Reduced to RUBBLE
July 21, 2005
¯ Watch a video of the implosion
:57 second [3.5mb] file in Windows Media
It took Knapp and Storms Halls approximately 12 seconds to collapse, leaving a billowing cloud of dust, 8,500 tons of rubble and 10,000 spectators, some speechless, some cheering.
At almost 10:05 a.m., near-simultaneous explosions caused by 60 pounds of dynamite and PETN explosives ripped through the second, fourth and seventh floors of each building. Moments later, columns supporting the base of the towers on the ground floor were ripped away sequentially from south to north, causing the buildings to twist in on themselves and collapse.
“We used a lot of locations on the upper floors so it would break the debris up better,” said Doug Loizeaux, vice president of demolition subcontractor Controlled Demolitions Inc. of Phoenix, Md.
Memories
“I was an RA on 10th floor of Knapp. I went to Omaha for the night and came back at 2 a.m. for my curfew and there was four inches of water on the carpet. All my residents took out buckets of water and poured it on the carpet and put on their swimming suits and put garbage bags on their bodies and made a Slip `n’ slide.”
– Kelly Considine, senior in horticulture
“We used to push garbage cans filled with water against the elevators so when they opened it, it would just flood the whole thing.”
– Steven Cornelius, 2005 graduate
“When I was a freshman in Storms, I lived right across the halls from the bathrooms. You know sometimes, how people used to say they used to lean? We had actual proof that they leaned because our door was right across from the bathroom and we had some major malfunction and all the toilets backed up. It flew right out across the hallway and into our dorm room. It didn’t go out the door; it didn’t go down the hallway.”
– Adrian McMullan, 1993 graduate
Shelly Shaver, an Ames resident, said she remembers the elevators always stalling and the fire alarms always going off. She also remembers when all four towers were filled and Iowa State was going to play Iowa, “They would tell us which room lights to go on/off to spell `Beat Iowa’ on each side on the Towers.”
He said some of the skylights on the roofs of the 129-foot-tall buildings had somehow remained intact.
Kerry Dixon-Fox, architect for facilities planning and management, said hall signs, which were removed before the demolition, as well as other potential memorabilia, now belong to demolition contractor Peterson Contractors Inc. of Reinbeck.
“They’ve been discussing a possibility of giving them to the Alumni Association,” she said.
Although public bathrooms were not provided for the crowd, ISU Dining sold bottled water to help spectators beat the heat.
Loizeaux said the event went as planned and more spectators than the 5,000 estimated before the implosion were present.
He said ground vibrations caused by the collapsing buildings were well below the speed needed to cause damage to nearby buildings. He said seismographs measured vibrations of .3 inches-per-second, well below the one to two inch-per-second damage threshold and in line with estimates given to residents living near Towers.
“They were very confident that no damage would be done,” said Ames resident Naomi Bogdanove, who lives across the street from the site of Storms Hall. “Only a wreath was knocked down. They didn’t even tell us to remove china from the walls.”
The Knapp-Storms Commons building, which was located closer to Towers than surrounding homes, did sustain some damage.
Reactions
“Interestingly enough, former professor Ray Crites was the designer of these and also helped on the Iowa State Center buildings, and he would probably be a little disappointed that his buildings were coming down.” He added that was a spectacular demolition, but they fell faster than they thought it would.”
– David Block, professor of architecture, with his wife Liz
“I have a tear in my eye. It was more personal for me because I was the last one in the custodial building of Knapp and I’d been in Storms too. I was the C2 in both buildings. I worked in both of them. I started on it Knapp – I had fifth and sixth floor Knapp. Some of my guys were here watching. I’ve seen them go up, and I’ve seen them go down.
– Pamela Schrad, Ames resident
“The only problem we had was we lost four windows in the commons building because of the percussion,” said Chris Gates, superintendent for Peterson Contractors Inc.
It took the dust approximately 15 minutes to settle into a thin layer on nearby homes and vehicles, leaving only traces of the huge cloud seen seconds after the buildings collapsed. Gates said it would take 30 to 40 days to clear the site of debris.
Dixon-Fox said the demolition went smoothly, thanks to 18 months of planning.
Two other methods of demolition that could have been used were a wrecking ball and a “mechanical” method, although neither would have been as efficient as demolition, she said.
The wrecking ball was ruled out because it would have taken three to six months per building. The mechanical method, Dixon-Fox said, involves using machines to take apart the buildings floor-by-floor and would have been the most expensive.
