One Meridian Plaza to be taken down
Piece-by-piece demolition of the tower of the abandoned One Meridian Plaza in Philadelphia has recently begun. Three firefighters were killed in a fire that started on the 22nd floor of the high-rise in February 1991. It will cost $25 million to take the 800,000-square-foot steel, concrete, and glass building apart. The building`s owners will pay for the work, which is expected to take 22 months. The building`s owner is seeking a user for the first 19 floors, which suffered no fire damage. If a tenant is found, those floors will remain standing. However, it is not expected that a tenant will be found.
The Department of Licenses and Inspections (L&I) will oversee the demolition. The main hazard in the demolition, according to L&I Commissioner Frances Egan, is PCBs, a carcinogenic chemical released from electrical switches. The upper floors of the tower are contaminated by PCBs, dioxin, and furan; the later two chemicals are produced when PCBs are incinerated. The lower floors are said to have less severe contamination. In a lawsuit that arose from the fire, a structural engineer and former professor at the University of California described the Meridian fire as “the worst fire in a high-rise steel building anywhere. There is just no question. It is a unique, unusual, unprecedented fire.”
(Reference: “Meridian demolition to take 22 months,” Nathan Gorenstein, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 13, 1997, A14.)
