SuperValu Demolition
Penticton, BC
6 Mar - 2 Apr 2006
Day 1 - Excavators start eating into the rear of SuperValu.  The fourth beam from the front shows evidence of the wood rot that led to the building being deemed unsound.
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Day 2 - Excavator pulls down the roof between the arched laminated wooden beams.
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Day 3 - Excavator takes out the last part of the back wall.  The now denuded wooden beams are still standing, supporting no weight except their own.
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Day 4 - Each half-beam is supported by an excavator while the lower ends are cut free.
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Day 5 - With the roof gone the morning sun now shines through the colourful facade.
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Day 6 - Beams have been separated and stacked on their sides.   The interface between pairs of beams is now exposed, showing holes for dowels and shear plates which held them together.
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Day 7 - There is no activity on Sunday.  Only two arches and the facade remain.
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Day 8 - Detail of the facade, backlit by the sun, the day before it is torn down.
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Day 9 - Excavator smashes the colourful facade.
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Day 10 - All that remains of the colourful facade are bits of shattered plastic.
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Day 11 - A beam is hoisted for loading onto a flatbed.
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Day 12 - Beams are stacked four high on a flatbed and trucked away.
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Day 13 - Rebar is cut with a torch while an excavator pulls up the concrete floor in the background.
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Day 14 - The floor has been ripped up exposing the basement at the rear of the lot.
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Day 15 - A freight elevator is deftly plucked from the loading dock area and tossed into the scrap heap.
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Day 16 - Excavator drops a big piece of concrete to smash the bigger piece below.
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Day 17 - Onlookers watch the ground surface being cleaned up.
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Day 18 - Concrete buttresses weighing up to 6 tons are loaded onto a flatbed.
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Day 19 - A forklift helps to lift the buttress.  Even so the flatbed only has a fraction of an inch to spare.
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Day 20 - The lot is nearly clear, and only one machine remains.  Backfilling of the basement has begun.
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Day 21 - Colours indicate different soils were used to fill the basement.
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Day 22 - A mini-sweeper sweeps up my shadow as it cleans the paved portion of the lot.
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Day 25 - After a few days of no activity, a strange two-tone mauve excavator appears on the site.
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Day 26 - The purple excavator shovels and grades at the same time.
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Day 28 - The job is done.  The site is clear, the basement is filled and the machines have been removed.  SuperValu has been obliterated except for one buttress (foreground) that is part of a retaining wall.
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