Along The Side Roads: WE WERE THERE!

Today, there was definitely excitement on South Padre Island. And we were there to witness it!

When we arrived on The Island a couple of weeks ago, we took a drive and noticed this building near the end of the developed area. Mike and I couldn't figure out if they were building it or tearing it down... turned out that both were true. We saw men on all floors and it looked like they were handing something to each other; it was all very curious. A couple of days later, we learned that the building was Ocean Towers, a building project that went terribly wrong. It seems that after just 4 stories were constructed on this condominium project, it was noticed that the building leaned 4 inches... but instead of stopping, they went ahead and built all 33 stories. It was at that point that the building was declared unfit for housing - some of the condos had been presold. Evidently this solid reinforced concrete structure could not be repaired and the decision was made to implode it... and that is today's story.

We got to the Convention Center, where parking was available, before 7 a.m. - the implosion was scheduled for 9. Even the birds had gotten there early to get a good view.

Bob and Corky posed for a "before" picture.

I took pictures from a couple of different directions to see if I could tell which way it was leaning - I don't know, can you tell? If the palm tree is straight, then it must be leaning into the Laguna Madre and away from the Gulf, but I don't know that for sure.

All of us were concerned about the houses that were very close on the north side. No one thought the black tarp was going to do much good!

Mike found a good leaning spot,

Bob set up his equipment, and gave us a detailed descriptions of what was happening on and around the building site.

With only 25 minutes to go, these two men were still on the roof, but they made it down in just about 10 minutes.

The fire trucks were ready,

and the team of demolitions experts were ready. With all the explosives, we were surprised to see them talking on cell phones. Bob saw one fellow take a picture, with his phone, of his hand over "The Button" .

And then sirens sounded, there were very loud sounds echoing and ... it happened. You can see puffs at the base, top and throughout the structure in the first picture.

And within seconds...

and then...

and this was the picture my camera captured at the end.

Then I backed off the zoom and this is what I saw.

Once it drifted towards us, it was very difficult to breathe; it felt like small pellets were hitting you and they tasted terrible.

Then it cleared enough to see the debris; notice the black tarp on the left.

It looked very close to the house in back.

With 15 minutes after the 12 second implosion, the air was relatively clear and this is what you could see. Notice the men working - the tarp is already down and if you look closely, you can see that some of the fence between the building and the houses was knocked down.