According to a report from WIAT TV, demolition contractor Tim Phifer and his crew set off two explosive charges within the smokestack Tuesday, located at Avondale Mills in Pell City, but the tower just wouldn’t fall. Al.com reports could be more than a century old.
When the charges didn’t bring the smokestack down, Phifer moved in with his excavator to dig away at the base.
As you can see in the drone footage below, as Phifer digs, the smokestack does indeed begin to fall apart—just not in the direction he was hoping. As the base crumbles away, the entire structure tips over directly on top of the excavator. Phifer told al.com that the 158-foot stack was built with about 2.6 million pounds of material.
