On October 12, the building site of the Hard Rock Hotel on the corner of Rampart and Canal partially collapsed. It happened in the morning. I was walking Rudy, when TFP came to find us and told me to come with him to the Greenway to see. He had been running downtown. When he got to Canal Street, the street was blocked and he was directed down another street. He got directed down Rampart street, where he could see the it pretty close. It happened on a Saturday morning, which was a better scenario than it could have been. There were less workers on site, and there wasn't the weekday rush hour traffic. It was still bad. I mean, part of a huge building in a busy area collapsed. And three people died, and many were injured.
So, I don't have a great camera, and I never got really close to the building to get a great shot. But if you want that, you can google "hard rock collapse" and find many better photos and videos of it. Anyway, here are some chronological photos that I have taken of the structure.
So there were two cranes at the site that had to be taken down. There was a fear that they were going to topple over. So the solution was to detonate them. This was supposed to happen the week after the collapse. There was a parade, Krewe of Boo, that was supposed to roll through the French quarter that night. So, they rerouted the parade to avoid the Hard Rock collapse site. Then, they decided to cancel the parade altogether. Then the implosion was postponed until the next day, so the parade was back on. This next photo is a couple hours before the cranes were set to detonate.
Here are some photos the night after the implosion. I know it's not a close up, but it's so weird how you can't even tell anything is off if you don't really look closely.
I didn't know when it was scheduled for. If I had known, I probably would have walked down there to watch. But instead, I was in the house. I had just come back from running errands, and I had sat down on the couch and was watching TV for a few minutes. All of a sudden I heard and felt a loud boom, or a rumbling that felt like a jet plane was taking off in the next door neighbor's yard. It shook the house. And I knew right away exactly what it was. Our house is less than a mile away from the site. But there were even reports that people could hear it from Gentilly, which is at least four miles away from the site. Crazy.
I wish I had photos from right after the implosion. The crane on the Rampart side broke in pieces and the longer arm or whatever you call it, went straight down and impaled the street. So it was standing straight up, stuck in the street. The long arm of the other crane bent like an arm with an elbow, and it was resting on the Canal Street side of the building. According to all the officials that made statements or went on the news, it was a perfect execution. Because they meant for the one part to be hanging off the side, and they knew the other one was going to stab the street. In the next couple of days, they removed the debris from Rampart street, and they kind of moved the base of that crane. Perfect execution, my ass.
These are photos of the weird and sad destruction against the beautiful sky during sunset.
And these are from today, from the Canal Street side. Amazingly, the street was still open a block away from the site. I guess they felt pretty confidant that nothing is going to fall into the street.
It's only been a little over two weeks since the collapse, but it feels like it's been a long time, and that this tragedy of a building is going to be a part of the cityscape for longer than it should be. I hope that it implodes soon. And I also hope I am able to watch it. Sorry, but I really do.
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