Yesterday a spokesperson for Landry’s told Galveston County Daily News Reporter Michael A. Smith that the company had already investigated claims that pieces of the Flagship Hotel it’s dismantling on Galveston’s 25th St. pier were finding their way into the water and “determined [them] to be false.” But what reports had the company actually looked into? By Wednesday, a website run by Galveston real-estate agent Bill Hill was featuring 7 separate accounts from witnesses claiming to have seen demolition workers or machinery knocking pieces of the building into the Gulf. And then there’s the video above, one of 3 assembled and posted Monday night by Flagship pier surfer Jeff Seinsheiner from a much longer weekend filming session. “The quality is shaky from shivers & cheap camera with no image stabilizer,” Seinsheiner explains in a note on Hill’s website. But: “I knew this would become a he said/she said without solid proof, so this should stop the nonsense.” As long as you look at it closely:
Watch for the bobcat on the first floor at 0:40…at 0:48 I see midair debris and at 0:49 I see splash. At 1:25 I see debris falling, at 1:26 splash, at 1:27 debris mid air, at 1:28 splash with more mid air debris above it.
Seinsheiner comments on the soundtrack of a later clip, which includes multiple OMGs: “By the way, we are non-denominational, but I needed a higher power for strength, as you’ll hear in the audio.” His camerawork appears to have had some effect.
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A statement from Landry’s SVP Jeff Cantwell issued today says the hotel-parts tossing shown in the video “is contrary to what we were told upon our initial inquiry,” and that the company has now ordered its contractors to quit it:
As a result of these findings, we have made demand upon our contractors that any debris that fell into the Gulf be immediately cleaned up. We have made further demand that the demolition contractors implement all known precautionary measures to ensure that this does not happen again.
But has the appearance of the videos sparked any change in Landry’s or its contractor’s approach to knocking down the hotel? It sounds like it could be kinda tough to do any better than what the company said it was already doing. Here’s Landry’s statement from earlier in the week — when it had declared the dumping reports to be false:
It was concluded that the contractor was in compliance of the containment devices and demolition protocol. We have taken extra steps with our project team to install additional containment devices and have taken every precaution to contain the debris.
How do you improve on that?
- Video Links and Eyewitness Accounts [g-townsurf]
- Flagship debris videos hit the web [Galveston County Daily News]
- Some Unsettled at Flagship Hotel Demolition [MyFox Houston]
- Previously on Swamplot: Galveston’s Flagship Hotel Fades into the Sunset, Leaves a Few Big Chunks in the Gulf
Videos: panamaziggy
Way to go, Hermit-crab-shell-cam operator!
But seriously, there is no concern for debris control in this demo as far as I’ve seen.
The camera operator in the video seems to be one of those people who lives through histrionics, exaggerating every little nuance and making a big fuss out of something small. His commentary is amusing and aggravating at the same time. I don’t want to see them throwing large chunks of debris into the Gulf, but I understand that not all of it is going to be contained, seeing as how it’s built over the water and all. I wonder if he was just as sick when Hurricane Ike dropped debris in the water during its deconstruction job on Galveston island and Bolivar Peninsula?
The fact of the matter is that there is no reason why the demo contractor couldn’t have installed netting around the structure at the pier deck level. They are right that it wouldn’t normally be required as the purpose of the netting on land is to prevent debris landing on people so it is used to only catch stuff higher up. However given the impossibility of cleaning up even small amounts of debris under the pier it would seem to be common sense to position additional netting to catch deck level debris.
and I was personally much less upset when Ike blew one of my neighbors trees across my fence than I would have been if he had cut it down and it fell on my fence, but that’s just me.
While that may be true, I was commenting more on the hyperbolic nature of his reaction. A simple preventative measure could curtail much (though I still say not all) of the debris falling to the water below. However, you’d think they had just taken a bulldozer and backhoe and pushed the structure into the Gulf judging by his stupid commentary. Bring what needs to be brought to light where necessary, but please, spare me the situational aggrandizement. Make a case, prove it, then shut up.
Maybe when the whole thing is built, they’ll send a crew into the water to pick up anything that was dropped?