19 buildings demolished at once in Central China (video)

To make way for a new business district in the city of Wuhan (formerly known as Hankou) in Central China, 19 apartment buildings were demolished on Saturday, January 21. It was the largest building implosion project ever taken place in China, where more than 5 tonnes of explosives were used, distributed in 120,000 locations. The implosion was carried out at midnight and the operation covered an area of two blocks of flats (more than 15 hectares).  In the stunning video, the 7 to 12 story-high buildings vanish in just 10 seconds!

“For this kind of large-scale blasting demolition conducted in the downtown area, we not only need to guarantee the demolition result, but also strictly control the adverse effects of blasting,” Jia Yongsheng, general director of the demolition said. “The demolition effect was quite ideal. The explosion didn’t affect the light rail and public facilities around the blasted buildings. There was no damage and adverse effects of blasting,” he added.

According to an implosion expert, by using the implosion technique rather the traditional demolition approach, the city saved more than four months to prepare the building site. This is the third controlled explosion in the area, which is planned to become a new business center, featuring one of the tallest buildings in the world (707-m tall), a cross-harbor tunnel and an underground complex, and at least 32 buildings will be demolished towards this end.