At 2.30 pm on Sunday, India will witness the demolition of the Noida-based Supertech twin towers using the “waterfall implosion” technique that will bring down the taller-than-Qutub Minar high rises within a matter of seconds like a house of cards — literally. This would be the second such demolition in India after the Maradu flats in Kochi in 2020. Hospitals have been put on alert in case of exigencies.
“Once last minute checks are done and all teams get down from the buildings, the two buildings — Apex and Ceyane — have to be inter-connected. After that a 100-metre-long cable would be run from the towers to the exploder to demolish the buildings,” Edifice Engineering’s project manager Mayur Mehta said explaining the final process.
“Once we get the clearance from the police department that the exclusion zone is 100 per cent clear, then at 2.30 pm on Sunday we will press the button,” he said, adding only six people, including three foreign experts, Indian blaster Chetan Dutta, a police officer and himself, will remain within the exclusion zone to push the button for the blast.
According to the Noida Authority, on Sunday, one nautical mile (1.8 kilometers approximately) of airspace around the demolition site will remain briefly unavailable for flights while roads leading to the twin towers located in Sector 93 will remain diverted. Around 600 police officials, including traffic personnel, will be deployed for law and order duty.
“The Noida-Greater Noida Expressway will stay closed between 2 pm and 3 pm,” DCP (Traffic) Ganesh Saha said.
The police have issued an advisory and even Google maps will be updated for real-time traffic updates. Green corridors will be created to facilitate movement of emergency vehicles.
The demolition of the Emerald Court project in Noida will cause a loss of about `1,000 crore to Supertech. It also need to pay `20 crore for the buildings’ demolition.
According to officials of the Edifice Engineering, the towers Apex (32 storeys) and Ceyane (29 storeys) will come down in less than 15 seconds literally like a house of cards, while ensuring that no damage is caused to nearby buildings — the closest two being just nine metres away.
They are “200 per cent” confident that the towers will come down safely and in the direction as envisaged by them, assuring residents of no damage to their homes except for chances of “cosmetic cracks” on outer paint and plasters of some structures.
Over 5,000 residents of Emerald Court and ATS Village — the two closest societies to the twin towers — will be evacuated on Sunday by 7 am. The will be allowed to return to their residences only after 4 pm pending safety clearance post demolition by agencies concerned. Flying rubble is a major concern, and to prevent that, the blasting area has been covered with four layers of iron mesh and two layers of blanket. No rubble will fly past, but dust may. Some 2,700 of their vehicles will also be removed from the premises and the residents will have to take away their pets too with them.
An exclusion zone will be created in a radius of up to 500 metres around the twin towers where no human or animal would be allowed except for a team of Indian and foreign blasters engaged in the demolition.
The twin towers are located at Sector 93A in Noida. One of the buildings has an altitude of 103 metres, while another is around 97-metre tall. For the demolition, about 3,700 kg of explosives, which have been brought from Palwal (Haryana), will be used. It is a mix of dynamite, emulsions and plastic explosives. Over 9,500 charging holes have been drilled into the buildings, a delayed detonator has also been placed for sequential blasting. In each of the holes, the amount of explosives ranges from 250 gm to one kg.
The twin towers, comprising 850 unfinished flats, are being demolished in pursuance of a Supreme Court order that found their construction within the Emerald Court society premises in violation of norms.
According to officials, there are basically three techniques to safely raze down any structure of such a scale — diamond cutter, use of robots and implosion. The ‘diamond cutter’ would have taken over two years of time to completely demolish the twin towers safely, and its cost would have been five times of the implosion method. On using robotics the technique would have caused a lot of noise over a period of 1.5 years to two years and disturbed the residents of nearby Emerald Court and ATS Village.
Mumbai-based Edifice Engineering has roped in South African South African experts Jet Demolitions for the twin towers. The two firms have previously collaborated on taking down the Maradu complexes in Kochi, Kerala, in 2020 which were four residential buildings with 18 to 20 storeys.