Six and a half out of seven structures came toppling down Saturday morning as crews imploded four smokestacks and three cooling towers of the shuttered Homer City power plant in Indiana County.
The structures at the shuttered coal-fired plant fell to the ground in succession beginning at 7:30 a.m., but the base of one of the smokestacks remained standing at an angle.
“That was not unexpected,” said Robin Gorman, vice president for government relations and communications for Homer City Redevelopment LLC, which is planning to redevelop the Center Township site as a natural gas-powered generating station.
She said that stack “fell straight down on itself. The top part, because it’s so heavy, fell, but the rest of it didn’t go. “
Gorman couldn’t immediately say what the company’s plan is for completing the demolition of the stack.
“It’s an easy ignition to get it down,” she said. “It’s just when can they get in there to get the last piece.”
Jeff Himler and Joe Napsha are TribLive staff writers and can be reached at jhimler@triblive.com and jnapsha@triblive.com.