While no major untoward incident happened during the demolition of Noida twin towers on Sunday, a boundary wall of a neighbouring residential society and windowpanes of several houses in the vicinity were damaged.
Visuals of the damaged wall surfaced on the internet, showing a very large chunk of one of the two towers lying on Earth just across a narrow road from one of the residential towers of ATS Village — one of the two residential societies in the vicinity of demolished towers.
No damage was done to Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL) pipeline that goes through the now-demolished structures, according to officials. The pipelines had been covered with protective iron sheets as a precaution measure.
Tavleen Singh Aroor wondered if the explosives did not go off in the top floor as visuals shared by her and Shiv Aroor appeared to show some of the top floors of one of the demolished tower lying almost intact on the ground.
In a separate video shared on Instagram, Shiv said these few floors of the demolished tower landed barely 12-13 metres from one of the residential towers. In the video, it's seen that a residential tower is just across a narrow road from where the tower's remnants crashed, breaking the boundary wall.
The Central Building Research Institute (CBRI) also confirmed the damage to buildings.
"The boundary wall of ATS Village adjoining twin towers suffered damages of about 10 metres. Windowpanes of several nearby apartments in both Emerald Court and ATS Village also got cracked," CBRI Senior Principal Scientist D P Kanungo said.
"The GAIL pipeline is safe. Iron sheets measuring 5 by 5 metres were placed above the pipeline at two locations. Besides, several tyres were also placed on top of them to absorb debris shock," Kanungo said.
Utkarsh Mehta of Edifice, the company that carried out the demolition, said that the company has "hired a contractor who would start replacing the cracked windowpanes of all apartments in the two societies".
NDTV reported that the demolition took place under a Rs 100 crore insurance policy and damages to nearby buildings would be covered under it.
The Noida twin towers were demolished on Sunday afternoon around 2:30 pm. The two buildings were rigged with around 3,700 kg of explosives which brought down the two towers in nine seconds, producing a huge cloud of dust which enveloped the neighbourhood for some time. The demolition is estimated to produced 55-80,000 tonnes of debris which would take months to be cleared.
Photos of the mound of debris at the site of demolished towers have surfaced on the internet.
(With PTI inputs)
