The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Jonathon Naylor Editor Five seconds is all it took to wipe out eight decades of history. With a thundering boom that cut into a dark and quiet Sunday morning, potent explosives sent the North Main head frame plummeting to the ground. "It was a building that was part of Flin Flon's heritage, and our skyline will be forever changed," observed city councillor Tim Babcock. "Like many of Flin Flon's residents, it's been there my entire life. You take comfort in knowing that something is always there. It's like losing a piece of your identity." In a spectacular cloud of dust, the familiar red landmark tipped over like a tree, falling in the opposite direction of the adjacent HBMS parking lot. Just before blasts sliced through four legs of the roughly 450-tonne structure, a warning siren sounded. At around 5 a.m., as scheduled, the head frame came down. 'Iconic' "The North Main head frame has been an iconic symbol of HBMS and Flin Flon for 80 years," said Tom Goodman, senior vice president and chief operating officer of parent HudBay Minerals. "It marked one of Canada's truly significant ore bodies and the beginning of our company." Goodman called it "significant" that the historic head frame came down as the head frame at the company's Lalor mine near Snow Lake begins going up, "solidifying our position in northern Manitoba for years to come." Powerful lights illuminated the head frame against the pitch black winter sky. This not only allowed workers to see what they were doing, but also offered the public an exceptional view to the end of an era. Despite the early demolition time, a crowd gathered to witness the event. It wasn't long before a pair of videos of the destruction were posted on YouTube. The unusual hour was chosen because 5 a.m. is when one HBMS shift ends and another begins, so traffic around the site is never lower. Without a hitch Demolition lead Tristan Rakowski said everything went off without a hitch. "It was pretty much textbook," he said. "The building lifted about three or four degrees the way we wanted it to, to the south, and precisely how we predicted with the sequencing of the explosives." Rakowski applied a technique known as "rapid progressive failure." A direction explosive known as linear shape charge projected a hot jet of copper plasma to pierce through the steel legs. Stick powder then detonated to kick the beams out, allowing the structure to drop. A 250-metre radius around the site was be sealed off, though HBMS said there was no danger to residents or their property. Though the demolition was handled by Rakowski's Winnipeg-based company, HBMS chose one of its own, power and distribution supervisor Christian Huysamen, to detonate the blasts. A South African national, Huysamen, came to HBMS nearly three years ago through a provincial immigration program. Preparations for the demolition began in early October. This included partial dismantling of the structure and an extensive washing to minimize demolition-generated dust. A large transparent "dust fence" was also erected to help keep dust particles on site. Rakowski, who also brought down the South Main head frame in 2009, said North Main was "definitely more challenging" due to the proximity of other buildings. But crowd control was much easier at North Main, he said, since it was surrounded by HBMS property. First head frame Having stood several stories high, North Main was Flin Flon's first mining head frame. HBMS began sinking the North Main shaft, over which the head frame would be built, in 1929, completing it in 1937. The precise date construction on the head frame concluded is unclear, but a photo in the book Flin Flon shows the structure apparently complete in April of 1930. Following the open-pit mining days, the head frame hoisted ore and workers out of the community-launching Flin Flon Mine until roughly 1981. After that, the structure served only as a second egress Ð or exit Ð for miners at the South Main shaft. In 1998, a new South Main egress was developed, rendering North Main completely obsolete. The North Main conveyor, however, remained in service as recently as four or five years ago. With the head frame reduced to a heap of twisted metal, Rakowski and his crew expected to finish the clean-up as early as Monday night. All of the metal will be recycled.
