FTLComm - Tisdale - November 4, 1999
Just a few minutes before three on Wednesday afternoon the large back hoe came to life and began the traumatic destruction of the Tisdale Unit Composite School. The contractor explained that he would first take down the exterior walls bringing down the roof then would disassemble the roof and crush the building. He said there would be demand for the bricks and he would sell them for ten cents each. He intended to salvage the huge laminated beams from the gym and there were other large structural timbers under the gym that he was hoping to see reused. The bricks and salvaged material will be piled to one
side and the remainder of the building will be hauled to a borrow pit dug in Phillips Seeds field West of town where the wood and other flammable structural material will be burned. Then the concrete will be placed in the landfill and the ashes and remaining material will be left buried in the pit under six feet of surface material.
The whole process drew a few cars and their passengers to watch the building come down and at 5:50 only two hours after the work began the last wall of the building toppled and the building is history. During the initial stages of the destruction Ensign took some still and video pictures of the process and some of them are shown on this page. It was surprising to see how violent this process was and how the simple wood frame construction succumbed so easily to this assault. It was getting pretty dark when the end came but you will see at the bottom some of the last dark images as the building core area was finally knocked down. Because of the large number of pictures for some clips from the video of this event go to the "Second Page".