As Tropical Storm Forms, New Orleans to Use Explosives to Topple 2 Cranes

Dan Levin

October 19, 2019 12:17 AM

Emergency crews in New Orleans on Friday were preparing to demolish two cranes that were teetering over a partially collapsed hotel project near the French Quarter, with fears that high winds from Tropical Storm Nestor could topple the cranes onto critical infrastructure and historic buildings.

As Tropical Storm Forms, New Orleans to Use Explosives to Topple 2 Cranes

To prepare for the demolition, which is scheduled for Saturday afternoon and will involve blowtorches and explosives, the authorities widened an evacuation area around the site, where a Hard Rock Hotel under construction partially collapsed last weekend, killing three workers and injuring more than 20 people.

With Tropical Storm Nestor forming in the Gulf of Mexico on Friday, city officials were racing to safely bring down the cranes and stabilize ruined structures.

“Now it’s crunchtime,” the New Orleans fire chief, Tim McConnell, said during a news conference Friday morning. “We’re moving as fast as possible,” he said, noting that the demolitions could safely occur within 15 minutes of the preparations being completed.

Since the hotel collapse, the cranes, which rise about 270 feet and 300 feet, have shifted, hindering recovery efforts. Only one of the three bodies has been removed from the site.

Engineers had initially hoped to demolish the cranes Friday but delayed the operation to ensure safety. The forecast Friday offered some reprieve, with weather models suggesting that New Orleans would likely escape the brunt of Nestor, which was predicted to track further east. The National Hurricane Center warned that a dangerous storm surge and high winds could arrive along portions of the Florida Gulf Coast by Friday night.

City and state leaders announced the audacious demolition plan Thursday.

“We have concerns about how the weather may impact the operation here and the stability of the two cranes,” Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana said during a news conference Thursday afternoon. “We are working as hard as we can on a timeline that will allow for the crane towers to actually be taken down safely.”

McConnell of the Fire Department said on Thursday that crews would use small explosives to implode the cranes “in a methodical way in a specific location” so they fall vertically into rubble and avoid utility lines.

“Think of it like it melting,” he said.

This article originally appeared in

Dan Levin

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