Devil's Peak. So we set out from Tafelberg Road early on Sunday and headed up to The Saddle. The weather did clear and Devil's Peak appeared bathed in crisp, clear sunlight. But then the weather closed in again. Ever hopeful that it would clear again, we continued from The Saddle up the slope to Devil's Peak. Frustratingly, the clouds got rapidly thicker and about halfway up, it became clear that we wouldn't be getting any shots from the top.

So we turned back and decided to try the Middle Traverse and make our way around the front of Devil's Peak and maybe get some shots from the old Lookout Hut. However, the cloud got even lower and cut off any view from that. Add to this the fact that the rain and howling wind made being up there dangerous, we decided to backtrack and get to the Lower Contour Path. And see what the view was like form there.

Aware that time was passing way too quickly and we still had a Mountain between us and a view of the Cooling Towers, we legged it around the Mountain, descended onto Tafelberg Road to move faster and got to the end of the road at 11:35-ish. We rushed down the dirt track and found a spot beneath the King's Blockhouse set up the tripod and camera and had every sorted with about ten minutes to go.

Quite a crowd had gathered there and we could see all the roads around UCT jam-packed with bumper-to-bumper cars due to the closed highways.

All set!

Not quite...

Just then a squall blew in and we had to cover the camera. We couldn't see the towers through the rain and it looked like all the effort would be wasted.

At about 4 minutes to 12 the rain lessened and we set up the camera again and tried to shield it from the rain with a plastic bag.

I fiddled a bit too much trying to compose a shot that would show the dust cloud rolling into the frame instead of directly out of it.

It wasn't the perfect composition I'd had before but something told me to leave it as it must be getting close to 12. I stepped back to look at the shot and literally a half-second later the towers tumbled down -- three-and-a-half minutes early!!

Everyone on the road missed the shot and (I later saw) even the eTV reporter missed the implosion.

Fortunately, we got it! But thought you needed to know the back story of how we ran up and down and around Devil's Peak to get the shot.

Enjoy it!!

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Implosion
• Explosion
• Demolition
• Blow Up
• Destroy
• Athlone Towers