By Shamona McClary Salisbury Post KANNAPOLIS -- Some 3,200 pounds of explosives and a blanket of pink dust laid two giants to rest Friday morning on the grounds of former Pillowtex Plant 1. Greensboro-based D.H. Griffin Wrecking Co. , with the help of Oklahoma-based Dykon Explosive Demolition Corp., toppled the bleachery and remaining portion of the towel distribution center. A blast in November had already knocked down one half of the distribution center. The implosions, coupled with several months of more mundane demolition, are clearing the way for real estate mogul David Murdock's North Carolina Research Campus -- a state-of-the-art biotechnology hub. Murdock and his staff estimate that the project will create about 35,000 jobs in the region. Leveling the structures, which totaled about a million square feet, goes down as the third largest implosion in American history, according to David Griffin Jr., head of of the company. Following in their mother's footsteps, Will and Elizabeth Safrit, children of N.C. Research Campus overseer Lynne Scott Safrit and City Attorney Walter Safrit, pressed the buttons that triggered a series of orange flashes and gunshot sounds through the buildings. In November, their mother pushed the buttons. With some help, 12-year-old Will held down the charge button while his 13-year-old sister pushed the fire button at 7 a.m. to ignite the dynamite that flattened the massive buildings. Elizabeth Safrit said she won't soon forget the moment. "It will make a great memory for me," she said. "It's a great day for Kannapolis." Hundreds of spectators -- young and old-- chomped on breakfast biscuits from Hardee's and doughnuts. Some sipped coffee or orange juice while anxiously waiting inside the gates of the campus' site near the old train depot on North Main Street. Food was provided under a hospitality tent, along with protective masks and lighters that held a yellow attachment. It read, "Light the flame of hope for a brighter future for North Carolina." Cameras and breakfast in hand, people wandered around trying to find the best spot to view the action. Some elevated themselves on top of a high dirt heap while others lined a staircase of an industrial walkway. Most people stood on the rocky mud-trenched ground. "That's 40 years of my life going down today," City Councilman Richard Anderson said before the implosion. Anderson, 69, worked as an account manager on the top floor of the bleachery. That floor held the information systems, billing and shipping offices. Anderson's office was moved from a warehouse to the bleachery in 1966. He said he had "tears of sadness in one eye and joy in the other." Kannapolis resident Debra Adams said called the moment bittersweet, also. The 48-year-old worked in the towel distribution building for 20 years. "There's not much of that one building I haven't been around," she said. Her father, George Adams, 86, was more deeply rooted than her. As a member of the Cannon Mills carpenter force for 40 years, he helped build the two buildings that came tumbling down. He could not attend the implosion, but she said he would have felt sad. Despite the memories, Adams said it is time to move on. "I know what's going here is going to be better and will improve the quality of life," she said. "I'd rather see this done than see it empty and decaying." Sirens, accompanied by a three-minute warning, followed by a one-minute warning, cued everyone to stop, look and listen. Griffin began the countdown. "10, 9, 8 ...... 1." In a matter of seconds, from right to left, blasts rippled through the buildings. It fell like a house of playing cards hit by a strong gust of wind. Claps and cheers rang from the crowd. The Rev. Dave Cash of Midway United Methodist Church stuck around after the blast. He took snapshots of the hazy site while talking with Norris Dearmon, a Kannapolis historian, and Kannapolis Library Branch Manager Terry Prather. Cash said Friday was a big to-do for his congregation, which is comprised of several former Pillowtex employees. "It's like burying a part of their family," he said. Cash took notes for his church newsletter as 83-year-old Dearmon condensed 100 years of history into a few minutes. "It really peaked in the '80s," Dearmon explained. "At that point, it started going down." Dearmon, who worked for 43 years as a computer programmer, supervisor and analyst at the plant, said it once employed 18,000 people. The last employment total before the plant closed in 2003 was about 5,000. As the dust cleared Friday, a ventilation pipe, which wasn't attached to either building, stood by itself in debris. It soon met its fate, though. With a workman's tap, it collapsed to the ground. The sheet distribution center and checkerboard water tower still stood in the distance. White structural columns were embedded in the rubble and stood up like tree trunks without their tops in every direction. For two months, Griffin said, 50 people prepared for the big bang, drilling thousands of holes in the foundation, disconnecting power and water lines and test blasting. But without the city of Kannapolis, he said things would not have been as easy. Griffin told Kannapolis Police Capt. Woody Chavis this was one of the largest perimeters he's had to cordon off. Five minutes before 6 a.m., Kannapolis blue-and-white squad cars, fire trucks and sign barriers blocked off the entire downtown section. "There were so many side streets. It took a fair amount of people to man the area," Chavis said. He said they used about 30 officers and 15 firefighters. Parks and Recreation Department staff assisted in blocking off Village Park. Aside from the viewing area near the old depot, Chavis said spectators stood at the park and on West D Street behind the old post office. Streets didn't open up again until 8 a.m. That's when the cleaning and packing up began. D.H. Griffin workers rolled up white tarps attached to a string of tractor-trailer beds. The trailers lined Oak Avenue and curved around to West A Street in front of K-Town Furniture. The wrecking company used the trailers as a safety precaution to protect the businesses directly in the area of the blast. A wise precaution in the end, Chavis said, because some bricks bounced off the trailers, landing in the road. Soon after the convoy left, city workers hosed down the dusty roads, and it was as if nothing happened an hour before. People went to work, and demolition and construction continued on the site. With the water tower and smokestacks scheduled for implosion this summer, a couple of buildings to wreck and the construction of the Core Lab under way, Lynne Scott Safrit said demolition is ahead of schedule. "Some things are actually coming out of the ground now," she said. "It's really starting to look like a construction site instead a demolition site." Contact Shamona McClary at 704-707-4257 or smcclary@salisburypost.com.
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