Early on Sunday morning, the evacuation of two housing societies near the soon-to-be-demolished Supertech Twin Towers of Noida fast gathered momentum. The evacuation of around 5,000 residents of Emerald Court and ATS Village societies was scheduled to be completed by 9am. While the residents, their vehicles and pets had to be moved out by 7am, private security and other staff will also be removed from the two societies by 1pm.
Why are the Twin Towers being demolished?
The twin towers are being demolished in pursuance of a Supreme Court order of August 2021 that found their construction within the Emerald Court society premises in violation of norms.
How will the Twin Towers be demolished, and what will be its impact?
The nearly 100-metre-tall structures taller than the Qutub Minar will be safely pulled down using a demolition method known as the 'waterfall implosion' technique, Edifice Engineering officials said.
The towers Apex (32 storeys) and Ceyane (29 storeys) will come down in less than 15 seconds literally like a house of cards, while ensuring that no damage is caused to nearby buildings the closest two being just nine metres away.
Edifice partner Utkarsh Mehta told publications that they are "150 per cent" confident that the towers will come down safely and in the direction as envisaged by them, assuring residents of no damage to their homes except for chances of "cosmetic cracks" on outer paint and plasters of some structures.
On how many options they had for demolition of the twin towers, Mehta said there are basically three techniques to safely raze down any structure of such a scale diamond cutter, use of robots and implosion. "The technique is chosen on the basis of three parameters cost, time and safety," he said.
He said the 'diamond cutter' would have taken over two years of time to completely demolish the twin towers safely, and its cost would have been five times of the implosion method. "There we would have to slowly cut down every column, wall and beam from top to bottom using cranes," Mehta said.
What are the safety precautions being taken?
“Gail pipelines [in the nearby area] have been designed as per the Richter Scale 4 here. It is three meters under the ground. Still, we have placed plates above it. There won't be any problem with the Gail pipelines,” said Jigar Chheda of Edifice Engineering.
Around 5,000 residents of Emerald Court and adjoining ATS Village societies in Sector 93A have to vacate their premises by 7am on Sunday while also removing nearly 3,000 vehicles and taking away 150-200 pets, including cats and dogs, with them for the day. Several of them left on Saturday itself, with some going to relatives' or friends' places in Delhi NCR only while some driving out to Uttarakhand and Rajasthan on short vacations.
The closest buildings next to twin towers are Aster 2 and Aster 3 of Emerald Court society which are just nine metres away. The demolition would be done in a manner so as not to cause any structural damages to other buildings, the officials said.
While nearby Noida-Greater Noida Expressway will be closed from 2.15pm to 2.45pm, the city will remain no fly zone for drones. The air space in one nautical mile radius above the blast will also remain briefly unavailable for flights during demolition time, according to Noida Authority.
All work related to placement of explosives and connecting them is already complete. The only work remaining is interconnecting the twin towers and placing a 100-metre-long cable from the structures to the exploder, from where the button would be pressed on Sunday.