Dykon Blasting Implosion of the Pacific Palisades in Vancouver

Under the direction of Dykon, work began to prepare the hotel building for the demolition. The structure was surrounded with streets and other buildings that had to be left in-tact.

The back side of the hotel was structurally attached to a building that housed the complex's indoor swimming pool. There was less than 20 feet separating the two structures and the building that housed the swimming pool had a glass roof.

Barricades had to be built, glass roofs had to be entirely covered with layers of timber and plywood to protect them from the falling debris of a collapsing building over 200 feet tall and less than 20 feet away.

While all this was being done, work was being done on the hotel itself to prepare it for the blast. Built 20 years ago, the structure was supported on several interior columns and long narrow reinforced concrete walls on the outside perimeter. Holes had to be drilled, walls had to be weakened and charged columns had to be heavily wrapped to protect nearby lives and property from flying chunks of concrete from the charges inside the building during the implosion.

Local authorities had to set up a barriers to keep onlookers far enough away to protect them. Streets had to be blocked and traffic re-routed.

A huge hole had to be opened up in front of the building, large enough to catch all the falling debris without letting it spill out into the street. A shorter building, scheduled for demolition, lining the street in front, was left standing to help catch the debris from the towering structure as it collapsed forward and away from the glass-roofed indoor swimming pool.

Finally, after weeks of drilling, covering, wrapping, planning, weakening, coordinating and working, the hotel was ready for the placing of the charges that would bring it down forever.

Explosives were carried up to the various floors that had been designated as "Shot Floors" in the blast plan prepared by Dykon. The loading started on the 19th floor and progressed downward to the ground.

Dynamite and detonating cord was used to load the columns that supported the 22-story hotel building.

Dykon key personnel and Pacific Blasting powdermen worked long, exhaustive hours to get the building ready for the scheduled shot time on Sunday morning.

The detonator circuits were wired and checked. The individual circuits all following the long, now empty elevator shaft, trailed to the ground floor where they would all be checked again and wired into the firing line that would energize them all at their predetermined time.

Late in the night, the building was finally prepared and exhausted Dykon and Pacific employees tried vainly to get a little much needed sleep before the Sunday morning implosion. Tension was evident on the faces of all. Would the building collapse into the hole provided, or would it lay out over the building in front and spill into the streets, or worse yet, would it collapse onto the building housing the swimming pool, only a few feet away?

The Hotel was loaded, the circuits checked. The crowd, held back by the police barricades was immense. Spectators lined every street corner trying to get into position for a good view of the impending implosion.

Finally, after weeks of grueling work, the police sirens sounded the five minute warning. The time had come. Jim Redyke of Dykon paced nervously back and forth in front of the barricades. Dozens of exhausted Dykon and Pacific employees watched nervously as the seconds took hours to grind by.

Sixty seconds from shot time, the sirens sounded the beginning of a demolition blaster's longest-minute. All the anxiety, all the stress, all the worry, all the planning, and every single calculation of the entire process races through their minds for inspection one last time. It's almost too late to turn back.

The ten second countdown has begun and the crowd joins in. The powdermen who are responsible for the job, all the property around and the lives of the people standing around, following the last seconds of the countdown and as it approaches zero, quietly say to themselves, we have done our best.

When the word "Fire" is heard over the now hushed crowd, the job is humbly handed over to God and the blasters quietly watch as his answer unfolds before them.

Thunderous booms echo through the streets, made worse by the thick cloud cover. The magnificent high-rise settles and then gently crumbles into an expanding cloud of dust billowing up from around the base.

The dust settles and upon investigation, it is revealed that the building fell as planned and none of the window skylights on the pool house were broken. Everybody was relieved and grateful that all the hard work paid off. The answer from above was favorable indeed.

Dykon would like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude to those at Pacific Blasting and Demolition, Ltd. We worked directly for them on this project and we couldn't have asked for a finer, more professional group to be associated with. It was a real pleasure.