They stand like giants, breathing smoke into the atmosphere, tall and seemingly indomitable. Yet all things on this earth have a lifetime, and chimneys are no different. When it comes to their demolition, the old maxim holds: the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Image: Torsten Bätge
A controlled explosion brings a towering chimney down in seconds, but the planning behind it takes far longer. Anything that might scatter too far is stripped out first. The charges are then placed and covered so the stack either collapses into its own footprint or falls like a tree — without sending lethal debris flying.
Image: Collapse The Light
For all the danger involved, these implosions are genuinely a thing of wonder. Watching monumental relics of the industrial age come down with a deafening rumble is something to behold — and spectators are braver than they might realise, since even neighbouring structures have been damaged when calculations went wrong. Here are ten remarkable photographs of chimney demolitions as they happened.
Image: Imperator3733
10. Tinsley Towers, Sheffield, England
Image: the_repairman
This shot catches the instant the Tinsley Towers came down in 2008. The two landmark concrete cooling towers in South Yorkshire stood just feet from a viaduct carrying the M1 motorway, which made the demolition unusual enough that thousands turned out to watch — and meant the motorway had to close for the night.
After 70 years of service the 250-foot (76 m) towers were blown to dust, though one stayed partially standing before crumbling later. Campaigners had fought to save the so-called "salt and pepper pots", the last remains of Blackburn Meadows Power Station. The site is now earmarked for a biomass power station.
9. Henninger Brewery Chimney, Frankfurt, Germany
Image: Heptagon
This time-lapse composite captures the successive moments a soaring smokestack crumples to its knees. The explosion was detonated two thirds of the way up at a critical point, enough to make the bottom half collapse under the weight of the bricks falling from above.
It illustrates something true of most demolitions: the explosives are only the catalyst. Gravity does the real work. This chimney was brought down in 2006 at the former Henninger Brewery, once among Frankfurt's best-known beer makers and now owned by the Radeberger Group.
8. Goodyear Chimney, Wolverhampton, England
Image: Skizza_wolves
Hundreds of onlookers watched the Goodyear chimney meet its end in 2008. The 180-foot (55 m) stack was blown at the base in a controlled explosion, and the local press reported that eight decades of history came crashing to the ground with it.
Developers had declared the chimney structurally unsafe, with the tyre factory beneath it slated to make way for housing. In a small piece of ceremony, a former factory worker and a local pupil pressed the firing button that reduced the landmark to debris and twisted metal.
7. Trojan Cooling Tower, Rainier, Oregon, USA
Image: Booga_roo
Dust and debris spew outward as the cooling tower at Oregon's Trojan Nuclear Power Plant smashes to earth. The 499-foot (152 m) tower — visible from Interstate 5 — was demolished in 2006 in front of thousands of spectators.
The plant itself lasted only 16 years. It faced sustained opposition from environmentalists and was found to have major construction faults, closing for good in 1992 after a series of dangerous steam tube leaks. This was the first implosion of a nuclear plant cooling tower in the United States.
6. Moorburg Power Station Chimney, Hamburg, Germany
Image: Torsten Bätge
With a plume of smoke still escaping the flue, this falling stack looks as though it is exhaling a last breath. At 839 feet (256 m) and 15,000 tons, it was among Hamburg's tallest structures when it was brought down in 2004 using charges set at three levels — ground, 208 feet and 298 feet.
The blast was powerful enough to tear a ventilation grill off one of the boiler houses and throw it into an adjacent building, causing a short circuit, a blackout across parts of the city, and an emergency shutdown that halted production at nearby oil refineries for days. Moorburg closed partly because of rising natural gas prices, and a coal power plant took its place.
5. High Bridge Power Plant Smokestack, Minnesota, USA
Image: Dan Oldre
The photographer captioned this one simply: the 570-foot (174 m) smokestack from the Xcel Energy High Bridge power plant is seconds away from being history. It came down in 2008, the boom greeted with cheering from a crowd of around 5,000.
Explosive charges toppled the 5,770-ton structure onto heaps of dirt laid out to absorb the impact. The coal-burning plant in Saint Paul, built in 1923, was demolished to make way for a natural gas plant with substantially lower emissions.
4. Northfleet Cement Works Chimneys, Kent, England
Image: Steven C Luck
A shot that makes you want to shout "timber". One of the chimneys overlooking Northfleet in Kent falls like a tree while dozens of spectators watch. The twin 550-foot (168 m) towers had dominated the local skyline for 40 years.
Dust streamed from the funnels before the chimneys disintegrated entirely, with workers on the ground aiming water jets to suppress it. Their fall in 2010 ended two centuries of cement production at Northfleet, and the former Lafarge site is set to become a mixed-use development.
3. Carrongrove Paper Mill Chimney, Stirlingshire, Scotland
Image: Nigel J C Turnbull
Time seems to freeze for an instant before the boiler house chimney at Denny's Carrongrove Paper Mill collapses into its own dust cloud. With a huge chunk blown out of the base, the next few seconds saw the stack buckle, tilt to one side, and crush itself under its own weight.
For photographer Nigel J C Turnbull, the fall of this giant in 2009 marked the end of the papermaking era in Stirlingshire. The mill had closed in 2005 amid sharp industrial decline in the region, and the site is due to be redeveloped for housing.
2. Athlone Cooling Towers, Cape Town, South Africa
Image: Hamish_h
Dynamite charges brought South Africa's Athlone Cooling Towers down in 2010. The 262-foot (80 m) concrete structures, known locally as the "two ladies of Athlone", fell in under ten seconds to loud cheering from the thousands of Cape Town residents who had gathered to watch.
Commissioned in 1966 and decommissioned in 2003, the towers were declared unsafe after one of the support rails gave way. Sitting alongside the busy N2 highway, the buckling tower had become a genuine risk to motorists, and controlled implosion was judged the only safe answer. The power station site is set to be redeveloped.
1. Lakeview Generating Station Smokestacks, Ontario, Canada
Image: kingofthenerds
Titled 4-3-2-1, this image preserves the successive moments in which the smokestacks of Mississauga's Lakeview Generating Station came down in 2006. Every few seconds another monolith disappeared into its own dust cloud with a thundering bellow.
Known as the "Four Sisters", the stacks had stood for forty years as icons of what was once the largest coal-fired station in the world. The demolition team waited days for the wind to blow out over the lake and away from residents before detonating. At 493 feet (150 m), they remain the tallest structures ever imploded in Canada.
Bonus: Blyth Power Station Chimneys, Northumberland, England
Image: Stewart Snowball
The chimneys of the former Blyth power station in North East England were levelled in 2003 in what was reported as the largest demolition of its kind in half a century. Four 17,000-ton, 460-foot (140 m) structures had dominated the coastal skyline for over four decades.
More than 300 lbs of high explosives were placed at the feet of the reinforced concrete, brick-clad chimneys, and residents had to leave their homes for the day. From a safe distance, spectators heard the air raid siren that signalled the start — then watched the stacks teeter and fall in sequence like toy soldiers.