Felling Dee Mill chimney.

[Stanley]

Felling Dee Mill chimney.
In summer 1986 I got word from one of my moles that Dee Mill chimney was going to be felled. I went down there and introduced myself to Mervyn Simpson of Simpson Brothers (Explosives) Ltd from Heywood who had the job of dropping the stack. As it was isolated in the middle of a large derelict site they were dropping it with explosives. I had a professional interest in this of course from my army days and went with Mervyn to look at the preparations.

A word or two here about demolition by explosives. To the uninitiated, blowing something up is easy. You just stick a pile of explosives inside, light the blue touch paper and retire! Nothing could be further from the truth. The explosives aren’t used as a battering ram but more like a surgeon’s scalpel. The idea is to use the minimum amount of explosive in exactly the right place to destroy the integrity of the structure so that nature, in this case, gravity, can take its course. What Mervyn was aiming for was to use the charges to persuade the chimney to fall over. The demolition would happen when it hit the ground. The danger that he had to avoid was any chance of the detonation throwing loose bricks far enough to damage property or injure anyone.

He and his men had drilled holes around the inside of the stack and put a stick of gelignite into each hole. These all had detonators inserted into them and the detonators were joined to each other by Cordtex instantaneous fuse. This is an explosive fuse which, when actuated burns so fast that in effect, it ignites all the detonators it is connected to at once and so ensures simultaneous detonation of all the charges. The Cordtex was connected to an electrically fired detonator which in turn was connected to the exploder located well away from the chimney in a safe place. When all was ready and the police had ensured that the site was clear, Mervyn connected the wires to the exploder. Wound the high voltage generator by hand to charge the capacitor inside the exploder and then pressed the button which sent the current down the wires to the set-up. There was a dull thud, a small puff of smoke from the bottom of the chimney and then a slight pause before the chimney slowly toppled and disintegrated as it fell. It was a text book operation and the chimney shattered into individual bricks as it hit the floor. Dee Mill chimney had bitten the dust.