El Paso City Hall gone from skyline in 10 seconds: Trish Long
Over the course of a week in April 2013, El Paso's skyline changed forever with the demolition of City Hall and the Asarco smokestacks.
El Paso's Asarco smokestacks gone in 35 seconds
On April 13, it was time for the demolition of the Asarco smokestacks.
Vic Kolenc reported the events:
It took about 35 seconds for two of El Paso's more visible and sometimes controversial pieces of history to fall to the ground and disintegrate just after the sun rose on a clear, almost windless Saturday morning.
One cannon-like, reverberating boom was followed several seconds later by another reverberating boom.
Those were the sounds produced after about 300 pounds of explosives were detonated inside the bases of two huge concrete smokestacks. They slowly fell like giant trees onto cushioned dirt beds on the former 126-year-old Asarco copper smelter site in West-Central El Paso. Three unexpected paragliders hovered in the sky above Juárez to get a bird's-eye of the planned destruction.
End of an era
At 6:55 a.m., the smokestacks were gone.
"It's the end of an era. It's changed the skyline," said Ted Houghton, an El Paso businessman and chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission, who watched the demolition from a special viewing area near Executive Center Boulevard and Interstate 10.
Huge, gray clouds of what Asarco site Trustee Roberto Puga said was concrete dust erupted as the smokestacks fell with two thunderous thuds.
The mass of dust clouds spread from the Asarco site to nearby neighborhoods in Juárez, where residents coughed and worried about the dust's effects.
Dust gone in 25 minutes
The clouds also moved across a closed section of I-10 to the University of Texas at El Paso area, where several hundred people stood on rocky hills bordering the freeway to view and photograph the historic occasion. Twenty-six water cannons shot 500,000 gallons of mist at the falling stacks, but that didn't deter the clouds' escape. Puga said the mist and other measures reduced the dust.
The dust was mostly gone from the Asarco site about 25 minutes after the demolition, but a dust cloud still hung over Downtown El Paso more than an hour after the smokestacks tumbled down. The Sunset Heights neighborhood near UTEP was also hit hard by the dust clouds, people reported.
"The engineering for the drop was right on target. All the ordinance was exploded," said Puga, a geophysicist, who said he slept very little in the nights leading up to the demolition.
The demolition's price tag is expected to be $1.6 million to $2 million.
No damage or injuries
No structural damage or injuries were reported on either side of the border after the demolition, Puga said.
The first to go down was the 63-year-old, 612-foot smokestack, which had served the long-closed lead smelter at the Asarco site. It was almost as tall as a 50-story building. The top half of the stack broke off as it toppled to the ground.
The second to go in a dramatic, slow-motion fall was the iconic, 47-year-old, 828-foot main smokestack used for the copper smelter. It was almost as tall as a 70-story building and had large Asarco letters on the side. A top section of the stack broke off as it neared the ground during the demolition.
A small group of El Pasoans spent about a year in an unsuccessful attempt to save the big stack from demolition. But they could not come up with the millions of dollars needed to preserve what they viewed as an important, historic landmark.
Some last-minute hitches
The weather was perfect for the demolition. But there were some last-minute hitches.
The demolition's start, scheduled for 6:45 a.m., was delayed about 10 minutes because two or three gawkers were seen walking in an arroyo along the Asarco site and the Border Patrol had to take them away from the area before the demolition could begin, Asarco site officials reported.
The three paragliders who appeared shortly before the demolition started were a surprise, Puga said.
"They were on the Mexican side (of the border), and there was nothing we could do about it," he said. They caused no problems for the demolition, he said.
Another potential problem came up Friday when an unidentified woman called 911 and said she saw a bald eagle, which is a protected species under federal law, on one of the smokestacks. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent went to the Asarco site to investigate. It was determined that the bird was a red-tailed hawk, which did not affect demolition plans, Puga said.
El Paso City Hall gone from skyline in 10 seconds
This is from an April 14, 2013, article by Cindy Ramirez:
It went as planned just like a scene straight out of a movie: A sequence of explosions ‒ boom, boom, boom ‒ and then City Hall came crumbling down Sunday morning.
The north wall of the building went first, like an accordion being squeezed. Then the glass walls broke. It took less than 10 seconds for the building to become rubble, a heavy dust cloud enveloping the landscape to the cheers and jeers of onlookers who appeared to be tailgating on nearby streets and rooftops.
With the help of a small breeze, the gray and white cloud headed east, leaving behind 1,000 truckloads of debris.
More: El Paso City Hall Demolition
'Perfect, it went perfect'
"Perfect, it went perfect," said Alan Shubert, the city engineer in charge of the ballpark project that will be built at the site. "Now we have a lot of cleanup to do."
Crews with MacKay Demolition and Controlled Demolition Inc., the subcontractors hired to tear down the building to make way for a Triple-A baseball stadium, for weeks had been preparing the building to fall into its own footprint. About 400 pounds of dynamite were carefully planted in the building, whose insides had been gutted to allow the 18,800 tons of reinforced concrete and other materials to fall as planned.
No major incidents were reported to police or other emergency crews, city officials said, thanking onlookers for being cooperative during the event.
El Paso's new ballpark to rise from the site
In a prepared statement released Sunday, MountainStar Sports Group, the group bringing in a Triple-A Major League Baseball-affiliated team, said it believes the ballpark will represent "long-lasting, sustainable progress for our City."
The group hopes to have the San Diego Padres' farm team, the Tucson Padres, playing in El Paso next year. The group will lease the $50 million ballpark from the city.
The City Council last June approved building the ballpark at the site if MountainStar acquired a Triple-A minor league team. The group bought the team in September, and later that month contracted with the city to lease the ballpark once it's built. It's scheduled to be ready at the start of the season in April 2014.
"We look forward to watching El Paso's new ballpark rise from this site," the group said, "and hosting Opening Day 2014."
Trish Long may be reached at tlong@elpasotimes.com.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: El Paso’s skyline changed forever in April 2013
