10 Questions About…

Today we woke up at 6:30 (on a Saturday!) to see them implode St Paul Smoke Stack. It was so worth it. It was the coolest thing I’ve seen in a while.

The smoke stack is part of the power plant. It was 574 feet tall. Dad worked the math and figured the stack would fall about 900 feet. They had piles of sand to help break the fall – although the tower completely missed them.

I can’t believe my luck I started running the video about 10 seconds before the smoke stack went down. First came the huge boom. Then in super slow motion the tower fell. Then a second boom as it hit the ground. Dust billowed up but blew away before it hit us.

The footage is taken from Superior Street (I think) – down from West Seventh on St Clair anyways – very near to where the TV camera were. We scoped out the perfect place last night. We were so thankful not to be on the high bridge – I think our view was better where we were and I think the high bridgers got the full burst of smoke stack dust. (Imagine washing that out of your wash and lungs!)

My body was shaking and my heart was beating for a while after the big event. My heat still jumps when I watch the video.

Forgot to add, we saw our neighbors the Howards there too. People were super friendly – but a little crazy. We were on the edge of a cliff – some people chose to hop the barriers for a closer look. Then we saw one crazy group on the roof of their house – never mind the houses in that area are about 100 years old. Luckily as far as we know the smoke stack was the only thing that fell.