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PRETTY blonde Holly Bennett is Europe's only
female explosives engineer and about to be the star of a television
programme about her great love ... reducing things to rubble.
The 24-year-old has been blasting buildings for
five years and is now about to make it on the small screen charting
her career success alongside her male counterparts.
Holly began as an office junior with a summer job
with the Controlled Demolition Group but has now risen through the
ranks to be an explosives engineer.
"I never realised that me being a girl would
cause so much hype, because we all do the same job."
But curvy Holly knew she had what it takes to
make her mark in this male-dominated world.
She said: "I get a bit of stick but nothing I
can't handle. Most of the men think it's great what I do."
When she was a child, girly Holly played with
dolls' houses, dolls and prams like any other little girl.
As she grew up, she passed nine GCSEs, all with
grades A to C.
She then started A-levels and applied for an
office junior's job with a company in Cleckheaton.
Holly had to file reports, do the photocopying,
answer the phone and make the tea. But she was bitten by the bug for
blowing things up after following engineers at work sites.
Holly volunteered to help evacuate people from
their homes around the blast site.
She said: "The first time I saw them blow
something up it was amazing. There is nothing like it. Words can't
describe the buzz."
Holly then pestered engineers to let her train
and carry out the work herself. "I'd basically just bug the life out
of my boss when I took his coffee. Eventually he gave in," she
says.
After she helped out on a few more blasts,
Holly's bosses thought it best to harness her skills properly. She
was 18 when she got her shot-firing licence, enabling her to obtain
explosives and, more importantly press the blast button.
They made her Britain's youngest and first female
explosives engineer.
She started by putting up protective sheeting and
fences around the blast zones, progressing to reading seismographs
monitoring the explosions' impact before becoming a fully fledged
member of the explosives team.
She thinks nothing of packing 90kgs of explosives
and running 3,000 non-electric detonating charges through buildings,
reducing them to rubble in less than seven seconds.
"I love every minute of it," she says. "You have
to work out how to bring the building down. We take out structural
elements of the building before we bring it down. Putting the
explosives in is the biggest responsibility.
"None of us work alone because when you have
1,000 to 1,500 charges in a building and have to check all the wires
are going where they should be, it would be easy for one of us to
miss something."
After eight years with the firm she is one of the
country's elite of 12 explosives engineers. And one of the group to
feature in the National Geographic TV programme Demolition
Squad.
The six-part series follows blow-ups, or "blow
downs", as they are called in the business, each with their own set
of problems, in different parts of the UK.
Holly's cv features a list of explosions - and
not all unwanted buildings. The company also works on special
effects for films.
Holly went to Casablanca a couple of years ago
where Spy Game was being filmed with Brad Pitt and Robert Redford.
In the film, a suicide bomber drives a truck of explosives into a
building - which is where Holly and co did their bit.
Another time they helped Jeremy Clarkson try to
blow up a Toyota pick-up truck on the Top Gear programme. They put
it on top of a 25-storey tower block in Hackney and demolished the
building - only to find the Toyota's engine was still running at the
end of it.
She said: "It's not something I'd planned, it's
just something that happened.
"The adrenaline rush you get from doing the job
is like nothing else. The responsibility and power you have is
incredible. Nothing beats it for me.
"You do get nervous on the run up to it,
especially when you are responsible for things, but it's absolutely
amazing and you get a real buzz."
She admits it has been tough coping with the job
and trying to cut it in a male dominated career.
"Some of the comments I get you wouldn't believe.
It isn't so bad now because they know me. but when I started at 17
and was having to tell men what to do on site they didn't like it.
But I couldn't care less.
"The only way to get a demolition man's respect
is to know what you're talking about.
"It's hard work, really hard work, but it's
great. It's obviously not a girly job getting covered in muck and
dust but it's part and parcel of the job."
Charles Moran, managing director of Controlled
Demolition Group, said: "We have been at the forefront of major
advances in the demolition industry for 20 years.
"I'm delighted that we've made another important
step forward with the training of the UK's first female explosives
engineer.
"Of course the most important thing to us is that
Holly is good at her job." | 
