Cape Town - It took less than a minute to bring an end to the Tulip Hotel, dubbed the worst hotel in the Cape Town.
On Sunday morning at around 8am Ross Demolition and Jet Demolition workers imploded the 12-storey building to make way for a new development.
It took 110kg of explosives positioned in four floors and also in holes in the concrete to bring down the building.
The detonation which took 1.5 seconds for the first floor and between 2-3 seconds for the other floors was watched by a large crowd of spectators.
The whole of Bree Street was closed off, where the main face remained.
A part of the building, which faced Buitegracht, had already been broken down prior to the implosion.
Over the years, the Tulip Hotel - one of the oldest hotels in the city - had become known as the worst hotel in the Cape Town.
Once the dust of the implosion settled the City of Cape Town conducted a mock search and rescue operation which went on till noon.
The operation was to test Urban and Search Rescue teams which were established in 2010 for the Fifa World Cup.
On Sunday morning City Disaster Risk Managements spokeswoman Charlotte Powell said the implosion provided a perfect scenario to test the reconnaissance and recovery skills of the various agencies involved.
“As part of the operations dummies will be used it to imitate injured bodies and some as corpse. They will have to be revived by the team of rescue workers in the dilapidated building,” Powell said.
Cape Argus