Boom Goes The Dynamite!

Fuck I hate that phrase...

Anyway, welcome to the most extensive coverage Otakuphotog has EVER had on any one topic! Part of the reason for the delay. I needed to pull the TiVo'd newscasts to my computer, convert them from the naziesque TiVo formats to AVI so I could take captures, and I pretty much fell asleep soon as I got home yesterday and woke up at 6 this morning.

Anyway, the day went smooth as a day can go. I did have to attempt to chase down a couple of spot news stories early on, which is fine since I hate sitting around, but they all turned out to be whack. I did find a neat car into house to shoot. Couple of people at home with minor injuries, but nothing serious. Good video though!

Then, as if everyone in Las Vegas read my blog and decided to obey it, at 4:00 the scanners went silent. It might have had something to do with the fact that I turned them off, but I am more content in thinking it was because everyone did what I told them too, and stopped the violence.

At 5:00 I rolled up to the site of the Castaway's Hotel. I checked in and found that Ashanti and Jorge were already in the place I was told to go.

"Well, this is going well." I mumbled. I drove around the lot and found a Lowe's across the street where Peter from FOX, his reporter, Ann, and John from NBC were hanging out. I decided to join them because it really was the greatest view of the building.

I set up my live and remembered why I loved this job. It's really fucking cool to have some red tape screaming DANGER DANGER and tons of civilians beginning to line up behind it, the demolition police keeping them back - but allowing you to roam around in the DANGER zone (anyone else thinking Top Gun here?) just because you're media.

Most of what was done was sit and wait. Peter had to do half hourly live hits, but John and I only had to sit around and wait for the building to come down.

One of the main things we were worried about was dust. I've gotten dust inside my camera before and I can tell you the engineers don't like it! So I placed the crappy rain gear (which does about a good of a job protecting my camera in the rain as an umbrella made from toliet paper would) on my camera and then stole a Wal*Mart sack from John and used it as a crude frag shield.

I didn't really work, for the record, as the dust began to rain on us about 10 minutes AFTER the implosion. D'oh!

Fifteen minutes before the planned demolition time, the deconstruction people came over and told us that we couldn't be inside the DANGER zone. But seeing as how they allowed us to set up in there (in fact we were in there long before they even set up the DANGER tape), they decided that we could leave our camera's, but at T-10 minutes we were going to have to abandon them.

Not an issue for me.

So at T-10 we all got word and scurried outside the danger tape. I was listening to Ashanti talk about buildings and dust and actually felt bad for her because it was just 10 minutes of 'time filling'. But soon those ten minutes passed, and it was time for the implosion.

You can watch the implosion here.

What was interesting was that there were several large bangs, and nothing happened. I know I wasn't the only one who was like 'Oops!' But then - BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Much larger explosions and down came the building.

from my digital cam

from my television cam

I was a little upset that my digital camera wasn't snapping off pictures as fast as I wanted. If anyone is feeling generous and would like to send me $25 for the ’Buy Erin a New Digital Camera' fund, please feel free.

This was the first implosion I had ever seen in real life and I got to say, it was really fucking cool. Pictures and TV do not do a building collapsing in a heap of rubble and debris justice.

One of the strange things about this was the dust cloud.

It looked like it was coming right at us. But then it didn't, and it turned and headed towards some other bystanders. That's not to say we didn't get dusty. In fact I probably have a half inch of Las Vegas history still on my jacket.

I did get to demonstrate how dusty it did get where I was, on live TV no less. I felt a little stupid slapping my foot on the ground, causing dust to come up, but it was my idea. I guess I Wish hadn't gotten all my attention whoreness out of me yet. ((Soon I will have video of this! Yay! Once it fucking encodes right!))


I am seriously looking forward to the next casino they implode. Hopefully, the next one will be even bigger! WOOT!