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Kingdome to fall to lifelong opponent -- gravity
Thursday, March 9, 2000
By ROBERT L. JAMIESON Jr.
(See a series of graphics demonstrating how the implosion should unfold.)
It's not going to look like huge tumbling dominoes. It won't end up flat like a map. The upshot of the March 26 Kingdome implosion, if all goes as planned, will resemble a bachelor stab at gourmet cooking: sunken souffle.
Images unveiled yesterday by demolition contractors suggest a gradual and controlled collapse of the stadium, beginning with explosions to weaken three large wedge-shaped sections of the 7.8-acre concrete roof.
Then the Kingdome, walloped and woozy, should fall to the force it has defied through earthquakes, home runs and fan frenzies such as The Wave for more than two decades -- gravity.
"17.6 seconds," chief imploder Mark Loizeaux, said yesterday, estimating the time it will take for the high-tech knockout of one of the largest -- if not largest -- concrete domes on Earth. At that length of time, the implosion, he said, would be one of the longest ever.
"The Kingdome is definitely coming down," said Loizeaux, president of Controlled Demolition Inc., the Maryland company hired to raze the Dome. "We use explosives as the catalyst. But gravity is the engine."
The process, however, is more complex than it sounds. For one, the Kingdome has a 25,000-ton concrete roof in the shape of arches -- one of the strongest features in the architectural world.
Second, the Dome is so structurally sound that Loizeaux said he would want to be there during a medium-sized earthquake.
Third, the building represents an intricate meld of physics and structural forces. Concrete throughout the building has re-inforced steel of varying measures. Other features pose challenges, including a compression ring (the spot at the top of the Dome) and a tension ring (which runs along the perimeter, where the roof base meets support columns).
Demolition crews who have seen the building up close have been awed by its intricate engineering and have nothing but praise for the Kingdome's structural engineer Jack Christiansen. Christiansen's work culminated in "an artful fashion," Loizeaux said.
Consider, for example, the tension ring -- 8.8 million pounds of tension, all pent up and packed to go.
"How do you deal with that?" Loizeaux said respectfully. "You don't!"
So the demolition crew will treat the tension ring the way you would an ornery, 6-foot-6-inch 280 pound athlete who crashes your tea party: carefully. "You are cajoling (the Kingdome) into the way you want it to fall," Loizeaux summed up. "It's the world's largest tug of war."
Come implosion day -- some time after 8:30 on the morning of the 26th -- the gelatin-based explosives that resemble dog food will ignite, snapping the Dome's support arches, breaking up the roof, "dropping" the tension ring and easing the support columns toward the middle. The debris will fall onto berms of crushed concrete, set there before the implosion to cushion the impact of the debris.
One possible scenario calls for the north section of the Kingdome to fall outward, where debris will partly spill into a spacious parking lot. Crews will decide on their final plan of attack closer to implosion day.
Whichever choice is made, the end result will, in all likelihood, look like this: A 25-foot-high pile of rubble in the middle; a 30-foot-high stack of concrete in concentric circles around the center pile; and an outer perimeter of detritus up to 70 feet tall.
Not exactly flat as a prairie. But such a result would be good enough for crews to use bulldozers and other earthmoving vehicles to remove or recycle concrete for construction of the new football/soccer stadium.
Implosion saves time. If crews were to raze the Dome the old fashioned way -- using a crane and wrecking ball -- the process could take two years or more. That would spell two years of noise, dust and inconvenience for neighbors of the Dome. Also, implosion, as a general rule, is not much more expensive than the wrecking ball.
Speaking with reporters yesterday, Loizeaux revealed himself to be a gregarious man given to wry wit and deadpan apothegms ("We don't do all projects on Earth, we do most of them.") He seemed like a high school science teacher who was eager to share his knowledge during a session that could have been dubbed "Implosion 101."
His passion, he said, stemmed from decades of tutelage under a man who gave him an early start on the path of implosion -- his father, "Daddy Jack" Loizeaux, who incorporated CDI in 1960.
More work needs to be done before the big day. More than 5,000 holes for explosives have been drilled into the Dome's roof and columns, with about 500 more to go. Loizeaux's daughter will load the compression ring with explosives beginning today.
Next week, passers-by may notice orange cords draping parts of the Dome -- that's detonation cord which, once ignited, will flash like lightning at the start of the implosion.
Loizeaux has been thinking about the Dome from the moment he knew CDI would be involved in the project. He thinks about the Dome on planes. At home in Maryland. In his hotel room. How to bring the Dome down safely, he said, is like a movie that constantly runs in his head.
"It's a mind-stretcher," he said.
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
In a blink, those blasts will be followed by simultaneous detonations to three remaining roof wedges, as well as explosive jabs to the stadium's interior and exterior columns.
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