Authorities in Noida, India, used 8,100 pounds of explosives to detonate twin residential towers on Sunday after India’s Supreme Court ruled that they were illegally constructed, Reuters reported.
A demolition team successfully razed the twin towers, the taller of which was 338 feet high, on August 28 after detonating strategically placed explosives throughout the apartment buildings. The towers fell in precisely 12 seconds as crowds gathered on the nearby rooftops of other high-rise buildings watched on.
“The demolition had built up as a grand spectacle through the day with people lining along the Noida expressway and taking vantage positions at rooftops, balconies and parks to watch the towers fall,” the Times of India noted wrote on August 29.
The spectators “cheered and clapped” upon witnessing the successful demolition, Reuters observed. The twin towers were reportedly the tallest buildings ever razed via controlled implosion in India. They had stood prominently on the edge of a major highway linking Uttar Pradesh state to India’s national capital, New Delhi.
Authorities had previously ordered thousands of residents within a certain radius of the planned implosion to evacuate the area for roughly ten hours on Sunday in anticipation of the blast, which was expected to produce more than 80,000 metric tons of rubble and massive amounts of dust. Officials planned to use most of the rubble to fill the demolition site at a later date. Noida’s government ordered some buildings near the towers to be covered in plastic tarps to protect them from dust and debris.
“Several families moved to safety on Saturday, fearing heightened pollution and health hazards from the massive debris,” according to Reuters.
The owner of a Noida apartment near the razed towers named Sudeep Roy told the news agency he booked hotel rooms away from the area last week so that he and his family and friends could avoid the event’s dusty aftermath.
“It is best to stay away from the blast site for 24 hours because the air will get toxic and we don’t know how it can impact our health,” Roy stated.
Noida’s government ordered city firefighters to spray the demolition site with water shortly after the implosion on Sunday to help dampen dust levels in the vicinity.
India’s Supreme Court ordered the towers’ demolition in August 2021 after determining that their construction had violated “multiple building regulations and fire safety norms,” Reuters reported. The razing was delayed for a year due to “technical difficulties,” according to New Delhi Television (NDTV).
