Episode 1 Demolition - The Wrecking Crew

Britain is being destroyed.

Day after day, it's being torn apart.

You're looking at an hour, two hours for a house to go

and then that's it. Done and dusted.

Filmed over 12 months, these are the men

and women taking on the biggest demolition jobs in the country.

Once you've done this job there's nothing else.

Not for a working lad anyway.

Better than sex.

All right, Simon.

WARNING SIREN

This is the inside story of the billion pound demolition industry.

Not much of a bridge now, is it? Eh?

Better take it down to the scrap.

It's a world of dynamite

and destruction that's changing the face of the UK forever.

Here we go! Show time!

Tonight...

..an explosive end to the three industrial icons puts

the crowd in the firing line.

People are out in their camper vans.

The cars are just piling up, they're all over the place.

It's the last chance to save a much-loved piece of our heritage.

There was so much weight there.

If that pulls that, the whole lot will go.

And it's a race against the clock,

where every second costs.

We're not doing very well.

We're probably three hours behind.

It's coming down though.

Come hell or high water, that bridge is coming down.

LOUDSPEAKER: Three, two, one.

Fire now.

Lovely! Bang on.

In Oxfordshire, 180 men are taking on

one of the largest demolition projects in Europe.

What we've got planned for today

is the dismantling of this structure here.

It's the generator,

part and parcel of the old turbine hall.

It's a structure that weighs approximately 800 tonnes.

Demolition firm Coleman and Company are attempting the biggest

job in their 50-year history.

Bringing down the former coal fire power station, Didcot A.

It always brings out the crowds, we've got a little mini crowd.

It's almost like a rock concert, isn't it, without the rock stars?

But in a way I think we are the rock stars here, aren't we?

Come on.

She's rocking.

Ah, you got it. Yep, you got it.

Did you hear the sound on that?

Now that's a good day at the office, that is, isn't it?

But taking down one generator is small fry

in the scheme of this project.

Kieran's team has to clear the entire 200-acre site...

As developers want to replace the towers and turbines

with a hotel and up to 400 houses.

In its 43-year lifespan,

Didcot A generated over 250 billion kilowatt hours of electricity,

providing power to more than two million of our homes.

But as cleaner energy sources have been developed,

coal has fallen out of favour

and the power station was shut down in 2012.

It will take more than two years to clear the whole site.

The biggest challenge is bringing down the 100-metre high

cooling towers, a job that will involve a huge amount of explosive.

-So when did you start this one, John?

-Monday sort of.

And it's all complete, done, charged.

Oh, yeah, we don't mess about.

For this dangerous technical challenge,

Kieran has enlisted the help of the man who's taken down more cooling

towers than anyone in the world - explosives expert, John Turner.

How long for tower two?

Three days.

Three days, yeah.

We're up to where that reel is, then we'll tie that this afternoon.

John is one of the most experienced explosive demolition

engineers in the country.

His time is valuable in terms of structures like this.

We only work with John because he's the best in the business.

Is he making you blush, John,

telling you you're the best in the business?

No, I know I am.

That's the Geordie sense of humour for you.

It's taken three months to drill more than 8,000 holes in the towers.

Now each one has to be lined with explosive by hand.

These ones are filled with 12-gram detonating cord.

This detonates at 7,500 metres a second.

We then place 40 grams of uridine explosive which is,

it's a nitro-glycerine-based explosive.

We've done a test whilst up on the shell,

with 15 grams of explosives in.

And that's the size of the hole it knocked in the tower.

It's not how much explosives that you put in the hole

that does the damage, it's where you put the hole.

Over the years, parts of the towers suffered weather damage

and were reinforced with concrete.

As the walls vary in strength,

the direction of collapse is hard to predict,

but the team want the towers to fall into the smallest target area

possible to avoid creating huge and potentially dangerous dust clouds.

Explosives will be laid just two thirds of the way around to

encourage the towers to hinge and fall towards each other.

Get the calculations wrong,

and sections could be left standing, then the demolition team will be

faced with the dangerous task of taking down the unstable remains.

Rumour has it that renowned sculpture Henry Moore advised

the architects on where to position the towers that have

dominated the skyline for more than 40 years.

When we moved to Didcot, we were, it's one of the things,

we looked at one house and the towers were really close again

and it actually put us off the house.

But now we were like, "Oh, they're going."

Yeah, so now we feel a bit differently about them.

So, yeah.

All around the area, wherever you live,

you will always see the power stations.

And when you go on holiday, you always know that you're coming home.

If you pass the chimneys, you've gone in the wrong direction.

SHE CHUCKLES

So I don't know what we're going to do. I don't know.

-We'll all be lost.

-We will be lost.

-Lost in the dust I expect.

-Yeah.

The planned explosion is just three weeks away.

On top of the huge technical challenge that Kieran faces,

there are now reports that thousands of residents intend to turn up

to watch the towers disappear.

But a huge crowd will be a huge problem.

We have never experienced the level of interest

from the public that we have at this project.

There's talk of people camping out overnight in the local fields,

setting up barbecues and staying up all night just to celebrate

the fact that these cooling towers are coming down.

And I can understand it,

it's such an iconic building that people are tied into it

emotionally, that they want to see it, they want to view it.

They don't want to miss this opportunity.

But at the same time, we have that vested interest to make sure that we

don't create any additional risks by inviting those people to the area.

If thousands of people turn up to watch the blast as predicted,

it could be too dangerous to go ahead with the explosion

and the months of painstaking preparation would all be in vain.

Demolition is big business.

It's an industry now worth more than £1 billion a year in the UK alone.

In addition to the industry's big boys who take on the largest jobs,

there are hundreds of smaller demo firms tearing down buildings all over the country,

transforming Britain as they go.

All right there, John?

Are we coming to the end of that lot now?

About BLEEP time.

Paul Johnson started his firm in Preston 30 years ago,

with just a pick-up truck and some hand tools.

Now he employs over 50 people

and turns over £5 million a year.

I love demolition, it's in my blood.

This is my big shear.

That'll cut girders to about two and half foot, cut girders that big.

That goes on me 50-tonner, that.

I've never knocked a power station down or anything nuclear,

but I've knocked most everything else down.

I've knocked some massive factories down,

I've knocked some famous buildings down like Central Park in Wigan.

Ah, that's what I'm looking for.

That's them - hammer for a 14-tonner.

I've seen them all come and go, clever words, big talkers,

fancy presentations, fancy brochures.

I'll see you on site, can you do the job?

You can either do the job or you can't do the job.

There's one thing about me, I can do the job.

What the bridge is, it's an old railway bridge.

I think it's 18... 22 metres long.

I've got these girders underneath.

-Now, that's one of the problems..

-Yeah.

So what I want to do is...

Paul's latest challenge is to take down a disused

bridge in a single weekend.

He'll face tough financial penalties if he can't bring it down on schedule

so he's called on his contract manager, Steve, to formulate a battle plan.

It's key critical that we're ready for when the crane comes.

Yep.

-So what's we're going to do, go on with your 15-tonner.

-Mmm.

Break the deck out, but I've got to get these out

and I can't burn them out of the covering concrete

and I don't know where they'll be fixed.

On this bridge, we've got to be organised because there's no time.

If anything goes wrong you can't come back the day after

or the day after.

I can't keep that road shut and it's a busy road.

I've got to get that road open.

The one thing I do know too,

proper planning prevents piss poor performance.

There's 12 bolts on each girder and there's 22 girders.

So half this key critical thing is to make sure

the ash is off for 7.30,

the hammer's on, is pecking,

Jimmy's blowing bolts...

When you start at a job you've got to know in your mind

that you can succeed

and you do the job 1,000 times in your mind before you get there.

I mean, Jimmy will burn that bridge up with one bottle of oxy.

But I'll take six.

Every base has to be covered.

OK. That's the programme.

-Right, I better ring them up, these people now.

-Yeah, no worries.

Make sure they're all up for it.

Hi Steve, are you all right?

That bridge is definitely on.

Now, now listen don't let me down.

12.30, next Saturday,

get your girl to get a purchase order off Eileen. Yeah?

And I'll be ringing you all week, make sure you don't forget

because I know you're getting on a bit and you might forget.

All right, ta-ra.

Now that's crane done.

You're quite straight talking aren't you, Paul?

Straight talking?

Er, at work I am, yeah, flipping right I am yeah.

It is what it is, in't it?

You know what I mean, it's not the diplomatic corps, is it? It's demolition, isn't it?

These things are happening, pal, you know what I mean?

What's the point in fannying about, talking rubbish?

Do you know what I mean?

That's the truth.

I say it as it is, it

and that's it.

Demolition crews don't just clear the way for new development,

sometimes their skills are put to the test

in a last ditch attempt to save a piece of history.

In Hastings, much of the town's pier

was destroyed by a huge fire in 2010.

Now local fundraising and a Lottery grant

has raised more than £10 million to save it.

But restoration work can only go ahead if the burnt out buildings

can be removed without causing any more damage to the pier below.

Demolition man Mark Hodgson is taking on the challenge.

This was the main hall of the pier

and all the big acts used to come back here in the day.

The Stones played here, The Who played here.

It's a real difficult thing to imagine the sort of

raucous fun that everyone had in here back in the day.

I should think it was absolutely buzzing.

The pier has been the town's focal point since opening to the

public in 1872 on the first ever August Bank Holiday.

In its 1930s heyday, it was a huge draw,

attracting up to 50,000 visitors a week.

Now the underlying structure of the pier is Grade II listed,

posing a huge challenge for Mark as he'll be held liable

if he causes more damage.

The main problem that we have now is that this large structure

that's still precariously sort of hanging.

If that goes, uncontrolled, it could then do some more significant

damage to the underside of the pier.

There were once 16 piers in the south east of England,

now only seven remain standing.

In Hastings, hundreds of locals have chipped in to help fund

the plan works in the hope that their pier can be saved.

While the town watches on, Mark is facing scrutiny much closer to home.

-That's incredible, isn't it? That's...

-Yeah.

-Look how many people are on there.

-I know.

-Crikey.

His family are Hastings born and bred

and his mum has a special connection with the pier.

-I don't know if we've got one the other side. There's this.

-Look at this one.

-Yeah.

And that was the uniform we used to wear?

-Oh, you wore that every, every day. Every day.

-Really.

-Yeah.

Mark's late grandfather was the pier master in Hastings,

and was awarded an OBE for his contribution to the town.

And this one... Oh, this is lovely, this one is.

-This was one of Dad's favourites because he loved Vera Lynn.

-Right.

They're just casually walking up the pier, look.

Nobody's taking any notice of them.

-So that was actually on the pier?

-Yeah.

-Don't he look young there?

-Yes, he does.

That was in the ballroom on the pier.

Mark doing the job means a great deal to us

because of Dad, obviously, and the happy memories we had there as a family.

Look at that one there.

This is Princess Alice opening the embroidery.

Yeah, see, he really did a great deal for the town

and he was very well liked.

She was, we won't go any further than that.

With me mum and me grandfather,

having links with it throughout most of their life,

for me to be involved in it at my stage in life is...

I'm quite proud of that.

I'd like to think he's probably quite proud of me as well

for trying to bring back to life something that was such a big

part of his life for so many years really.

So that's why we're quite keen to make sure we don't damage it

any further than it already has been and that we do everything

we can do help to make it, sort of bring it back to life, really.

In an attempt to prevent damaging the pier any further,

Mark's going to try a unique unproven method of removing the damaged buildings.

The deck is too weak to take the weight of any demolition machinery.

So, he's chartered an industrial barge,

normally used by the oil industry off shore.

His crew will work from a basket suspended from a 50-metre crane

and try to take the old buildings down by hand.

Any false moves and they could end up destroying

parts of the Grade II listed pier, and be hit with a hefty repair bill.

The specialist barge has come all the way from Denmark,

a journey that's taken over two weeks.

Cracking, look at that.

I have to say mate, I wouldn't want to be tugging that in, would you?

No.

I think there's 250 tonnes, something like that.

He's controlling that with the two tugs

and that's a big old risk because if that nudges into those piles...

They're not going to put up with that too much. If they hit the pier it's gone.

Any duty free?

THEY LAUGH

Got any bacca?

I'm saying nothing.

I love it. Absolutely love it.

The barge's legs will be drilled into the seabed overnight.

Then it will be raised to the same level as the pier

and work can begin.

But there's a major flaw with Mark's unique demolition plan.

It can only go ahead if the weather is right.

The barge is great and the plan's brilliant.

The issue is because of the weather controls the barge.

If it's too windy, the barge can't work cos the crane can't work.

So again, it is a bit nerve-racking, one of those things,

because if it doesn't go ahead then we're going to be

snookered for some period of time.

With good weather needed throughout,

Mark's plot to save the pier is in the hands of the gods.

'BBC Radio Oxford News at one o'clock, I'm Amanda Della.

'Should the Didcot power station towers be

'demolished during the day?

'More than 700 people think so.

'They've signed an online petition calling to change the time

'of the demolition which has been set for before dawn...

The planned night-time demolition of Didcot's cooling towers

is causing controversy

as hundreds of residents are calling for it to be

rescheduled for the daytime, so they can come out to watch.

It's a day of work, shall I say, Neville.

It's not a public event, shall I say?

It's not a public event.

For project director Kieran the prospect of a huge crowd

can make it too dangerous to go ahead.

Cheers, bye-bye.

And whilst he's battling to keep crowd numbers low, he's got a new headache.

First Great Western. Ah right, OK.

Local businesses are trying to use the blow down as a publicity tool.

It gets worse.

So, it says here, "Those wishing to watch this great spectacle

"are welcome to use our car park, free of charge,

"and it's just a short walk for the safe viewing area."

But there is no safe viewing area,

we haven't put anything on for people.

This is over and above what has happened on any other blow down

that we've done in the last... since the year 2000.

I've got a kennel club actually ringing me up

worrying about the dogs on a night-time.

That's the last thing on my plate

if I have to try and find accommodation

for some pets and poodles.

God, yeah, I've never come across anything this intense.

I mean, normally, you...

A tower block or something, you expect this

and you've got to evacuate people, so that's what you do.

Yeah.

But, you know, this is a closed site, it's...

The build-up to this has, it's gone on for ages, hasn't it?

Yeah, and it's just spiralled.

But, luckily, you know,

our captain keeps this ship sailing in the right direction.

Without him we'd be lost.

He's like a hero to me.

I mean when I grow up... PHONE RINGS

..I want to be like Kieran. Excuse me.

I'll try and teach you everything I know, Chris, all right?

I'll try and teach you everything I know.

Obviously the kennel club don't want to know about the blow down.

Let's see whether Asda want to know about it.

With the explosive demolition looming,

cooling tower fever is only set to get worse in Didcot.

It's good news for one local resident.

I think they're actually really graceful structures.

I think the shape of the cooling towers especially is really lovely.

Compared to anything else I've done,

this has just gone bananas.

It's... I've sold so many of the prints.

I'm just... I'm flabbergasted.

It's good. Yeah, it's really good.

So when they bring the towers down, we're going to go and watch from...

There's a local park in the middle of the estate

and there's two mounds...

so I think quite a lot of people want to go up there.

I think it would be quite a good community feeling up there

in the middle of the night.

It'll be weird, but fun.

So, yeah, I'm looking forward to going out,

even though I don't think the people who are taking down the power station

really want it to be a big thing.

But it's impossible to stop everybody.

We're too...too determined.

The 10,000 tonne towers are being readied for blasting.

But as the pressure to reschedule the demolition to the daytime grows,

an 11th hour meeting has been called.

There are six people, actually, to evacuate

from the Trident Business Park.

They work 24/7 on there, 7 days a week.

We have got the facility to contact all of the tenants and...

Coleman and Company's directors have come to Didcot

to meet council officials and the police

to put their case for keeping the blasts at night.

We expect a lot of public to be out there.

We need to make sure that they are safe.

We understand you've done the risk assessment at the earlier time,

what we wanted to see was whether you'd done a risk assessment

for that later time.

The whole process that we go through as a demolition contractor,

is to deter people from coming

and we are not happy that putting it back,

trying to pin a time, to an exact time or putting it back,

is going to be in the interests of public safety.

And therefore we have to deter public from coming.

You will not stop everybody from coming.

I think we are quite clear there will be a public event,

so it needs to be owned and managed.

What I don't want to be doing is getting involved

with trying to coordinate 3,000 or 5,000 people standing in a field.

You know, we are trying to discourage this,

so we will actually issue a press release that says,

"Don't come. It is potentially dangerous to yourselves."

There are dust clouds, you get people with grit in their eyes.

There are all sorts of very, very practical, obvious reasons

why we discourage people from coming to these jobs,

which is effectively what it is.

It's agreed that the demolition will be held at night

in the hope that it will deter the crowds.

Watching large structures come tumbling down can be dangerous

as Kieran knows all too well.

I've actually had experiences of the dust cloud

from controlled explosives.

Within seconds you are engulfed by this cloud of dust.

It was like the fog from that old classic film.

The fog, it actually followed you around the corner,

it pelted with you with little fine particles of dust.

It's almost like a little sand blaster.

There is a chance that someone will be, or several people might be,

engulfed by it.

It really depends on the prevailing winds on the day.

We're going to have to deal with thousands of people turning up here,

and that's something that we are going to have deal with,

because if they get out of hand, if they get rowdy or whatever,

it will cause an issue.

It will cause a problem for us.

In Hastings, the barge is in position...

Nice and steady.

..and Mark can inspect the full extent of the fire damage

for the first time

before beginning work on removing the wrecked buildings

to try and save the pier.

I just want to give it a bit of a touch.

Nothing too... Nothing too strenuous.

He's had to employ the unorthodox technique

of working from a basket suspended from a crane...

Whole lot's moving though, isn't it?

..as the pier is so weak that it can't take the weight

of traditional demolition machinery.

Hold on the wire there, Dave.

Come round two metres to your right on the slip.

Mark's under extra pressure.

He needs to remove the buildings before the bad weather comes in

and stops all work,

but he's got to be careful that in his haste

he doesn't do any more damage to the Grade II listed pier

where his grandfather worked.

From here we can see the collapse of the...

The RSJ that was coming through there,

you see the collapse of it now

and why that's come down there, can't you, from here?

It's purely the fact that it's landed on that column

that's stopped it going.

You can see where it's tore the end of that truss off

through the centre there altogether.

It's a bit of spaghetti, isn't it?

It's the first time we've had the opportunity

to actually see exactly what's going on.

The whole collapse seems to be set on a couple of specific locations

and they do seem to look like they're taking quite a lot of load.

So just need to get the weight off it as much as we can

before we start cutting.

Yeah, it's a bit of a mess in there, though.

Before the major challenge of removing the heavy twisted steel,

the team has to remove the brickwork

to reduce the weight of the building.

Parts of the fire-damaged pier are too weak even to walk on.

As a precaution, Mark has hired a two-man kayak support crew

in case any of his workers fall into the water below.

-ON RADIO:

-'Down a little bit please, mate.'

With the barge costing £15,000 a day,

the demolition team will work shifts around the clock.

You got your radio on channel five?

Tonight is the first night shift.

Watch you're left of that basket there, Ken.

The weather at the moment's fairly good,

so we need to make sure we work with the good weather.

You can't get better weather than this -

no wind, no heavy seas, no nothing -

so we really want to make sure we make the most of it.

There's so much weight there. If that pulls that,

the whole lot will go and we'll have a huge hole,

and then we've got a massive problem

because it'll just do too much damage.

Bit of stress on that, wasn't it?

Cut the bit on the right.

-That's your left.

-Cut the bit on the left, get them out the way.

Just an hour into the night shift, a problem appears on the horizon.

THUNDER RUMBLES

Lightning coming in.

Continuous, no break in it at all.

Got to bring the basket in.

In you come.

Get her in there, boys. That's all we need, isn't it?

That just shows you all the lightning strikes here.

Bit dodgy when you're hanging off a metal hook.

I don't want to fry.

Lightning - one thing we cannot work with.

We've got 52 metres of stick on our crane,

stuck off shore with a man riding...

So we've just had to shut everything down, bring all the boys down.

Yeah, that's us now for what might be whole night, we don't know,

We just don't know.

So any road, where's my bowl of strawberries and my Ready Brek?

-Fridge.

-Fridge.

In Lancashire, Paul's team has gathered at his converted farmhouse

in the middle of the night.

This weekend, his crew of 15 men will be working against the clock

to take down a disused bridge.

Half past two on a Saturday morning.

Everyone else is just coming out of nightclubs, aren't they?

-Yeah.

-Look what we're doing.

-Taking a bridge down.

Do you reckon it's just one day or two days?

We're going to get the bridge down tonight by tea time.

That's the plan.

-Good plan.

-We can't fail.

The Highways Agency have shut the road

to allow the demolition to go ahead,

but if Paul's team doesn't complete the job on time

he'll be hit with a heavy fine.

Get off, you daft devil.

Very exciting, it's like Christmas Eve, isn't it,

when you were a kid?

Bit worried, though, as well. Always worried.

I suppose the nearest thing it would be to is like going on holiday.

You always forget something, don't you?

Come on, boys.

Jackie, Terry, we need that timber up here.

We need some boards.

Get it off from there, get it out. I want all this wagon emptying now.

Come on, Andrew, get it all off.

Military history buff Paul might have never been in the army,

but on site, there's no doubting who's commander-in-chief.

Get down here, we need some men down here. Come on.

'You've got to run it like a military campaign.

'You know, you've got your officers, you've got your sergeants,

'you've got your privates.

'So you've got your tank drivers which are your machines,

'it's very much like a military operation, isn't it?'

Hang on. Whoa!

What are you doing?

'When you looked at D-Day, Eisenhower,

'he'd been planning it for two years with all his generals.

'And once he's finished he were out of it, I won't be out of it.

'I'll be in the thick of it with the troops, yeah.'

Some more boards to do the other side yet, Robert.

Go and get yourself a labourer.

It's all right this demolition game,

but you need about £1 million worth of tackle

to get a day's work done.

50 grand, 35 grand, 20 grand before you get owt down.

Little tiger cub.

Tyger, tyger burning bright, in the forests of the night;

What a immortal hand or eye, could frame thy fearful symmetry?

I've always fancied painting one like a tiger,

so I painted this one for a bit of a show one time.

It's only a little digger this, 14 tonne.

Tommy, let's get a bucket on this digger now.

The bridge has to come down today

to give his crew any chance of clearing the debris

and reopening the road in time for the Monday morning rush hour.

The steel side panels will be removed by crane,

but before they can be lifted out,

the heavy concrete base that they're attached to has to be destroyed.

Paul hasn't had access to the bridge until now,

so he has no idea how strong the concrete is.

Not much ash here, straight down onto deck.

There's only a cup full of ash on top, we're on concrete.

Not much ash here, old lad.

Come on, then, let's get it off.

Let's just wish for a little luck here

because we don't know how reinforced it is.

Not too reinforced...

..we're on t'winning side then, aren't we?

Yeah, let's get these scissor lifts now, some burner gear set up,

blow a few bolts, we'll be wrecking it in two minutes.

It's not going to be easy.

I don't know what we're going to do here.

Concrete's a lot tougher than I thought.

These things are sent to try us, and it's trying me.

After the lightning storm in Hastings...

the demolition team can get back to work

taking down the burnt-out buildings to try and save the pier.

-Jack, can you hear me?

-'Yes, mate.'

If the building collapses and someone falls through the deck,

two safety kayaks are on hand to try and rescue them.

Jack, bearing in mind this side is a bit more awkward

to get that steel off, mate,

if you want to cut it out in bigger sections,

ie, triangles or whatever, to save someone the cutting and time.

'All right, mate.'

But once again, as soon as work starts...

it's called to a sudden halt.

Yo!

Stop.

It's down now, boys.

We've just got a swimmer coming quite at speed, actually.

Fair play to him, he is at it,

but he's coming in quite fast towards the pier.

I doubt if he'll go under it, we just want to let the kayaks know

just in case he does think he's going to swim straight underneath.

I kid you not he's going at it, isn't he?

He's hell of a swimmer.

-He is, in't it?

-Because he's absolutely banging on.

'He's not going to stop, we're going to guide him through.'

Yeah over, received. Incredible.

If any falling debris hits the swimmer,

Mark and his team will be liable.

He's going back now.

Ah, he's a bit slow going back.

MARK LAUGHS

All clear to resume works, over.

Just something else to stop us.

Slow us down.

Today, Mark faces the most critical section of the whole demolition -

bringing down the heavy steel frame

that once formed the roof of the ballroom

but now hangs precariously ten metres above the fragile pier.

If it twists and falls in the wrong direction,

it could crash through the deck causing serious structural damage

to the listed pier below.

Just bank us in, mate, we know what we're going to do, don't we?

Fire us up, there, mate.

As the steel has been so badly fire damaged,

it's very difficult to know how it will behave...

I just want him to touch the beam.

..so Mark is forced into making an educated guess.

At the moment where its up so high,

even I try to reach down and cut it,

there's a chance it might come down and hit the concrete beam.

OK, squeeze up on the wire please, Dave, squeeze up on the wire.

That's right where I want to be, Mark, lovely.

Going to heat this over a little bit.

Head back a bit, head back.

Is that starting to hinge?

I see that, mate. She's opening up a little bit, same as before.

OK.

See how it's opened up on the cut this side,

so it's starting to hinge.

Hanging on till the bitter end.

All good.

Yeah!

-It laid down quite nice, didn't it?

-Yeah, it did.

-It came down really nicely.

-Lovely.

Having successfully made the most crucial cut of the project,

Mark's team should now be able to crack on

with removing the rest of the steel.

It came down as we wanted, which was, again, very good.

So, yeah, that was quite a critical part of that job, yeah.

We've had the lightning yesterday, the swimmer this morning.

Yeah, I don't know what else it's going to throw at us.

No more thunder storms and we'll be all right.

We're not doing very well.

We're probably two-and-a-half, three hours behind.

It's a tough old bugger.

It's coming down though.

Come hell or high water, that bridge is coming down.

I think this is a bridge too far for him.

Bridge Over The River CRY.

Paul has been on site for more than 12 hours.

The concrete that he's trying to remove from the bridge

is stronger than he expected.

The steel is heavier too,

but that's a more welcome surprise as it can be sold on as scrap.

Tough, I just didn't think it would be as tough as that.

Anyway, they're 20mm girders,

so I might make a bit more on scrap, eh?

The bridge has to be down by the end of today.

To try and claw back some much needed time,

Paul's taking a gamble.

He's decided to try and lift the metal panels off

with some of the concrete still attached.

It means the crane will be lifting

much closer to its maximum capacity than planned.

If it can't handle the lift,

the road closure will have to be extended

while they remove more concrete.

What can you lift all in, 35?

It depends where we are.

Well, we've only got 31 tonnes' worth of chain.

We've got two sets of 15-and-a-half, gives us 31 tonnes.

Because you said 15 up to 30, so...

We've rigged it to t'specification of what you asked for.

All right, all right. The contract.

So this has put ten tonne on the lift.

So the lift's gone from 16 tonne to 25 tonne.

I've still got a margin of error of 4 tonne. I'd have liked more.

Four inches to go.

What's on it, Ash?

28 tonne, bang on.

So that way it's about 25.4.

That girder weighs four.

It can do its job.

Professional.

25.4.

I said it would be about 26 tonne, didn't I? Something like that.

27 tonne, so, yeah, I'm really happy, yeah.

There we go.

That's the bridge now.

Not much of a bridge now, is it, eh?

Not much of a bridge now, I'll tell you what it is now -

it's about 8 grand worth of scrap.

That's what it is now - scrap.

That's right.

Going nowhere that, go on, lad.

It's one panel down and one to go,

but with time ticking on, it's going to be tough to hit the deadline

and get it done today.

It's quarter to six, we're more than halfway through.

We're still about two hours behind,

I'm losing the light at eight o'clock,

but it's going to be tight.

There's less than 24 hours to go until Kieran's team

attempt to reduce the 100m-high cooling towers

to a pile of rubble.

If the explosive engineer has got his calculations right,

a series of blasts will bring the towers down

into a small target area

and won't leave any parts of them standing.

Got to go.

Chris, have you got the access cards?

Ahead of the big night,

project director Kieran is putting his team of more than 50 men

through their final paces.

One thing I asked you to sort out,

one thing I've asked you to sort out...

Come on, let's go, come on. Let's step it up a bit, come on.

Good job I'm here.

Sorting it all out for them.

I'm absolutely buzzing.

I love this, sort of, organisation and planning.

I want to make sure everyone knows what they need to do.

Blokes need to know what they have to do.

Come on, then, let's go.

You've already got access cards, yeah?

The nearby roads will all be closed overnight,

an exclusion zone of almost a kilometre is being put in place

to keep the public away from the danger zone.

So can you go back, like, ten yards?

The controversy over the proposed timing of the blow down

has fuelled local media interest,

so Kieran has launched a charm offensive

to explain why he doesn't want large crowds turning up to watch.

Have you done media studies?

No, no, I did English and then I did my post-grad in journalism...

Oh, right, educated as well.

Well, I guess that was always...

'Kieran, it's fair to say, has the gift of the gab,'

but don't say I said that.

Yeah, some say he's one with the ladies.

Personally I don't think that.

So do you want me looking at you or...?

-Yeah, looking at me.

-If you want to come round that way...

'He's definitely a good talker.'

I think people naturally warm to him and because they believe him as well.

I mean there has been a petition

with thousands of signatures on already,

how do you feel about that?

We can understand it.

We can understand that we're here destroying

what is an iconic landmark for South Oxford on here,

but we're trying to do it with some compassion

whilst maintaining and doing a project at the same time.

There have been concerns about the time this demolition is happening,

between three and five in the morning,

is there no way of being able to move that,

you know, what's the reason behind it?

We're not making this a public event,

we don't want to make it a public event.

We understand that there's going to be a public interest,

but we're trying to discourage people from coming here

because at the end of the day, it is a place of work.

Come on, guys, let's go.

See you later, guys. See yous tonight, yeah?

Stay out the pubs.

See you later.

See you later, Ashley, all right, take care.

Leave him alone.

See you later, yeah?

Well, that's all the troops gone. This is the last throes, now.

It's been a busy day today, hot weather.

Everyone's sweating like buckets

just to make sure they can get it done.

They want to get in, get the job done and get away,

so it's a little bit of banter as the lads go out.

We appreciate it, you appreciate the efforts that they go to and that,

so, yeah, they'll all be back.

They'll all go back to their hotels

and then back here at midnight, yeah.

For the last time.

All right, then.

-Finished.

-That's it. Done.

See you at midnight.

Paul had hoped to complete the bridge demolition in daylight,

but it's taken much longer than planned.

He's now been on site for more than 18 hours.

But with the second panel finally ready to be hoisted,

he can still get the job done today

if he gets it down on the first attempt.

Here we go, show time.

Saturday night!

Beats X Factor, doesn't it?

I've certainly not got stars in my eyes.

Hang on, hang on, hang on.

It's going that, it's going.

Lovely job.

Paul will send a team back to clear up the debris tomorrow,

and the road will be ready to be reopened on time.

For Paul, it's a job well done.

19 hours we've been on this site, 19 hours.

I'm four hours worse than I wanted to be,

but I'll tell you one thing...

that bridge has gone.

That bridge is no more.

What's everybody else doing?

Sat on couch watching X Factor.

Look what I've done. I've made that bridge disappear.

In Hastings, the remnants of the fire-damaged buildings

have been successfully removed

and the barge has set sail once again.

Now all that's left is for the concrete floor to be removed,

so Mark has called in his robotic assistant.

They're quite funny little things, you know,

it's not the sort of thing you see on everyday sites.

But this on in particular is a tidy little one,

so, yeah, it is like a little Tonka toy on site.

With demolition almost done,

the new deck is being laid

and the pier where Mark's grandfather used to work

will have its new lease of life.

So this will be interesting for you, won't it?

But before he signs off, Mark's work will be inspected...

by his mum.

One second. They're really awkward to get in.

Put your hands in.

-Your poor mother.

-You'll be all right.

-I guess.

-Hat on.

-Is that OK?

-Yeah, it's good.

OK.

So, over this side, you can see what they've done over here.

They've already started to build all of this.

It just looks so different.

And this part was where the ballroom was,

and Dad's office was at the end of it.

You almost forget the, sort of, nastiness

of the demolition side of things

in regards to what was there.

-It's absolutely amazing what they've done already.

-Yeah?

-I mean...

-I mean, well, look at what we had.

Everything is new, everything is brand-new, isn't it?

Yeah.

You can just imagine with, you know, families coming down here,

cos, you know, if you can walk right to the end of the pier like this

-and look back on the town, it would be great for the families.

-It will.

Oh, well, it's just amazing.

We've got our pier back and, you know, say to Dad, "It's back"

cos he'd be so thrilled.

Whilst one well-loved structure has been handed a new start,

another is about to meet its end.

If all goes to plan, tonight, 170 kilos

of explosive will tear down Didcot A's most iconic structures -

the 100m-high cooling towers.

For Kieran, it's the final straight after months of planning.

You ready, James?

The precise time of the blow down hasn't been announced

as it will be dictated by the ever changing weather.

Undeterred, many residents have come out for the whole night

so they don't miss it.

So this is the first time they've had an explosive demolition

in Didcot or even Oxford, they've never seen anything like it.

People are out in their camper vans, they're sitting on the traffic...

Of the island of the traffic and, as I went round the corner,

the cars are just piling up, they're all over the place.

So, I mean, they've got an awfully long wait.

'Now, we were told 4:30 was going to be the demolition time,

'we've now been told it's running a little bit behind schedule,

'we don't know exactly what time.'

The button won't be pressed until conditions are exactly right.

Too much wind and the dust could disrupt the nearby roads

and railway line or even engulf the onlooking crowds.

We just walked up the side here and you couldn't see anybody but you

could just hear a sort of murmur of voices and then, as we came round

the corner, it's just like,

"Wow, there's so many people!" It's ridiculous.

WALKIE-TALKIE BEEPS

Yeah, they are actually outside the exclusion zone so they don't

cause us a problem but, obviously, we just need to be aware of them.

Received, thank you.

The site is now completely sealed off,

with sentries guarding the perimeter fence

but there are concerns that the crowd is growing bigger

and harder to control.

We've just had a report that there's youths or guys standing

on roofs of cars and the police has just gone down to move them on.

-OK.

-OK.

There's a guy threatening to come across the railway track as well.

To get home or to...?

Oh, no, to get closer to the station.

But he has to go across like, two fences.

Well, the police have gone to intercept him anyway.

Oh, there's a firework!

Yay! Excitement.

Yeah, the excitement is building now, especially now there's fireworks.

I was tired when we came on here but I'm not really tired now.

Yeah, I'm not tired.

-I'm too excited, I want to stay up.

-Yeah.

3, 2, 1!

SILENCE LAUGHTER

Not yet.

It's been six months in the planning

but the demolition can only go ahead if the police

and explosive experts are both completely satisfied that it's safe.

Even at this late hour, it could still be called off.

This is where all the decision-making happens.

We decide the fate of the three cooling towers.

They're in our hands together, lads, they're in our hands together, yes?

OK, guys, obviously we've had a few little skirmishes

by the sound of a few people getting a bit restless.

Crowd-wise, around the Didcot facility,

-we're looking at 1,000...

-Yeah, that's right.

..in about three groups and we've got officers deployed to those

and they're all fairly good-natured at the moment.

There are more people further afield,

so we estimate probably about 600 or 700.

But that's great because initial estimates were a lot more than that.

Well, I'm actually pleased that perhaps people have got

the message that we're trying to get out.

I propose that we do proceed with the demolition.

-Everybody happy with that?

-Yeah, yeah.

OK, we'll be looking at an 0500 blow down.

-Yeah.

-Cool? All right, thank you.

-ON WALKIE-TALKIE:

-Ten minutes till blow down now.

Sentries, can we make sure we're all extremely vigilant and let us know

straightaway if you see anything that's untoward in the zone? Over.

The wind is low enough to proceed

and the prospects of a duststorm are slight.

Nine minutes now to blow down.

In just a few tense minutes, Kieran will find out if the towers

will collapse as planned with 2,000 people watching.

Got nine minutes to go, they've just done the warning siren

on the radio, so I think everyone's just feeling a little bit tense.

A little bit anxious, a little bit, "Oh, what to expect."

I was worried we're not going to see anything cos we heard there was

going to be a 15-minute warning but we haven't heard anything yet.

ON WALKIE-TALKIE: OK, sentries, excellent visual. Now we're in the final minute prior to blow down.

Here we go, this is the exciting part.

One minute to go.

Exciting, Mark, my heart is pounding.

-Mine is too.

-My heart is pounding.

It should be from 20.

20,

19,

18,

17,

16,

15,

14,

13, 12, 11...

I'm not supposed to get this excited at work.

LAUGHTER

Get ready.

Firing now.

Oh, my God.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Go on...

go on!

Yeah!

Oh, my God, they're gone.

Well done, well done, guys.

ON RADIO: All sentries please maintain your positions.

-How exciting was that? Did you feel that in your chest?

-I did.

-It's gone good, it's gone excellent.

-Great, wasn't it?

-Bang!

-THEY LAUGH

-There is it.

-There she goes.

It's eerie, isn't it? It's so eerie.

The 36,000 tonnes of concrete that made up

the three cooling towers has fallen neatly into the target area

and the dust has quickly settled, leaving the crowds unscathed.

RADIO: Ready to let the boys go home now.

Come on, let's do another one.

We've got to start planning for the next one, mate.

It's been a long day, it's been a hard day.

It's been a very successful day.

I think now's the time that we go home,

see our wives and kids and go to bed.

Next time...

Work starts on one of the most

technically demanding demolitions ever...

We've never done one as high, as close to the railway,

this type of thing has never been done before.

..the threat of history repeating itself looms large...

A lot of the people that come to watch these blow downs come

because they want to see things go wrong.

..and the stage is set for one demo man to bring down the house.

That's the end of the theatre,

there's only one show in town now and that's mine.