St. Paul's premiere phallic symbol, the 570-foot smokestack of Xcel's High Bridge Power Plant, came falling to earth this morning in a controlled demolition. Since my office is right down the street and I spent my entire summer last year dealing that building's construction, I wanted to be there to make sure we suffered no damage. OK...so I couldn't miss the chance to see something go BOOM and fall down.
In the days preceeding the demolition they notched out the base of the stack and piled up a bunch of dirt hills for it to land on to break the fall. They missed the target, though. It hit next to those dirt piles. Hard. The explosive blast that started the sequence wasn't much louder than some fireworks shells, but the concussion from it hitting the ground was truly impressive.
The light wasn't very good, but here is a sequence of shots I took as it fell. As usual, click on any one for a larger version.
A coworker shot hi-def video of the whole sequence a few feet away from where I was. A lower res version of his video is on YouTube:
ED! Ha!
Great to see everyone there...event of the year IMHO.
Posted by: weierd | June 30, 2008 at 10:40 AM