ISU building implosions go as planned

The Iowa State University campus looks a lot different after two of its tallest buildings were reduced to rubble. I-S-U spokesperson Anette Hacker says the implosion of the 1960’s era Knapp and Storms Halls went off just as planned this morning. She says it was a perfect implosion, and there’s now about 18 feet of rubble left — though they thought there’d be 40 feet of rubble. Hacker says the buildings collapsed just as they’d planned. She says, “It was perfect, and it was really pretty thrilling to see.” Hacker says there was a huge plume of dust as the 11-story structures collapsed to the ground — but she says it wasn’t as bad as expected. She says the dusts dissipated very quickly, as they expected it to last five to six minutes, but it disappeared much faster. Hacker says lots of people showed up to see the event. She says the crowd all showed up around nine a-m just about and hour before the implosion. She says there were “several thousand” people on the I-S-U campus to watch. Hacker says the contractors now move on to get rid of what’s left of the buildings. She says the next five to six weeks will be spent cleaning up the rubble. Pieces of the rubble will be ground up and used in the roadbed at the new dairy farm. Hacker says some 42-thousand students lived in the two buildings throughout their life.