PORT ANGELES — The 72-year-old smokestack that was all that remained of the Peninsula Plywood mill was finally toppled Monday.
In what will be remembered as a colossal letdown for thousands of spectators, the iconic smokestack withstood explosives that were supposed to immediately topple it almost three hours earlier.
The blast left the base of the concrete-and-brick stack with nothing but a web of reinforcement steel called rebar.
Crews using huge electrical saws and cutting torches successfully cut through the rebar to finally topple the 72-year-old landmark overlooking the west side of downtown Port Angeles.
The stack fell with no warning to spectators at 6:13 p.m., 2 hours 43 minutes after the planned demolition.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: To see a video of the stack falling, click on https://giftsnap.shop/article/20130408/NEWS/130409982. A set of photos of the event are in the photo gallery at the right.)
Port of Port Angeles Public Works Director Randy Brackett, who was in constant contact with the contractor, could not say what went wrong.
“I don’t think there’s been any final analysis,” he said.
“The bottom line is that it didn’t go down like they thought it would. There is a lot of steel in there.”
After the 3:30 p.m. explosion, a Wallace Technical Blasting crew determined that “their next attack was by cutting steel.”
“But it didn’t go until they were able to lift it with an electric hydraulic press, or a jack, I should say,” Brackett said.
“That appeared to lift it about two to three inches on the back side.”
“So it was a delay,” he added. “It’s wasn’t exactly what we expected, but nobody got hurt. So it’s considered a success.
“Now we’re waiting for pizza.”
Paula Gustafson and Alisa Proctor were leaving the site without the video and images they were hoping to capture.
“I wish they’d given us a little better warning,” said Paula Gustafson of Port Angeles.
“My daughter worked here and she lives in Alaska and she wanted me to video it for her. So I missed it.”
Earlier, the 175-foot stack remained defiantly erect well after the smoky blast of explosives, muffled by rubber insulation around the base of the concrete monolith, was set off to a 10-second public countdown at 3:30 p.m.
Scores of onlookers packed the site at 439 Marine Drive and adjacent hilltops overlooking it to witness what Mayor Cherie Kidd said before the blast time was the end of an era and a new beginning for the city.
Since 1941, the site was home to Peninsula Plywood, ITT Rayonier and KPly until it closed for good as a reincarnated PenPly in 2011.
Kidd, chosen to push remote-control buttons to trigger a countdown to the blast, said she was disappointed.
“I pushed my buttons just right, heard the boom, saw the smoke,” Kidd said.
When the stack didn’t fall, Kidd stayed at the site well after most of the onlookers at the observation site had departed.
“I was so excited. It was the coolest thing I’ve done as mayor,” she said.
The 1,000-ton stack — containing 4 inches of concrete covering inner layers of brick and fiberglass, was the last remaining structure on the port-owned land, which is expected to be cleaned up by 2017 and redesignated for marine trades.
Sixth-grader Thomas Reynolds, 12, who with preschooler Jason Williams, 5, won a port-sponsored coloring contest for the honor of pressing the button that started a one-minute countdown to detonation, was among the disappointed spectators.
“I wanted to see it fall,” Thomas said.
“I don’t think they put enough dynamite [in the base of the stack].
“But they made stuff pretty hard back in the old days.”
One of the shareholders of the original PenPly, Vernon Reidel, 70, said he wasn’t surprised that the stack didn’t fall.
Reidel spent many hours on the stack’s inspection platform, testing gases being emitted, from 1960 to 1971.
“It’s a tough stack; it’s pretty thick,” Reidel said.
“There was one just like it, the same design, in Hiroshima, and the atomic bomb didn’t take it down.”
Rhine Demolition LLC leveled the mill site under a $1.6 million contract with the port.
Woodland-based Wallace Technical Blasting was in charge of toppling the stack.
Explosives were placed in timbers that were wedged into a notch on the north side of the stack to ensure that it would fall north, toward the water.
When the explosives went off, the stack nudged a little bit — but remained erect.
A half-hour ceremony preceded the blast demolition.
In addition to Kidd and Calhoun, speakers included state Department of Ecology Olympic Region Director Sally Toteff and Port Commissioners Jim Hallett, who emceed the ceremony.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345 or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
PDN staff members John Brewer, Keith Thorpe, Arwyn Rice and Rex Wilson contributed to this report.
