Natural gas explosion at the Realty Tower Building

[Murph 9000]

This one is both a failure and success, at the same time. A 100 year old, historic, 12 story, steel frame office building that was converted into apartments. Early reports say that workers who were clearing out old utilities in the basement cut through an abandoned gas service line that was still connected to the gas main (i.e. abandoned in place, capped somewhere in the building, but still very much "live"). The ground floor and basement are massively damaged, obliterated might not be too strong a word, but the structure is apparently stable for now. NTSB are investigating, as apparently gas is their domain because it moves. The engineering of the structure seems to have performed extremely well for such a devastating explosion in the basement.

NTSB: Natural gas explosion at the Realty Tower Building
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History

CBS: Explosion in downtown Youngstown, Ohio, leaves one dead and multiple injured
CBS: Photos show extensive damage caused by explosion in downtown Youngstown, Ohio

 

[Murph 9000]

I think the firefighters did go in, on a purely off-duty volunteer basis. I saw a news report on YouTube of someone showing some cherished stuff that had been retrieved from their apartment. Just checked, here's a video showing some of it:

Firefighters Rescue Memories from Realty Tower as Downtown Businesses Await Relief

There's also some news video showing them applying sudden shock shear loading with a wrecking ball to the top of the structure. As I said earlier, that seems to fly in the face of claims of instability so bad that it justifies demolition. There was also another article saying that it would be carefully brought down "brick by brick", and everything carted away in an asbestos-safe way. Again, smashing it with a wrecking ball does not seem like a good way to contain asbestos.

I'm still quite unconvinced that the structure could not have been repaired (at a cost). I'm even less convinced that it couldn't have been stabilised and undergone proper asbestos remediation (probably at huge cost) prior to demolition, rather than casually releasing asbestos dust into the open air in the middle of the city. It seems as if the property owner is very much using this as an excuse to do "emergency" demolition on the cheap to erase their asbestos liability.