Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 273, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 November 1916 — Building Hard to Wreck. [ARTICLE]

Building Hard to Wreck.

Dynamite, oxy-acetylene torches, fire and wrecking cranes were employed successively in razing five tall, thin walled, reinforced concrete, cement storage bins, built 15 years ago at South Chicago, says the Engineering Record. Heavy charges of dynamite in the supporting columns produced no effect. Oxy-acetylene torches were then employed to cut the steel rails that reinforced them, the weight being shifted to wood shores. Even the effect of the heat and flumes of burning kero-sene-soaked supports, roaring up through the barrels of the tanks, apparently had no disintegrating effect, ns the structure was not wrecked when it dropped on edge. Wrecking cranes finished the work, starting at the top and pulling the tanks apart In chunks.