(47th in a series on Martin Tower)
Martin Tower demolition May 19
www.martintowerbethlehem.com
Gadfly:
Just a couple of things . . . Conventional demolition isn’t any less safe than explosives demolition. The facts don’t bear that out one bit. In fact, the opposite is true. You can look at the number of accidents from explosives demolition v. conventional demolition and the number of man-hours worked. There’s been at least 8 or so workers in the past year that have been killed while preparing a building for implosion, just look at the Didcot Power station incident, for example. Heck, when they imploded the Sheraton in Bal Harbour, Florida, the owner of the company’s daughter was several thousand feet from the structure and still got hit in the head by a chunk of flying debris. It almost killed her. I think she said she got something like 60 stitches.
With a conventional approach to demolition, water can be used at the source to palliate the dust, and any workers exposed to what little if any dust that is left are required by OSHA to wear Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).
The problem is that he [the demolition company rep] reads from a script. He can’t deviate from that script. 99% of the time he’s never challenged on it. Which brings up another Red Flag. On a project of this size, why didn’t one of the firm’s principal attend these meetings? I guess they need the plausible deniability that they get from sending a contract employee.
George Lopez
