On Kingdome's last day, anticipation was half the blast

Spectators shield their ears at the implosion of Seattle's Kingdome

March 26, 2000
Web posted at: 11:05 p.m. EST (0405 GMT)

In this story: A glorious Seattle spring morning Few savor the moment RELATED STORIES, SITES

By Correspondent Jack Hamann

SEATTLE (CNN) -- The alarm snapped on. My eyes stayed shut.

Sunday morning, not yet 6 a.m. Clearly, I was nuts. The over-hyped, overdue, over-the-top implosion of Seattle's Kingdome suddenly seemed less compelling than perhaps another hour or two of sound sleep.

But the cobwebs quickly cleared. In less than three hours, two tons of explosives would turn 130,000 tons of concrete into rubble. No Sunday morning dream -- or nightmare -- was likely to top that.

VIDEO Watch the implosion of the Seattle Kingdome. QuickTime Play Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K

I rolled out of my warm bed.

For days, the hype from my fellow members of the media had reached full frenzy. We figured that hundreds of thousands of our friends and neighbors would respond to the incessant call and sacrifice their Sunday slumber, descending on the few truly great viewpoints.

Hoping that an early morning start would ensure at least a peek-a-boo view, we had packed our rucksacks and loaded our bicycles on Saturday night. First thing Sunday, we'd be ready to go.

Our home is only five miles from the Kingdome. As the first sunbeams hit the bike path, our fingers froze in the 33-degree chill. It was a glorious Seattle spring morning, erasing any fears that rain or fog would obscure the Dome's collapse.

Three miles from ground zero, we passed the first spectators ... two men in lounge chairs, perched on a berm above Elliot Bay. Moments later we caught up with other cyclists headed our same way.

To the left were folks arriving by car, taxi, bus, skateboard and in-line skates. To our right were hundreds of sailboats, cabin cruisers, tugs, speedboats, kayaks, Jet Skis and freighters, all steaming toward positions on the bay. Overhead, the sky droned with seven helicopters and four planes pulling advertising banners.

The soon-to-be-departed Kingdome was a magnet, and we were all stray shards of iron.

We decided to stop at Pier 61, about a mile from the Dome, and as close to the blast as we could hope to be without being buried in debris. A new Internet company looking for publicity was in full gimmick mode, passing out eye-protecting goggles.

T-shirt sellers circled like seagulls. No one that I saw was hawking respirators.

We lined the railing at 8 a.m. With less than 30 minutes to go, we swapped horror stories of what might go wrong.

Wasn't a young spectator killed a few years back in Australia when a demolition company used too many explosives? Weren't we close enough to the Kingdome to be rocked by what might be an ear-splitting concussion?

And how about those rumors that the implosion might trigger an earthquake?

Why weren't we all back in bed?

With less than two minutes until blastoff, the crowd grew silent. Dozens of AM radios echoed through the morning, as terse conversations between demolition crews were broadcast around the city.

Gavin, are you clear? Clear. Jamie, are you clear? Clear. Doug, are you clear? Clear.

Here we go.. 10 ... 9 ... 8 ... 7 ... 6 ...

Then, silence. No 5, 4 or 3 ... just silence.

Every pair of eyes in the city was fixed on the world's largest concrete roof. Seventy-three million people had passed through the turnstiles of the Kingdome during its brief 24-year history.

On days like this one, when it seemed a shame to waste a day of sunshine on an indoor baseball game, the Dome was a spectacular joke. Yet, on nights when it was cold or wet outside, we had seen Ken Griffey Jr. blister pitchers and Randy Johnson frighten batters.

Our family had attended dozens of Mariners' games, including several of the most historic. The Kingdome may have been ugly, but it was all we had.

With two seconds left, no one was thinking about history. We all had come to watch it blow.

Each of the ribs circling the Dome's cap shot off a puff of smoke. Within seconds, the cap collapsed. The boom was loud enough to send seabirds scurrying, but not enough to hurt our ears.

The only large debris seemed to shoot straight up. There was no earthquake.

Eerily, the crowd around us stayed silent. What was left of our stadium was instantly swallowed by dust. Within moments, it was obvious that the cloud of concrete fragments was barreling straight into the heart of downtown, looking ever so much like the explosion of Mount Saint Helens, almost exactly 20 years earlier.

And then it happened.

Less than 60 seconds after the first detonation, people around us started to leave. On the water, hundreds -- then thousands -- of boats streamed away.

All the hype, all the anticipation, all the hassle to get here, yet few were patient enough to savor the moment or even wait until the dust cleared. It wasn't that they were afraid of the dust; it had slowed to a crawl.

It was more a collective feeling of "been there, seen that, time for a latte." The anticipation was half the blast.

Our family DID wait for the dust to settle, because we wanted to see what the Seattle skyline now looked like without the Kingdome. We negotiated our bicycles right up to the police lines at the perimeter.

A fine layer of concrete dust covered the streets, sidewalks and cars ... looking more like hard frost than soft snow. Families gathered spoonfuls of Dome dust for soon-to-be-forgotten souvenirs.

The Kingdome itself looked like a squashed gray bug. Everywhere was the slightly sweet aroma of wet concrete.

In two years, a new sports palace will stand where the Kingdome has now fallen. If all goes as promised, it will stand until at least the next century.

But if they decide to blow it up in another 24 years, I know just where I'll go to watch it.

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