Glasgow skyline changes as flats bite the dust in £2.7m night time demolition

By Alan McCrorie

Six multi-storey blocks in Sighthill have been demolished in a £2.7m operation that changed the skyline of Glasgow in less than 15 seconds.

The early-morning blow-down wiped the multis at Fountainwell Terrace, Fountainwell Square and Fountainwell Avenue off the map after months of careful preparation by the staff of Technical Demolition Services and Glasgow Housing Association (GHA).

Crews used 3800 explosive charges in the three double blocks, which are being levelled as part of a regeneration scheme.

GHA estimate it will take 16 weeks to clear the 60,000 tonnes of rubble after the 22 kilogrammes of explosives levelled each of the 40-year-old buildings. The debris will be crushed and recycled for reuse in roads and buildings.

Blast-off was 2.30 on a cold Sunday morning. The usual carnival city demolition atmosphere was replaced with shivering as onlookers who left the comfort of their homes around the main viewing area at Keppochhill Road braved the cold.

In stark contrast to recent daylight demolitions in Castlemilk and The Gorbals, small crowds gathered quickly and dispersed just as rapidly after the 19-storey blocks, which housed nearly 700 flats, collapsed.

The proximity of the buildings to the Glasgow – Edinburgh railway line out of Queen Street meant that the demolition had to be carried out in the early morning.

The housing association moved 174 residents to a city hotel for safety, and Strathclyde Police searched the neighbourhood with sniffer dogs and by helicopter with thermal imaging equipment to ensure no-one had strayed into the blast zone.

Just on the half-hour, the floodlit giant closest to the railway line tottered like a drunken Saturday-night reveller clinging to her dignity, then, as the explosives tore out the central stairwells, the block collapsed in on herself. The others followed suit, and a huge pall of dust swirled across the cityscape, dampened down by winter rain.

Windows in the neighbouring tower blocks lit up with camera flashes as tenants snatched photographs of the spectacle then closed up to avoid the billowing cloud.

Onlooker Phil Hewitt was making up for a lost opportunity at the Sighthill blow-down.

He said: ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before. I missed the last one,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know anything about that one until it had passed – it’s something you don’t see every day.