An obsolete analog radio tower could have continued to stand inactive or slowly crumble into dust, but as the Medicine Hat News reports, enterprising residents in the Canadian province of Alberta had other ideas. Rather than mourning the demise of the old warhorse tower, the people living near the CFB Suffield site chose to create a more celebratory atmosphere giving the tower one last moment of distinction.
Plans were made to bring in a demolition team to blow up the tower with a lottery, awarding prize money to the ticket holder who correctly guessed where the tower would fall. Participants spent $50 for a ticket. The money was then split fifty-fifty with half going to the Medicine Hat Women’s Shelter, and the other half going to the lucky winner.
Stephen Bjarnason, director of the nearby Suffield Research Centre noted that everyone would benefit from the removal of the defunct tower, saying, “We now have digital radio systems out here, so the tower is of no value to us, we can’t even climb it anymore.” He added that after clean up, the military base could erect a building, “where we [can] do field trials in various types of defense-based research. The plan is a structure that is big enough that we can actually do things inside of it, such as aerosol generation and those sorts of things. Out here we can control what is going on and we can keep very stringent control over the conditions.”
A crowd assembled a safe distance away to watch demolition proceedings. After quelling a fire that occurred following the blast, the crew determined that the site was safe and permitted interested onlookers to come closer and take photos of the fallen tower.
The News reported that the tower met expectations by falling like a tree, as predicted. A drone was employed to record the event, and to determine who scored the prize money.
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