On the second day of charging of the twin towers on Sunday, three floors each in Apex and Ceyane were fitted fully with explosives.
Officials in Edifice Engineering, the company tasked with bringing down the two towers, said three additional floors in Ceyane had been partially fitted with explosives.
Mayur Mehta, the project manager at Edifice, said work was going ahead of its schedule.
Over the next two weeks, 250kg of explosives are slated to be brought from a magazine in Haryana’s Palwal and fitted into 9,400-odd holes drilled into columns in the two towers.
As of now, the deadline to demolish the towers is August 28, but the Supreme Court has given a week’s window for the preparations.
“We are trying to ensure the final blast takes place on August 28. The charging process has started from the top floors of both towers simultaneously and will go downwards alternatively. By Sunday, we covered the 30th, 28th and 26th floors of Apex and the 28th, 26th and 24th of Ceyane. Additionally, work was partially completed on the 18th, 20th and 22nd floors of Ceyane as well. We are ahead of our daily target. The unused explosives are being sent back as planned,” Mehta said.
The elevator system has been removed from all the floors where the explosives have been fitted. As of now, the lift is available till the 23rd floor of Apex and the team involved in the charging process uses an interconnected iron walkway to move from one tower to another.
There are 16 teams of three members each involved in fitting and connecting the explosives. Of these, six teams are headed by experts from Jet Demolition, the South African technical partner of Edifice.
Mehta explained that the charging process involved mainly five steps. The first is placing the explosives and shock tubes in the holes drilled into columns. There are 110 columns on each floor of Apex and 60 of those in Ceyane.
Subsequently, the holes will be plugged with stemming foam so that the gas generated at the time of ignition does not leak.
In the third step, the shock tubes drilled in the holes will be connected to each other. In the next step, called trunking, all the explosives on each floor will be connected. Finally, all interconnected shock tubes will be joined with an electric detonator through a wire.
Once the detonator is pressed, it will send a shock wave and ignite all the shock tubes, leading to the blast, Mehta explained.
