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PREPARATIONS
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Once
the approvals and paperwork were completed, work
on the towers began. Olshan's crews spent six
weeks preparing the structures and surrounding
site for blasting.
To their disappointment, the outer bands of hurricane
Floyd blew in just four days before the scheduled
event, and it was decided that the most critical
preparatory activities would have to be postponed.
It was too dangerous to perform the final cutting
with high winds.
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Several
days later, the weather finally cleared and a new
blast date was set.
Olshan’s team of burners meticulously began cutting
dozens of small windows in supporting steel columns
as laid out in the demolition plan. Once all burning
was completed, Dykon began the task of attaching
more than 400 linear shape charges to specific beams
and columns throughout the towers.
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The
smaller Umbilical Tower was loaded first. Explosives
would be used to remove the bottom four feet along
the south end of the structure, allowing it to roll
over.
Next came the loading of the Mobile Service Tower.
An interesting feature of the MST was that it literally
‘moved’ back and forth on a set of railroad tracks
to facilitate the servicing of rockets while they
rested on the launch pad. As part of this unique
design, the bottom level of the structure consisted
of massive X-braces instead of the conventional
beam-and-column construction ordinarily found at
the base of large steel towers.
Due to this unusual framing, it was decided that
the structure would be blasted on a slightly higher
level, just above the heavily reinforced X-braces.
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per the blast plan, a ‘wedge’ - starting 15 feet tall
along the front side of the MST and tapering down towards
the rear - was targeted for explosive removal. A review
of a $57 million dollar renovation program completed in
1989 found that most of the structure had been retrofitted
with additional steel plates on the flanges of the columns.
Large shaped charges had to be placed opposite each other
in order to cut through these multi-plated steel flanges.
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Once
the explosives were attached, Olshan’s crews installed
protective plywood boxes around the shaped charges
and wrapped the boxes with conveyor belting. The
boxes and belting would help contain debris created
by the detonation.
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Bad
weather complicated Olshan's already-tight preparation
schedule, which resulted in some long days - and
nights - leading up to the blast.
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Because
Florida is the lightning capital of the world, a
non-electric system of initiation was selected for
the project. This system would provide the greatest
safety against premature detonation due to lightning
strikes, stray electricity or radio interference.
Dykon then carefully began placing the timing mechanisms
that would guide the towers into their designated
fall zones. |
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Mobile Service Tower had two large Lightning Diffusor
towers on either side of the fall zone that Lockheed
Martin needed to save. Therefore, the direction
of fall was absolutely critical. Additionally, the
launch pad’s massive concrete slabs were slated
for reuse with the new Atlas system, so Olshan took
the labor-intensive measure of placing over five
feet of sand throughout the impact area of each
structure. (Such precautions are often implemented
to help absorb the ‘ground-slap’ that occurs when
felling tall, heavy structures such as communication
towers or smokestacks.) |
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A
field inspector is dwarfed by one of the
twelve lightning diffusor footings located
near the blast zonee
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Both
Olshan and Dykon retained the services of Protec
Documentation Services to perform detailed inspections
of nearby structures prior to the blast. Protec's
field representatives spent several days surveying
a wide wariety of structures – including fuel farms,
oxygen tanks and support buildings among dozens
of other items to document any changes that might
occur as a result of the project. |
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Several
weeks earlier, the firm had worked with Dykon to
formulate a detailed impact-calculation study for
the project, and had submitted independent rail-elevation
surveys for the Mobile Service Tower.
Protec's final responsibility was to install and
operate seismographs at key points around the site.
Technicians programmed these instruments to monitor
vibration levels from both the initial explosive
detonation as well as the resulting ground impact.
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