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Plant to go down in a puff of smoke

The 64,000-square-foot power plant in Oldsmar will be demolished in a 13-second implosion.

By SHEELA RAMAN
Published October 19, 2006

	[Times photo: Jim Damaske]
	Once known as Mighty Higgins, the A. W. Higgins plans has been a Tampa Bay landark since the 1950s. It was named for A. W. Higgins, former president of Florida Power Corp. It was in use until 1993, when its owner, Progress Energy, closed it. The plant was abandoned as obsolete in 1996.

OLDSMAR - The countdown has begun.

The explosives are in place, the wiring soon to be rigged.

With exactly four bangs and five booms at 8 a.m. Friday, the A.W. Higgins Power Plant is expected to vanish in the time it takes to pour a bowl of cereal.

But behind the 13-second implosion is six months of painstaking preparation.

The Higgins plant is 56 years old, an antique compared to most others. It had asbestos in its linoleum tiles, window caulking and machine insulation. Its thousands of light fixtures contained a chemical called PCB, now banned.

A.W. Higgins, then president of Florida Power Corp., built the plant, describing it as "one of the most modern plants in the world." It was in use from the early 1950s until 1993, when its owner, Progress Energy, closed it. It was maintained until 1996, when Progress Energy abandoned the plant because it had become obsolete.

Early preparations for the demolition began when cleanup crews arrived in March. They drained the plant's fuel lines, which were clogged with old oil, before removing the asbestos and lighting fixtures. They meticulously removed each of the plant's countless thermometers, switches, and gauges to get rid of mercury. They collected barrels of lead.

"The environmental piece was the biggest challenge," said John Meyer, Progress Energy's project manager for the demolition.

Only after three months of detoxifying could they even think about removing any structures from the building, Meyer said. Only then could DEMCO, a company contracted by Progress Energy to dismantle Higgins, attack the plant with wrecking shears, leveling the fuel tanks, pump houses, administrative offices and turbine houses to leave only the main boiler house intact. They barreled through the first two floors of the building, leaving only the support columns.

It is in these columns that the explosives are buried. Tiny charges containing RDX explosive are embedded in each of the 134 columns, ready to detonate at 28,000 feet per second, fast enough to send projectiles flying well past the boundary for viewing the explosion, which is set at 2,000 feet away.

But the plant should fall onto itself, said Kevin Klass, superintendent for Controlled Demolition Incorporated, the company in charge of the explosion. He said the plant will fall slightly toward the south, and that is the only direction in which debris might extend beyond the site of the current building.

Wednesday, all 392 explosives were in place. Around each of them, Klass' crew has built plywood structures filled with used conveyor belts.

These are probably the most crucial part of the implosion, Klass said, because they make sure things don't start shooting through the air.

After one more day of setting up the wiring and detonation delays, the Higgins plant is set for destruction. The 120-foot tall, 64,000-square-foot structure will be destroyed by pushing a button on a blasting machine the size of a video game controller

But between the four bangs from the detonation system and the five booms that indicate the explosives going off, there will be a six-second pause.

For Klass, who has imploded hundreds of buildings in his career, this is the worst part.

"It makes me want to throw up," he said. "It's an eternity."

Sheela Raman can be reached at sraman@sptimes.com or 727 445-4158

[Last modified October 18, 2006, 20:56:05]