China implodes 19 buildings in 10 seconds

China tends to do everything on a large scale, and that clearly includes demolition. The video above shows the implosion of 19 buildings at once located in Wuhan.

How do you implode so many buildings at the same time and in less than 10 seconds? By using 5 tonnes of explosives!

Liaoning Province Meteorological Station caught on camera going down

The image you see above is of the Liaoning Province Meteorological Station building in Shenyang, Liaoning as it collapses. The building was notable for having a 45-meter-tall thermometer attached to the exterior, which you can see closest to the camera.

The building has been demolishied to make way for redevelopment, which will take the form of a large residential area to help cope with China's billion-plus population.

Source: Yahoo! News

Demolition gone wrong: China accidentally creates the leaning tower of Liuzhou

This may have happened a few years ago, but it's still worth sharing. Chinese demolition "experts" managed to implode a building and leave a structure we're more used to seeing in Italy.

The 22-storey tower block located in the city of Liuzhou split down the middle as it fell. The problem is, one of those halves decided not to fall over, leaving a leaning tower. The reason? The demolition company explained it as "technical reasons." They had fully intended for the building to split in half as it did, but both sections were meant to collapse.

Source: The Daily Mail

China builds a glass bridge hanging off the side of a mountain

China doesn't have the best record for health and safety, so news that they've built a glass walkway on the side of a mountain should be met with some trepidation.

The walkway suspends in midair off the side of the Tainmen Mountain, some 4,700ft above sea level. As it's made of glass, anyone walking along it will see nothing below their feet as the images here show.

Brave is definitely a word I'd associate with using the bridge. But the Chinese authorities are determined to keep the bridge looking great and ask anyone crossing it to wear shoe covers to protect against dirt smearing the glass surface.


It's a stunning walkway and vista, and the bridge appears to be safe having carried people since the beginning of October last year. The question is though, would you use it?

If you'd like to see more image of the bridge, including its construction, you can download a 48-page PDF document giving further details.

Health and safety. What health and safety?

The video above has to be seen to be believed. The least surprising thing about it is the fact this was filmed in China, whose health and safety record isn't great to begin with. But this takes it to a whole new level.

What I believe we are witnessing here is a top-down demolition of a building where the machine is precariously close to the edge of the building and has no safety tethers. You can also see rubble hanging off the sides ready to fall with the slightest disturbance. And what waits below? A busy main road always full of vehicles.

But all that pales in comparison to the last bit of information this video reveals. It seems there are still people living in the lower apartments!

You have to wonder if they were told to leave but decided not to, or is the demolition contractor just giving them notice a few floors before they reach them?

1,156 meter viaduct imploded in China

At 10pm on Saturday, the 14th pier of the Hanzhongmen viaduct formed the starting point of an implosion that demolished 1,156 meters of viaduct in the eastern city of Nanjing, China. The job required 620 kilograms of explosives and took just 6.9 seconds to fall.

Due to the location of the viaduct, and the close proximity of a subway system, 80 stainless-steel-wire-rope absorbers were required to ensure the explosion didn't damage the surrounding buildings. It is now up to "scores of machines" to remove the rubble as part of a large expansion of the local highway system.

Source: The Telegraph

World's highest and longest suspension bridge opens in China

We've seen a few videos of suspension bridges being demolished, but the opposite is true in China where the world's highest and longest tunnel-to-tunnel bridge has just opened. It's called the Aizhai bridge, measures 1,176 metres in length, and is suspended 355 metres above a canyon.

Its location is in the Hunan province sitting at the top of the Dehang Canyon. It was constructed out of necessity, as until now all vehicles have had to slowly wind their way up the sides of the canyon. With traffic getting worse, the roads were gridlocked. Now hours of journey time can be replaced with a few minutes traveling across the new bridge, which has been under construction since October 2007.

China is not known for its health and safety record, or its high standard of construction, but lets hope they didn't skimp on materials or engineering with this bridge. If it failed it would be a serious disaster.

Visit the link below for some fantastic pictures of the bridge.

Source: The Guardian

6 sentenced for carrying out demolition with person still in building

When big redevelopments are planned it is inevitable some people will be forced to move out of their residence. Those that really don't want to move can protest and even refuse to leave their home. This delays demolition work and can lead to police involvement. The end result is always the person leaving before demolition of a building occurs.

In China, that's definitely not the case. A 48-year-old by the name of Liu Shuxiang did not leave his home when a 6-man demolition team turned up to demolish it. What did the team do? They decided to demolish the building anyway. Shuxiang was killed by falling debris.

What's unclear is whether the team knew the resident was in the building. Even so, all 6 have been sentenced for involuntary killing because of a lack of warning signs being erected around the site. That suggests the court believed the crew thought the building was empty and that this death was accidental, but surely you'd carry out a final check before starting the work, right?

Source: China Daily

Excavators dismantle leaning Chinese tower block from the top down

The building regulations in China leave a lot to be desired, if they are followed at all. But one of the growing problems in the region is newly built tower blocks starting to lean shortly after being built. The problem seems to be with the land they are being built on.

A lot of new buildings are sprotuing up across China built on land reclaimed from the sea or some other body of water. The problem is, that land does not settle evenly, meaning a heavy structure on top of it is going to sink. In the case of the tower block you see above, it started leaning almost immediately after building work was completed. The construction company then attempted to reinforce the base, but one of the main support pillars broke a few months later rendering the structure dangerous.

As you can see below, lots of health and safety rules are being broken to demolish it. Those machines have been lifted on top of the building by a crane and are working precariously to break up all the concrete floor-by-floor. We hope they can finish before the other support pillars decide to crumble.

Source: Daily Mail

The leaning tower of China

Living in the UK I believe everyone has a respect for the building regulations we work under. When a new building is erected, we all expect it to be safe and remain so for decades. In China, those regulations either don't seem to exist, or at least are well below what the western world has come to expect.

An example of how bad the building work can be in China has become apparent as we've progressed through 2011. A number of tower blocks were built and completed in January of this year in the Zhejiang province of China. Each block is 68 meters high and is used for residential apartments. The problem is, one of those blocks started to lean soon after building work was completed. At first it was dismissed as the building settling, but then the angle of the lean continued to get worse.

An evacuation was carried out over the weekend, and now the construction company has to decide how to proceed. The problem is made worse by the fact several other blocks are in close proximity meaning if it does collapse it could take other blocks with it in a domino effect.

It looks like the only way to proceed is to call in the professionals and implode the tower block thus saving the surrounding blocks. But even then, if the foundations of this block are not sound, what's to say the others are?

Source: China Explosion blog (Chinese language)

15-storey Chinese hotel constructed in just 6 days

I know this website is all about demolition, but sometimes we have to marvel at how much construction of new buildings is being modularized and sped up.

Take this Ark Hotel, for example. It's 15-storeys and located in Shanghai, but it only took 6 days to construct. Apart from the foundation which was already in place, that 6 days accounts for everything including wiring and glass. 46 hours were the outer shell construction, and 90 hours to complete the building enclosure. Stick some furniture in it and it's ready to be used.

It's actually a new, earthquake-resistant construction that relies on a thin steel frame structure to give it strength. All the sections were prefabricated in a factory and transported to site. When complete there was only 1% construction waste. So it's clean to manufacture and clean to build.

When it comes to taking it down I don't think they'll need a wrecking ball or dynamite. A crack team of screwdriver wielders will have 6 days to unscrew all the sections.

Source: Gizmodo

Two huge cooling towers imploded in China

The video above is of two huge cooling towers that were demolished on October 29th. Their specific location isn't known other than it's the Fengtai Beijing Feng Yungang Thermal Power Corporation compound in China.

The larger of the two towers is 95 metres tall. The smaller is still a respectable 65 metres. The blast required the use of 90kg of explosives and 1,400 detonators. Unlike a lot of the implosion failures we see on YouTube from China, this job seemed to go without a hitch.

This demolition was a tale of two halves

Clearly this building implosion somewhere in China was not planned that well. The building splits in two, with the desired result only happening to half the structure.