Well … that really was pretty cool. Now you see it, now you don’t. At ~6:40am the Key Bank Building went down. With the news helicopters circling overhead, the crowd atop the American Towers building woke up as a line of charges began to fire up the left side of the building. There was almost a strange pause, and then the charges continued to fire … now seeming to go in inside the building. By that time, the left side of the building had already began to drop and as charges continued the entire building slowly collapsed sideways, with the left side leading the way.

Immediately, a large dust cloud began to rise, and as the crowd let out a cheer the entire area became enveloped in a huge ball of dust. It was amazing to see the dust cloud rise and completely obscure the Marriott Hotel, and then move over the Salt Palace and continue to blow west, and north west. It took a good 10+ minutes for the dust to clear, and what was left was a pile of rubble. Within 30 minutes, the rooftop was pretty much cleared and everyone was on their way.

It was interesting to see the large amounts of dust that were left spread across the buildings and streets in the area.  In front of the Salt Palace on the street you could see a line that almost looked like snow … near white/tan dust and then the black asphalt another block down.  I’m sure the clean-up will take a while.

There was a pretty good group of us up there, Dave Biesinger of DNA Films joined us and filmed the implosion in high-speed/slow motion, Phil Burns and his wife joined us, and several other friends. So we have a variety of pictures and video to sort through and post. I’ll do one last follow-up post when I get my videos up on YouTube.

And so the re-construction of downtown Salt Lake City continues …