Despite all the excitement about blowing up the tallest building in Sioux Falls, the zip feed tower, it didn't go down.The 202-foot tall Zip Feed Tower in Sioux Falls, S.D., the tallest building in the city, and believed to be the tallest building in the state, was scheduled for demolition Saturday. However, after the explosions, the tower wasn’t demolished; it was leaning to one side.
Many in the crowd of more than 200 that gathered at Kilian College gasped when the blast went off, then held their breath as the tower leaned and stopped. And they held their breath some more.
Slowly, anticipation turned to confusion and, in less than a minute, to laughter at the mishap nobody had prepared them for.
One of the few people not smiling was Jim Redyke, who supervised the explosion for Dykon Explosive Demolition of Tulsa, Okla.
He said the tower didn’t fall because the concrete on the west side did not remain stiff. Instead of cutting a wedge out of the east side, the explosion collapsed both sides as well as the basement foundation, leaving the building stuck like a cork in a bottle.
“What you count on with these things is stiffness in the frame of the mechanism to push it over center,” he said. — Argus Leader
Clearly they picked the wrong people to do the demolition. They should have gotten Controlled Demolition Inc. to do it. They have a lot of experience blowing up all sorts of tall structures.
The demolition company now goes to Plan B: the old-fashioned wrecking ball.
