Ka-Boom!

Our church is located in the middle of downtown Dallas. And our buildings were over 60 years old. We literally have 1 new building. It's 5 years old. The rest... ancient.

Our sanctuary is old, historic, and beautiful. but also limited in space. and since it's a historic landmark, there is nothing we can do to make it larger.

And there are buildings surrounding our church. We are literally land-locked.

And it was time to make some improvements. Time to make a larger sanctuary so more people can come. Time to get rid of the asbestos filled buildings. Time to make a more inviting, open campus.

So, what options did we have? But to implode 6 buildings... and here is the aftermath...
I taught in 3 of the buildings. I spent 3 years of my life, day in, day out, in these buildings.
Ty went to 6th grade in these buildings. Ty played basketball in the gym for hours upon hours.

And this is what is left... This picture has Ty in it so you can grasp the scale of the wreckage.

That building on the other side of the debris- the one with 4 floors of 4 windows on top... that's where I live, I mean teach now. BUt I'm on the bottom floor on the back side.

The trees were covered in so much dust it looked like it had snowed!

The 6 buildings were separated from the historic sanctuary by a plaza about 40 feet wide. They built this temporary ply wood wall to protect the sanctuary- you can see in this picture that the debris came all the way up to the wall- good thing they put it up!

Classic.

They have 1 more building to take down. But it will be done by hand because it shares a wall with the sanctuary. So the only buildings that will be left are the new 5 year old building, my school building, and the sanctuary. After they finish tearing down the last building, they will remove all of the debris- and apparently begin building in January! They have been working CONSTANTLY all week! We took these pictures last Saturday and it is a noticeably smaller pile now. Impressive!

The implosion was shown live on television - all over the world! You can probably watch it on You Tube- just search for First Baptist Dallas implosion. If I didn't have 17 four year olds wiggling around behind me waking up from nap, I'd add a link. But i can't.