Noida’s Supertech twin towers turned into rubble

The demolition experts cried soon after the exercise

At 2:29:50 p.m., Kelvin Martin from Jet Demolition started a countdown for demolishing the Twin towers in Noida. At 2:30 p.m., Hisar-based blaster Chetan Dutta pressed the button and a team of 6 members, at the blasting site built barely 70 metres away from the building, raised their heads to watch the show of disappearance of the Apex (32 storeys) and Ceyane (29 storeys) buildings. In 12 seconds, the illegal structure had disappeared from the land, where they had existed for over 10 years. Many present there burst into tears on seeing the massive exercise that was completed successfully.

This is how the twin towers which were over 100-metres-high—being taller than the Qutub Minar—left 85,000 kg of debris and a thick layer of dust around. The Edifice Engineering officials informed that the boundary wall of neighbouring ATS village towers had got damaged for about 10 metres due to the blast and the window panes of nearby buildings were also found broken, but the same was already accessed and communicated to the authorities concerned.

Read | Noida twin towers demolition: Timeline of key events

Soon after clouds of dust had settled on the ground, a team from Edifice Engineering and South Africa’s Jet Demolitions – the two companies that had carried out the task – along with officials of the Central Building Research Institute (CBRI) and the Noida Authority began a structural audit of the adjoining buildings. A clean chit was given to the site later in the evening.

“We have a 100 crore insurance for post -demolition damage and will put everything back to its own structure,” said Utkarsh Mehta, founder, Edifice Engineering.

The detonation expert and managing director of Jet Demolition, Joe Brinkman said that 9,642 holes were made in the twin towers, that had over 900 flats and shops in the span of 6 months which had helped in bringing the structure down. The firm applied waterfall mechanism in the demolition in which the debris had come down like a waterfall, or a house of playing cards, without damaging the adjacent buildings.

“The Controlled detonation of around 3,700 kg of explosion left the twin towers into rubbles. Also, with this exercise, India also joined the 100 metres club of demolition,” said Mr. Brinkman.