Two high-rise apartment towers in India were leveled to the ground in a controlled demolition on Sunday after the country's top court declared them illegal for violating building norms, officials said. They became India's tallest structures to be razed to the ground. More than 1,500 families vacated their apartments in the area more than seven hours before the 328-foot-tall towers crumbled inward by the impact of the implosion. The 32-story and 29-story towers, which were being constructed by a private builder in Noida city on the outskirts of New Delhi, were yet to be occupied, the AP reports.
"Largely, everything is OK,” said Ritu Maheshwari, a government administrator, after the demolition. "It happened as expected." The demolition was completed within seconds but followed a 12-year court battle between residents in the area and the builder, Supertech Limited. The razing of the towers occurred after the Supreme Court found that the builder, in collusion with government officials, violated laws prohibiting construction within a certain distance from nearby buildings. The Supreme Court said the construction of the two towers also was illegal because the builder did not receive mandatory consent from other apartment owners in the area.
“It would come in the top five demolitions in the world in terms of height, volume, steel, and tightness of the structure,” said Utkarsh Mehta, a partner with Edifice Engineering, which brought down the building in collaboration with Jet Demolition from South Africa at a cost of $2.25 million. Mehta said 7,716 pounds of explosives were drilled into thousands of holes in the columns and shears of the towers. Experts used the waterfall method of demolition, in which one story collapses on the next. The tallest building demolished in the world with explosives to date was 541 feet tall. It came down in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates on Nov. 27, 2020, according to Guinness World Records. (More demolition stories.)
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