5,000 pound wrecking ball begins demolishing medical centre

St John's Regional Medical Centre, a hospital in Joplin, was ravaged by a tornado last year and killed six people in the process.

The building has sat empty since May last year, but the work crews have now moved in and a 5,000 pound wrecking ball has the task of bringing the structure down.

The site is expected to be cleared in a little under 2 months.

Source: Demolitionnews

175ft Feed Mill vs. 8,000 pound wrecking ball

We had to share this great picture of the 175-foot feed mill being demolished by an 8,000 pound wrecking ball attached to a 200-foot-tall crane.

Source: PJStar.com

Video footage from a camera attached to a wrecking ball

This video was shot of the Spectrum Stadium being demolished earlier this month in Philadelphia. Another local stadium called Veterans Stadium had been imploded making for quite an event, but much to the dismay of locals the Spectrum was subject to a 5 month demolition using a wrecking ball instead.

How do you cover something that takes 5 months, local reporters asked? Well, they decided to attach a camera to the wrecking ball and see how it turned out. Thankfully the memory card in the camera survived and they got some rather unique footage.

Here's what the camera looked like afterwards:



Source: Philly.com and thanks to Rob the Wrecker for the link.

Swing it harder!

Demolition News found an amusing video which clearly shows you need the right tools for the job.

In this case, the wrecking ball is far too small to even have an impact on the building. There may be some light window damage, but this building isn't coming down any time soon without a rethink.

Someone forgot to close the road, car hit by wrecking ball

Health and safety was clearing lacking on this site. Questions need to be asked about exactly why that wrecking ball was swinging so violently with people around and across an open road?

You'll also notice people nearby were not wearing basic safety equipment such as high-visibility clothing and hard hats. The road was also not closed to the general public.

The safest person was driving the car until they got hit. Lets hope whoever was inside walked away from the accident.

Wrecking Ball vs. High Reach Excavator

Demolition News found this great video of a wrecking ball vs. a high reach excavator working on the same building.

Which one is better? That's for you to decide.

The comments on the video focus on how good the actual video is with only one person suggesting the high reach does a better job. You can't say they are evenly matched either as both stop for a period of time while the other continues work.

Baltimore warehouse wrecking ball video

Thanks to Demolition News for this one: