With cracks as sharp as the frozen Arctic air, a 1,357-ft steel communications tower in Port Clarence, Alaska, tumbled to the ground on April 28, the first step in the U.S. Coast Guard's decommissioning of its network of LORAN radio navigation facilities across the country.
The 400-ton, 45-segment triangular steel tower is the largest man-made structure to be felled by explosives, according to Controlled Demolition Inc. (CDI), Phoenix, Md., which performed the operation as a subcontractor to Jacobs Field Services North America.