Mark Loizeaux took a degree in business administration at the University of Tennessee, where he also studied architectural engineering. Apart from never having 鈥渄one anything constructive in our entire history鈥, the Loizeaux family set many world records, including imploding the largest single building (the J.L. Hudson department store in Detroit, 134 metres tall and 200,000 square metres). Other major blasts starred in movies such as Mars Attacks!, Lethal Weapon 3, Enemy of the State
We all love to watch buildings being demolished 鈥 does it still give you a thrill?
Not a thrill exactly. I would call it tremendously satisfying. But you can get that same satisfaction in having a good conversation with someone, it鈥檚 all about fruition. Everybody has to have something to do. And right now my brother and my family and I help people solve problems.
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How did you get into the job?
I started hiding in the back of my dad鈥檚 truck when I was about 6. Of course, he knew I was there, he just went along with the charade. I spent every waking moment with him when I wasn鈥檛 made to go to school. I probably wasn鈥檛 a very popular kid 鈥 I didn鈥檛 have much time for other children, I spent summers and vacations with my dad. And in fact, this is all I鈥檝e ever done, and it鈥檚 been a marvellous trip, I鈥檝e just loved it. I started working with him, seriously, really full-time at age 18, as did my brother Doug, my partner.
Back to the buildings, it is a very physical, visceral thing, isn鈥檛 it?
It鈥檚 the antithesis of a structured society鈥檚 mandate for its people 鈥 calm, controlled. Demolition, particularly implosion, is visually violent. It is like jumping out of an aeroplane. It is a rush. But not so much for those immediately involved because where the spectator is thrilled with the prospect of a disaster, fear of the unknown, in my mind the building is down, it鈥檚 finished before we鈥檝e done a job. I already know what is going to happen. I don鈥檛 get excited, I don鈥檛 jump up and down. We simply do a job.
So how do you make these doomed structures dance or walk?
The secret lies in preparation 鈥 which involves many things, including learning from the last blast. So we鈥檒l drop a building and people will go to the closest bar, or go have a party, but my brother and I are out there checking out the debris, seeing how far it went, what the fragmentation is like, did it meet our expectations, what might we do differently next time. If it is a new type of construction we will have 15 different cameras on it from every imaginable angle so we can study it, you know, image by image, to see if it corresponded to the demolition plan.
Planned to the last millisecond?
Completely planned. It has to be the right job in the first place, the right explosive, the right pattern of laying the charges, and sometimes, which sounds odd, the right repairs to bring it down as we want, so no one or no other structure is harmed. And by differentially controlling the velocity of failure in different parts of the structure, you can make it walk, you can make it spin, you can make it dance. We鈥檝e taken it and moved it, then dropped it or moved it, twisted it and moved it down further 鈥 and then stopped it and moved it again. We鈥檝e dropped structures 15 storeys, stopped them and then laid them sideways. We鈥檒l have structures start facing north and end up going to the north-west to avoid hitting something.
What sort of explosives do you use now?
There are two types of explosive 鈥 low order and high order. Low makes a slow heaving explosion, which pushes more than it shatters. We tend to look for a shattering explosive because we want to instantaneously remove the structural integrity of whatever we鈥檙e working on. So we would opt for nitroglycerin or NG-based dynamite. With a steel structure, we use something called a linear-shaped charge that concentrates the force of a high explosive called RDX. For example, it took 80 pounds of shaped charge to bring down two New York gas tanks built with 5 million pounds of steel.
You sound like you develop a sort of sixth sense for the job?
I think that鈥檚 possibly true. Obviously a lot of it is technical and based on evidence 鈥 like picking the job by looking at photographs, talking to people, going there and so on. But even then, there is a feeling and some of them are not right for a number of reasons you can鈥檛 always articulate 鈥 including customers who don鈥檛 seem right.
But what is that sense? Do all your family have it ?
Yes 鈥 we all do to some degree, it depends rather on how long you鈥檝e been doing the job. It鈥檚 like鈥ou go to a project site and somebody will say: 鈥淲here is Mark, or where is Doug?鈥 And Stacey laughs, she says: 鈥淭hey鈥檙e thinking.鈥 Thinking means we鈥檙e three blocks away on a roof or mountaintop somewhere looking down at a structure. And we鈥檒l spend all day looking at it from this side, looking at it from this side.
And in our minds we have these little multivideo screens, and we鈥檙e overlaying building layouts, demolition plans, sequences from other jobs we鈥檝e done that may have a similar elevator shaft, similar stairwell. In our minds we鈥檙e taking down that building with this delay path, this sequence, those floors. Then we move round 鈥 and we鈥檒l go round a building three or four times.
Do you do it together?
We do it separately. And then we see where everybody comes out. And it鈥檚 amazing how close my brother Doug and I usually are, we鈥檙e right there, and it鈥檚 amazing how we got there, we鈥檙e just thrilled. We鈥檝e been doing this a long time.
Few people would be able to do that kind of reckoning, they鈥檇 rely on computers鈥
This is where I truly struggle and it may have something to do with bad synapses or something, I don鈥檛 know what it is, but I really have a problem with it. I like computers. I think CAD [computer-aided design] has revolutionised construction and safety of structures worldwide for people in differing environments and circumstances. But CAD is used for putting things together where you specify the steel, the concrete, you assume construction methods within parameters of building codes. You assume it was put in using health and safety-approved methods and inspections. It does not allow for weathering, structural fatigue, modification, all the things that don鈥檛 show up on blueprints.
Is demolition too different a world?
Yes. You move into a different category of structure that is distressed 鈥 failed yet standing structures that have failed as functioning structures because they break building codes or have been burnt, struck by lightning or tragically these days bombed or hit by planes. And it frightens me that would-be advancers of the demolition arts think that they can take a program 鈥 which is entirely contingent on the data put into it 鈥 to analyse what is going to happen in a structural system which is beyond definition. It can be bracketed, it cannot be defined. When you design a building you can specify each and every variable, but that is not the case in structures that have endured a life. Look at us, we have wrinkles, our feet are a little flatter than they were when we were younger, our butts are a little wider. We change with time, but we鈥檙e better in many ways, we鈥檙e smarter. But does that mean that a physician who understands anatomy can explain us?
No indeed. You must also have to develop communication skills to deal with communities that used to be just wary but post 9/11 are plain terrified of anything that even looks like destruction鈥
Our feelings in this country, particularly the people immediately adjacent to Ground Zero, were severely traumatised by the 9/11 incident. Their nerves are right on the surface, and they have gone through waves and pendulum swings of faith, lack of faith, trust, no trust, belief, disbelief, about what is happening surrounding the project. It impacts them politically, it impacts them financially, it impacts where they live, where they work, and it takes a special hand, I think, or maybe a special empathy, to get with them, to move through the project alongside them rather than simply present it to them and ask them to swallow it.
Were you involved with the 9/11 clean-up?
Our crews worked with one of the main contractors after 9/11, to pull the shards of skin of the building from the south tower of the World Trade Center, out of this 15 storey gash in the side of the Deutsche Bank building. So we are very familiar with the building, with the damages sustained, with the environment. We can speak about the community situation. And given that we often will go to a place like Seattle, where we had to communicate with an international community living around there, in four or five languages before felling the Kingdome arena, we have rather interesting community outreach experience and capabilities. We鈥檙e patient. We understand people鈥檚 emotions and the gamut they can run.
And you鈥檝e got a new job in New York?
We鈥檙e part of a team in a 14-month project with the Deutsche Bank, including cleaning up the 9/11 dust. It鈥檚 not sexy, but standard and typical environmental remediation of the building. But naturally the project does have very unique community relations problems, which was one of the reasons we were involved.
When you watched 9/11, did you imagine that the towers would come down like that?
I did a report on the World Trade Center when I was at college and I knew exactly how it was built. I understood the concept. When I saw the first plane hit, my mind first went to: 鈥淥h my god, what鈥檚 happened? Is it a plane, a private plane?鈥 But I was watching along with most of the western world when the second plane hit. And everything changed. When I saw what hit, that it was an airliner, that it was loaded with jet fuel, I remembered the long clear span configuration from the central core to the outer skin of the World Trade Center from the report I did. And we had just taken down two 40-storey structures in New York.
I still had some cellphone numbers so when the second plane hit I said: 鈥淪tart calling all the cellphones, tell them that the building is going to come down.鈥 It was frenetic, nobody could get through even with speed dialling. And I just sat there, just sat there. Of course, building number 7, which is where the emergency management headquarters was, was on fire. I鈥檇 been in that office two months before. And I sat there watching, I picked up the phone and I called a couple of people on the National Research Council Committee involved in assessing the impact of explosives. They said: 鈥淲hat do you think this is, that they鈥檙e going to fail, they鈥檙e both going to fail?鈥 The expression around was they鈥檙e going to pancake down, almost vertically. And they did. It was the only way they could fail. It was inevitable. And it was horrific.
Could they have been built in such a way that they would have withstood the impact?
Bad question 鈥 they did withstand the impact. The correct question is could they have been built to withstand the consequences, the fire?
Well 鈥 could they?
I鈥檒l defer to the reports coming out, but I will say 鈥 is society willing to pay for it? It鈥檚 far cheaper to take the battle to terrorists than let them bring it to us.
But 9/11 has also sent your insurance up, hasn鈥檛 it?
It鈥檚 gone up about 2000 per cent since 9/11. Not only because of 9/11 but because insurance companies lost a great deal of money in the stock market collapse just preceding 9/11 with the collapse of dot.coms. Our job is to make sure we never have claims.
Are you mostly successful in that?
We have an enviable record. No one has been killed as a result of our explosives demolition operations 鈥 though we have had to stop people hiding in dangerous places to get good pictures 鈥 one even disguised himself as a bush.
But you鈥檝e been involved in a very wide range of projects that sound dangerous?
Yes, but we are very, very careful. We follow my dad鈥檚 motto of stay small, stay sharp, stay safe. We have to stop other people sometimes. In 1995 we were involved in demolishing the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that Timothy McVeigh bombed. And when I got to the site, there was a man trying to remove debris from the building to uncover bodies. I had to tell him to stop 鈥 if he had moved one more foot the whole building would have come down.
Yet you鈥檝e worked in many environments?
Oh yes. Right now we are working at a nuclear plant in Maine, and one in Massachusetts, and getting ready to start one in Connecticut. We鈥檙e working on nuclear facilities in Colorado Springs, and at Hanford in Washington State. And we鈥檙e involved in destroying weapons.
Weapons?
We鈥檝e been working with Bechtel Corporation on demolishing the Soviet Union鈥檚 former biological warfare production facility in Kazakhstan. Much of the weapons destruction work that we do does not involve explosives at all, it鈥檚 dismantling, removing items of proliferation concern and seeing that they are destroyed in accordance with treaties and conventions. We鈥檝e also been in Iraq. There were missiles there that could have held biological and chemical weapons 鈥 but they were not filled. We were defuelling missiles and providing back-up to the military group. We helped get rid of hundreds.
Didn鈥檛 your family coin the term implosion to describe one type of demolition you do?
That鈥檚 right, my mother Freddie did 鈥 borrowing it from physics 鈥 back in the 1960s. I would say right now, the implosion side of things is possibly 5 per cent of our gross revenues worldwide. Globally it鈥檚 around 1 per cent for all firms like ours. We do blow down a lot of things 鈥 as opposed to 鈥渃ollapse violently inward鈥 which is literally what implode means. But we also do a lot of conventional demolition which is far less sexy!
Do you have an heir apparent?
There鈥檚 no pressure 鈥 I鈥檓 only 56! Our kids 鈥 mine and Doug鈥檚 鈥 have always been encouraged to be their own people. There are children involved who do an excellent job and other great non-family employees as well.
Does your wife blast too?
Yes, Sherry handles explosives with me. She and Stacey have their own company, called CDI USA, it鈥檚 women-owned. And it鈥檚 just a very pleasant thing to see women involved in what has traditionally been a male dominated industry. I love it when people鈥檚 eyebrows go up.
The women in my life are very special. Stacey is probably one of the more accomplished blasters we have 鈥 she first flipped a switch on a blasting machine aged 3! She handles all of our initiation systems, she鈥檚 very intuitive about what we do. She is a very anal person in that regard 鈥 she really checks, cross-checks. I don鈥檛 check her work, my brother doesn鈥檛 check her work. We know that if she does it, it鈥檚 right.