Two high-rise apartment towers in India were razed to the ground in a controlled demolition on Sunday after the country’s top court declared them illegal for violating building codes, officials said. They became India’s tallest structures leveled to the ground. More than 1,500 families evacuated their apartments in the area more than seven hours before the nearly 100-meter (328-foot) tall towers collapsed inward from the effects of the blast. The 32- and 29-storey towers, which were being built by a private developer in Noida city on the outskirts of New Delhi, were yet to be occupied. “To a large extent, everything is fine,” Ritu Maheshwari, a government administrator, said after the demolition. “It went as expected.” The demolition was completed within seconds, but a 12-year legal battle ensued between local residents and the developer, Supertech Limited. The demolition of the towers came after the Supreme Court found that the builder, in collusion with government officials, violated laws prohibiting construction within a certain distance from nearby buildings. The Supreme Court said the construction of the two towers was also illegal because the developer did not obtain mandatory consent from other apartment owners in the area. Before the demolition, the towers were surrounded by scaffolding, fences, barricades and special covers to block dust from the roughly 88,000 tons of debris that will be created, officials said. It will take three months to dispose of all debris. Residents are expected to return to the area on Sunday afternoon after experts examine the effects of the demolition. Some apartments are just nine meters (29.5 ft) away from the blast site, and the required safety distance is 20 meters (65.6 ft). “It would be in the top five demolitions in the world in terms of height, volume, steel and tightness of the structure,” said Utkarsh Mehta, a partner at Edifice Engineering, which demolished the building in partnership with Jet Demolition of South Africa. at a cost of 180 million rupees (US$2.25 million). Mehta said 3,500 kilograms (7,716 pounds) of explosives were blown into thousands of holes in the towers’ pillars and trusses. The experts used the waterfall demolition method in which one floor collapses onto the other. Joe Brikmann, director of Jet Demolition, said earlier that he was confident there would be no damage to the buildings next to the demolished towers. “The buildings in this area are in a high seismicity zone (zone IV) and are built to withstand earthquakes that are much stronger than the shocks of an explosion. We are confident that the collapse of the towers will not cause any property damage.” , The Times of India quoted him. The world’s tallest building to be demolished by explosives to date was 165 meters (541 feet) high and occurred in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates on November 27, 2020, according to Guinness World Records.
