


Ron Lorch, however, lived next to plant during the last 30 years of its operation and said it never posed a problem. The smoke would come out, and there would be constant soot,” said George Frick of Circle Avenue, who has lived in his house since the early 1970s, about 20 years after the plant was built in 1950. Some neighbors of the plant living in a section of Elrama near the company property had mixed feelings about the plant and its demise more than a decade ago. “The thing is, you don’t want to get caught in that debris cloud,” Hromanik said as he left his post.

The airborne debris enveloped Route 837, pushing some onlookers away. Warned by a shout of “fire in the hole,” a series of explosive charges were set off along the base of the structure and a large section of it fell to ground.Ī giant gray cloud of dust ensued, and the wind slowly moved the mass several hundred yards toward the crowd watching the event. We were able to make power for less money” by burning coal, Hromanik said as he waited for demolition workers to bring down the structure, which contained the turbines that generated power for Duquesne Light’s customers.Īs some 200 people gathered in the Dollar General store parking lot across from the plant entrance and crowded against a guardrail off Route 837, the implosion went off at 9:30 a.m. “We fixed a lot of problems in the plant. coal-fired plant along Route 837 in Washington County imploded because he used to work there as an electrician before it was decommissioned in 2012. Hromanik of West Mifflin had a special reason for seeing the structure of the former Duquesne Light Co. The second implosion finished off the building, according to Tribune-Review news partner WPXI. Friday at the 28-acre site, state Department of Environmental Protection spokeswoman Lauren Camarada said. Still, not all of the building came down, and the demolition contractor held a second implosion at 6 p.m. Dave Hromanik did not want to miss the spectacle Friday morning when the hulking boiler unit at the former Elrama Power Plant went out with a bang.
