How the stacks will fall: Dynamite part of $8.8M effort to bring down Asarco icons

NewsNM: Swickard - Perhaps it is not for everyone, but some people love to watch when the experts bring down a large structure. In Southern New Mexico there is that chance. The Asarco stacks are near the UTEP campus in El Paso on I-10 south from Las Cruces about 35 miles. From the El Paso Times - by Chris Roberts - When the two tallest Asarco stacks are demolished within seconds of each other early next year, old-time dynamite will bring them down. The stacks -- one of which rises 826 feet and displays the Asarco lettering -- will be among the last vestiges of a smelting plant that operated for more than a century. There is historical symmetry in the use of dynamite, which will be employed to fell the concrete stacks like giant tree trunks. At the turn of the century, when the plant was built, dynamite was replacing nitroglycerine as a safer tool for mining raw materials processed by the smelters. Over time, the plant's furnaces purified copper, lead and other materials blasted from the Earth's crust. "It's (dynamite) still the best workhorse in the industry," said Jim Redyke, president of Dykon, the explosive demolition company hired to bring the stacks down. Redyke's Tulsa, Okla.-based company has used explosives to bring down numerous structures in Texas, including Texas Stadium, and around the world, including a 900-foot smokestack in South Africa, which the company bills as the world's "tallest stack shot." "I've done hundreds of smokestacks," Redyke said in an interview last week at the Asarco site. Read more

How the stacks will fall: Dynamite part of $8.8M effort to bring down Asarco icons