Controlled Demolition, Inc.
Controlled Demolition, Inc. (CDI), founded by Jack Loizeaux in 1947, is a firm headquartered in Phoenix, Maryland that specializes in the use of explosives to create a controlled demolition of a structure, with the structure collapsing on itself into a pile of debris contained within the site of the building. Controlled Demolition claims to have imploded "more buildings, chimneys, towers, bridges, and other structures" than all of its other competitors combined.
The firm was created by Jack Loizeaux who used dynamite to remove tree stumps in the Baltimore, Maryland area, and moved on to using explosives to take down chimneys, overpasses and small buildings in the 1940s.
The firm has claimed world records for a series of 1998 projects: The June 23 demolition of the 1,201-foot-high Omega Radio Tower in Trelew, Argentina, "the tallest manmade structure ever felled with explosives"; The August 16 implosion of the 17-building Villa Panamericana and Las Orquideas public housing complex in San Juan, Puerto Rico, "the most buildings shot in a single implosion sequence"; and the October 24 project at the J. L. Hudson Department Store in Detroit, Michigan, which at 439 feet (134 m) in height became "the tallest building & the tallest structural steel building ever imploded" and its 2,200,000 square feet (200,000 m2) making it "the largest single building ever imploded".
On March 26, 2000, the firm used 4,450 pounds of dynamite placed in 5,905 carefully sited holes and 21.6 miles (34.8 km) of detonation cord inserted over a period of four months to take down the 25,000-ton concrete roof of the Kingdome in Seattle, Washington in 16.8 seconds, one day before the 24th birthday of the stadium that had been the home of the Seattle Mariners of Major League Baseball and the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League. The total cost for the demolition project was $9 million. The firm carefully planned the collapse of the roof to prevent its simultaneous free fall, creating a delay pattern that would break the roof into pieces and setting up 15-foot-high earth berms on the floor of the stadium to absorb the impact of the falling concrete. The demolition of the Kingdome established the record for the largest structure, by volume, ever demolished with explosives. The implosion of the 125,000-ton concrete structure did not cause a single crack in the foundation of the new stadium being built 90 feet (27 m) away.
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