March 26, 2000

12:10 AM

Watch the Kingdome Fall.....must hurryI know some have posted it here before, but watching a stadium crumble starting at 11 a.m Eastern time would be something to tune into. This is the ESPN link that requires Real Player
posted by brent (5 comments total)

15 minutes to go, and the people on the news are just sort of wasting time... one comment was "This is the party we didn't have for New Year's." Hah.
posted by endquote at 12:22 AM on March 26, 2000

3 minutes to go, and the demolition workers are praying. I think KING will have an archive of their 25 (!!) cameras, but who knows.
posted by endquote at 12:31 AM on March 26, 2000

Man that sucker made a lot of dust!
posted by starduck at 12:37 AM on March 26, 2000

I didn't even try to watch the explosion live, because I knew the site would be swamped. But you can go there after the fact and watch it in replay.

The coolest view is camera 3, which was actually one they sacrifice which was inside the dome.

The folks who do these implosions are really incredible. They've been doing this about 30 years now; it really became big in the late 1960's, and for a lot of really big structures there's just no other practical way to bring them down.

What's more amazing is that they have such a good safety record. Even when they're bringing down a building which is 20 feet from another which remains standing, they never seem to screw up. I've never heard of one of these going wrong.

About twenty years ago they brought down a bridge over the Mississippi, and they raffled off the right to "push the button", and gave the money to charity. I wonder why they don't do that more often. Wouldn't you have spent $10 on a chance to bring down the KingDome?

In the meantime, Seattle will spend the next fourteen years finishing paying off the cost of this pile of rubble. They've got lots of bonds out on it yet.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 4:55 AM on March 26, 2000

My sweetie wanted to go see this live. I was dubious, but went along with it. We got surprisingly close, and stopped two blocks away from the line (we were at 7th and Dearborn). We had a great view of the whole dome! it was very impressive -- pow! pow! pow! pow! And a beautiful morning. the dustcloud moved to the north and east, covering my whole neighborhood. Wash that dust off, don't wipe it off, or you'll scratch the paint on your car (unless the paint is already shot, like on my car).


Anita of Anita's BOD and Anita's LOL
posted by anitar at 6:36 PM on March 26, 2000