With a contract in hand from the developers, Mayor LaToya Cantrell can move forward demolition. She wants the compromised Hard Rock Hotel structure brought down as quickly as possible and says the use of explosives is possible.
It it the best idea? We talked with Structural Engineer Kerwin Julien about the best way to bring down the house.
"Implosion of the structure would probably not be a good approach." Julien says. "Because of the nature of the exisiting structures in the vicinity. A lot of them are and probably fragile condition. I expect that they would want to dismantle the structure piece by piece."
Julien says the ten story steel and concrete structure sits atop a podium-like parking garage and dismantling the building from there.
According to published reports New Orleans has spent six-million dollars so far on the Hard Rock Hotel collapse.
Reportedly Mayor Latoya Cantrell wants the structure brought down by the end of the year. But Consulting Engineer Kerwin Julien says there's a lot more involved. And the costs are going to go a lot higher.
"There are ancilary costs that are related to the demolition with the infrastructure that's around," Julien says. "And with every [piece of] demolition equipment that comes in, there may be some impact to subsurface utilities. So getting a handle on costs is going to be a difficult thing."
Julien says expect the cost of mitigating the disaster to go quite highers and the time line of removing the structure and clearing the site taking as much as eight months.