Fall of the 40-storey twin towers

Brut India

15 seconds... and these 40-storey twin towers will be reduced to dust. Brut journalist Labanya Maitra is here to tell you everything you need to know about the skyscrapers that will be demolished this Sunday.

Transcript

00:003700 kgs of explosives, 10 men and 15 seconds.

00:06That's what it would take to turn these nearly 40-storey towers into dust on 28th August 2022.

00:13But the idea was not to explode the towers, the plan was to make them implode like a house of cards.

00:19This meant that the basement would explode first and then the other floors from the bottom up.

00:25The supertech towers in Noida Sector 93 had more than 900 flats in them,

00:31but they violated several norms of UP's Apartments Act.

00:35Nearly 18 floors on each tower were stuffed with explosives,

00:40and the demolition would be carried out by blasting the columns on these floors.

00:44It would take 9-10 seconds for all the explosives to go off in a series of loud blasts,

00:50and another 5 seconds for the buildings to collapse.

00:54The engineers behind the demolition were expecting the dust to clear in about 10 minutes.

01:00Taller than the Guto Minar, these would now become the highest structures to be demolished in India.

01:06But what about neighbouring buildings?

01:08The residents there removed all wall hangings, stuffed their clothes inside cupboards,

01:13uninstalled their televisions and tightly shut their windows.

01:17The blast was to be carried out at 2.30 pm,

01:20and more than 5,000 residents in the vicinity would have vacated the area by about 7 am.

01:27Two adjoining societies were covered with a mesh made of galvanised iron

01:32and a special fabric that doesn't allow dust to penetrate.

01:36The residents could return by 4 pm on demolition day.

01:39The Noida Authority had also arranged parking spaces for

01:432,500 cars that would need to be moved out of the neighbourhood.

01:46More than 50 hospital beds had been reserved in case anyone fell ill.

01:51Fire tenders and ambulances were on standby,

01:54and just 10 workers would remain on site.

01:57Two blasters, one project manager and seven experts.

02:01It would take clearing nearly 1,300 truckloads of debris after the demolition.

02:07As for the people who bought houses in these illegal towers,

02:11the Supreme Court had ordered them to be refunded

02:13and also paid 12% interest from the time of booking.

02:17The demolition was supposed to act as a cautionary tale

02:21for builders who resort to illegal construction for profits.

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