demolition of first apartment

The school I currently go to and my brother has graduated from is expanding the athletic facilities by adding a baseball diamond and tennis courts. This is tough because the school is located in a heavily urbanized environment, but recently some land became available. In the 1960's, several apartment complexes were built on the last remaining open land in this area of the city, which is a neighborhood generally built between 1890-1940. While the neighborhood in general has remained stable, the 1960's apartments were crime ridden and in poor condition due to bad management and poor site design. St. Mary's was able to buy the largest of the apartment complexes adjacent to the current football/soccer field. There are 16 buildings holding 168 apartments. The apartments started demolition at the end of the summer, but structural demolition has just now started because of extensive asbestos abatement. The demo contractor is Environmental Operations and the site work contractor is Kozeny-Wagner, both local contractors. All brick, CMU, and concrete will be processed on site and be used as fill. Building the baseball field will require extensive grading, since the whole site is the side of a hill. Demo started with two Cat 330's. More equipment will be brought on site as work proceeds.Demo started at about 8:00 am this morning, with the whole school walking down the street to watch. The Student Council President got to take the first hit with the excavator. After that, the professional operators took over and the first building was quickly down. I am taking pics throughout the demo and construction for the school and my brother is helping me out, so we have site access.

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• demo
• demolition
• excavators
• cat
• heavy equipment
• cat 330dl

[385cl]

This was just the first building to come down and it was 4-5 feet from the street so they were taking it down carefully. I have another new video of them tacking down another building that is a lot faster that I will up lode.

[jpmelsdon]

@RossPK81 hey mate, the reason its done bit by bit is so you can control whick way the buillding falls should it decide to go, if its done right there shouldn't be any bit of a building tht falls without you doing it yourself, its a saftey thing, plus if you just slam the bucket in, theres a chance that the building will fall onto the diggers dipper arm and cause damage to the hydrolics

[jparker327]

this video reminds me of a scene from the movie "stranger than fiction' lol

[RossPK81]

It always seems like it's done in a controled way, little bit by little bit.

Why is that? Why not just go for it and tear the place down?

[qm4life2008]

5* awsome