I grew up in a part of the Southern Suburbs towered over by the Athlone Cooling Towers.

We called them, collectively, the ‘smelly castle’, because they formed a landmark on the N2 freeway into the Cape Town city centre and were fed by reclaimed water from a nearby sewage plant.

Then, in 2010, they decided to demolish them, and people gathered in the thousands at the Pinelands Sports Club and the University of Cape Town to get a good vantage point from which to watch them fall.

The weather was terrible, but well worth it for the 10 seconds it took to level them to the ground.

More recently, thousands gathered, this time online, to watch the demolition of the Hazelwood Power Station in Australia.

Over to The Guardian:

Eight chimneys at Victoria’s defunct, coal-fired Hazelwood power station have been demolished.

The chimneys, which soared 137 metres above the town of Morwell in the Latrobe Valley, came down just before 12.30pm on Monday.

Owner Engie provided a live stream of the chimney demolition, which took about a minute.

Like the Athlone Cooling Towers, Hazelwood was built in the 1960s and operated for roughly half a century, during which time it was known as “Australia’s dirtiest power station”.

There is about 50kg of asbestos in each chimney and about 12 tonnes of concrete, which will be monitored following the demolition in line with Victorian environment laws.

Engie head of corporate affairs in Australia and New Zealand, Ryan Auger, said the asbestos was in the base of the chimneys, but it was far enough from the detonation site not to become airborne.

“There is absolutely no risk that asbestos will be anywhere other than on the ground, and ultimately remediated on site and stored in an approved cell,” Auger said.

The videos below show the chimneys falling from every conceivable angle so that you can really take it in:

The view from above as #Hazelwood chimneys come down.
A feature of Gippsland’s landscape has finally gone. #gippsnews pic.twitter.com/6mENRUomjx

— Tyson Whelan (@tyson_whelan) May 25, 2020

Finally, a view from a distance as the towers disappear behind a row of trees:

That was extremely satisfying.

[source:guardian]