The stage is set for the safe demolition of Supertech’s twin towers here this afternoon in what is expected to be a breathtaking engineering spectacle that will raze the nearly 100-metre-tall corruption-ridden structures. The towers both taller than Delhi’s iconic Qutub Minar – will be brought down in less than 15 seconds by a waterfall implosion technique. And They will be the tallest structures in India to be demolished, officials said. Several people, including families and children, gathered at the site on Saturday night to Sunday, where they clicked selfies and took videos from the twin towers.
“All arrangements have been made and preparations have been made for the safe demolition of the twin towers as scheduled tomorrow at 2.30 pm,” Noida Authority Director General Ritu Maheshwari told. Over 3,700 kg of explosives will be used to destroy the structures in compliance with a Supreme Court order that found their construction at the Emerald Court premises in breach of norms. Around 5,000 residents of Emerald Court and adjoining ATS Village in Sector 93A have to vacate their premises by 7 am on Sunday, along with removing nearly 3,000 vehicles and taking 150 to 200 pets, including cats and dogs, with them for the day.
Several of them left on Saturday, with some going to visit relatives or friends in Delhi-NCR only while driving to Uttarakhand and Rajasthan for short vacations. The nearest buildings next to the twin towers are Emerald Court’s Aster 2 and Aster 3, which are only nine meters away. The demolition will be done so that there is no structural damage to other buildings, officials said.
While the nearby Noida-Greater Noida Expressway will be closed from 2:15 pm to 2:45 pm, the city will remain drone-free. The airspace within a radius of one nautical mile above the blast will also remain briefly unavailable for flights during the demolition period, according to the Noida authority. All work related to the placement of explosives and their connection has already been completed. All that remains is to connect the two towers and place a 100-meter cable from the structures to the exploder, from where the button would be pressed on Sunday, project officials said.
“Once the last-minute checks are done and all the teams have descended from the buildings, both the Apex and Ceyane buildings need to be connected. Then a 100-meter cable would be run from the towers to an exploder to demolish the buildings,” Edifice Engineering project manager Mayur Mehta said on Saturday. “Once we get clearance from the police department that the restricted zone is 100 percent clear, then we’ll push the button at 2:30 p.m. Sunday,” he said. Mehta said only six people, including three foreign experts, Indian blaster Chetan Dutta, a policeman and himself, would remain in the sealed zone to press the blast button. Asked how confident he is about the safe demolition, Mehta told PTI, “100 percent. I have no other word. We are 100 percent confident.”
Mehta’s Mumbai-based Edifice Engineering was tasked with safely demolishing the structures. Edifice brought in South African experts Jet Demolitions for this project. The entire exercise is supervised by the Noida local authority. His brother and Edifice Partner Utkarsh Mehta assured residents of adjoining societies that there would be no damage to their homes, apart from the possibility of “cosmetic cracks” in the exterior paint and plaster of some structures.
About the duration of the demolition, he said that first all the explosives will detonate in series from the bottom floor to the top in eight to nine seconds, and then the buildings will take another four to five seconds to complete the action in under 15 seconds. “The buildings are planned to come down in a southwesterly direction, away from the surrounding buildings and towards the open space,” Mehta said. On how many options they had for demolishing the twin towers, Mehta said there were basically three techniques to safely destroy any structure of this scale – a diamond cutter, the use of robots and implosion. “The technique is chosen based on three parameters – cost, time and safety,” he said.
He said it would take “diamond beetles” more than two years to safely demolish the twins and would cost five times more than the implosion method. About the use of robotics, he said the technique would cause a lot of noise for 1.5 to two years and disturb residents of nearby Emerald Court and ATS Village. “Its cost would be lower than the diamond cutter technique, but higher than implosion,” he said. The Edifice boss said that since the Supreme Court had also ordered that this project should be done in the shortest possible time and without disturbing the surrounding residents, the implosion technique became the choice. Meanwhile, in a notice issued to the public on Saturday evening, the Noida authority asked people, especially children, elderly people and patients living in nearby areas, to wear face masks as a precautionary measure after the demolition. The authority has specially asked residents of nearby Parsvnath Prestige, Parsvnath Srishti societies, Gejha village and others in sectors 93, 93A, 93B, 92 to wear face masks after 2.30 pm.
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