Collapse !!

I had a previously planned Packard factory exploration. A friend of mine wanted to explore some tunnels she'd found underneath the factory. We'd also heard there might be a bomb shelter down there. Nothing like damp dark tunnels underneath a crumbling 100 year old factory to garner my interest.
Then I saw this aerial photo that a friend had taken one day ago What it showed was absolutely incredible. Horrifying, actually.

Sometimes in the last week, an entire section of a 7 story concrete building had collapsed. Nobody in the local urbex scene was aware of it apparently, and the response to this aerial photo was "Holy Shit", since almost everybody has walked around up here at some time. Lots of folks have spent hour after hour up here placing televisions. Lots of friends have spent hours up there taking extensive photos.
The collapse reminded me of the side of the Oklahoma City Federal building after it was bombed. Just a giant chunk scooped out.
My first thought was " cool, I'm already going tomorrow, can't wait to see the collapse". Then I was bummed out because looking at that, there was no way I was going back up in that building and there was supposed to be sunshine. I had lots of photos in my head that I wanted to try and reproduce up in the Garden of the Gods. This collapse spoiled my plans


or so I thought.......


Don't forget to double click, then click to enlarge the pics!!

The approach was typical.Through the fields of rubble, left behind by scrappers.
There was a nice change though. A guy was stealing stuff using a forklift so some of the rubble has been cleared from the front. It made for an easier trip once we got near the building
The area of the collapse is on the right side of the building in the photo I know only one way to the area of collapse, which is through the inside towards the only remaining functional staircase
What is visible here is the part of the top floor which collapsed over a year ago. For some reason this didn't cause the remaining floors to pancake beneath it ( YET) The entry point for us is the center bottom of the building.

But I did not want to enter this building until I could see the area of damage from the outside. We climbed over lots of rubble towards the railroad tracks and headed down to the collapse.

Holy shit!

It's all gone. All the way to the bottom. Wow. It totally pancaked. I hope nobody was in there. It's a pretty popular building for exploration. I've taken lots of photos in here before, and you would never expect all of it to come down. All of it.

What about the staircase, shown on the left. How is that sucker staying up? It seemed to be bowing about mid way up, towards the area of collapse. The staircase was kind of crumbly last time. I wondered if the stairs were still in working order.

I guess given 100 years, and almost 60 years since it was abandoned, add water, snow, rain, wind, scrappers stealing infrastructure, and good Old gravity and I'm surprised this hasn't already happened. But it was still shocking to see this degree of damage!

and zooming in shows the sagging of the concrete.
Those metal reinforcements in the concrete are incredibly strong. Exposed to forces they were never designed to take, and they are bending but not breaking. I found myself rooting for them, especially as I was standing underneath all the rubble and any more falling stuff could come in my direction.


The three of us were content to shoot the area from below.

Obi Won Kenobi said, Who's the bigger fool. The Fool or the fool who follows him.

The 4th member of the group, who'd announced her arrival by whistling down to us from the 2nd floor says " OK, time to head on up"

and then I said, OK. Surely it can't decide to collapse more now, right? I said a Hail Mary as I began to climb over the pathway of rubble to get into the building. We double around to get towards the entry to the stairs. I stayed as far to the inside as I could...ya know. Just in case
Entering the stairs, I looked up. Swallowed hard, and headed up. I think I was the first one in the line at first. I can't remember.



I gingerly exited the stairs on somewhere on the 4th floor. When I got to the door for 3, I opened it up to see if the murals I'd shot in the reflection the month before were there. They were. The water was mostly gone this time. I guess whatever was there , not had a giant hole to drain it.
Here's a nice thought. This lovely shot was taken by me just 1 month ago......in the area that would have been pancaked by 4 floors of factory

The murals are still there, but the area where I was standing taking that photo is gone......

Out on 4. OK, as long as I'm standing there, I'm gonna get my photo.

The destruction was incredible, but really I just wanted to shoot this floor and then head down. It occurs to me now that the extra weight of the water this past week ( we had 2 days of rain) probably pushed the structure to the limit. Last month when I was in the building, it was raining for two days before we explored the building. Those reflections were because there was a few inches of water. Those few inches over all that space certainly add lots of weight.I'm glad it didn't collapse that day.

"Onward and upward" I heard the voice....

Shit.


Back to the stairs we went and up we went. We noticed that there were 6 coffins just sitting alone, on the grass at the cemetery. Just sitting there. I remarked, let's hope they aren't for us.

The views got better and the uneasy feeling got stronger. I think we were all pretty scared but nobody admitted it. Peer pressure is such a strange thing. I'm pretty sure none of us would have gone up alone , but given the chance to opt out and look afraid, we opted to explore. So what takes more guts, to explore an unstable building, or to say No. Peer pressure is a pretty powerful thing, one way or the other, because all of us headed up the stairs!


Almost to the top. I call this shot "stadium effect" This is the effect hurricane hunters refer to when inside the eye of a hurricane. This image reminded me of that. I certainly felt like I was in the eye. Danger all around.

Shooting through bars. Kind of like a view from Jail. I thought of Disgraced mayor and thug Kwame Kilpatrick doing hard time, looking at the city from which he stole millions.



The final push. The last concrete staircase looked a bit under the weather, but that's exactly how I remembered it, so I proceeded quickly to the roof. The less time I spent in the stairs the more time I had for the wonderfully stable roof......
The View was both spectacular and chilling . I felt sad knowing that this would be the last time I would see this view, but at the same time I was glad that I overcame many fears and made it up here.


These are two photos taken 1 month apart. Both from the exact same vantage point. On the second photo it's pretty obvious the area that was destined to fail and collapse. It appears depressed from a half century of water damage. But let's be honest, who could look at that second photo and say the entire building would disappear underneath that area? I couldn't and at the time paid this area no attention



Then there was this view I took last month.
Pretty much everything seen under here is collapsed. The ceiling does look pretty eroded and weak

The views that day were really nice. It was sunshine. Very little wind ..
My friend took the opportunity to walk the very thin isthmus of pavement that remained between the new and old roof collapse to perch herself and look straight down. No way I was following her over there. I'll just wait for her photo ( which was awesome by the way) I decided to photograph her since I knew nobody would believe how nuts this looked. That giant enormous slab, probably weighing several tons just hanging by a few metal rods, right beneath her. Incredible!!!
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The reason I pose this way, is because this expresses my emotions in living my dreams. Putting it all out there, and leaving nothing behind. When I take my last breath, I don't want to say, 'Wish I'd done that" It's my expression of freedom and being alive. I call this my kinesthetic pose as somebody called me a kinesthetic personality last year.I think this was said derisively, by somebody who thinks adventure is frivolous, but I took it as a huge compliment.I looked down at the people in the cemetery below us. Their days are done. I'll join them soon enough, but I'll not squander one day. Each day is a gift and I am grateful for it. So this explains this frequent pose I do.

My friend was still on her perch shooting her shot. I was pretty much ready to leave, but I figured I'd make the most of my time and take one of the shots I'd planned on doing.

Remembering where I was, I suddenly got religion. Alternative title for this photo is Tele-Evangelism

Body language is a cool thing. I noticed that although my one friend was still perched shooting, the rest of us had our tripods folded and our lens caps on our cameras or they were stored in the bags ready to go. She called out " can you guys move over out of my shot"...and we all , rather than head further away from the stairs, moved in unison towards the stairs!! Ha.
She quickly thereafter finished her shot and it was time to take one last look. Mine lasted about half a second. I didn't want to dash down the stairs and put undue strain on them, but I'm pretty sure I gracefully glided down that staircase about as fast as anybody ever has!

Part one of the exploration was done. I had a tremendous sense of satisfaction and relief. Mostly relief. No time for second-guessing the decision to head up there. It's done and I won't look back.

On the way heading towards the entry to the underground tunnels, we ran into this scrapper who was all too happy to relate the events of the collapse a few days earlier.
He said some punks were around there throwing rocks, and he thought they were chipping away at the concrete and that caused it. Of course that's impossible.

He said, out of the blue in the middle of the afternoon, there was just an incredible crash. Louder than anything he could have imagined. BANG. All at once it was down in a matter of a few seconds. That mu'fucka was down

He said he was pretty sure some people would come and want to go up there, and he shook his head and said that this would be a pretty damned crazy ass thing to do.

Yes, it was.

and on we went to explore the tunnels, some intersting stuff but that is a tale for another day