We got called out to a dangerous structure where a fire engine had crashed into a 3 storey building.
The building was sitting on the fire engine and we had to jack it up with Acro's and timber jacks so they could pull the fire engine out!
Real old school stuff jacking up a building with timber and wooden wedges!
It worked though!

I figured I would chime on this subject. My only problem is I am not so much of a demo guy as I am a scrap guy. The wierdest demo or removal job as I will call it that i have been on. I was asked to remove 13 or 14 stamping presses from an old plastech plant in Newton Falls, Ohio. That might not sound that hard but there were seven of those presses that were located in bay that had a cracked foundation. There was over a million gallons of water in the basement. We had them suck out and reclaim as much water as was needed to see the bottom base of the press. We also didn't have a gantry crane to remove them. Just cut and lift out pieces with a crane. There was also an inch to two inches of oil over the water so you couldnt see anything below the base bolts. Don't fall in the water was all I was told. We put three cranes on each base once we had cut them down to the water to remove them. Once we mad the final cuts it was pretty much just a guessing game to how much weight was under the water. Thank god I guessed right and it was a pretty easy removal. I was only 24 at the time and in charge of the job so it was on me and me only to make sure it was done and done right. Learning on the job is the best way to do it. I dont remember them teaching a college course on scrap stamping press removal.

Another strange job we did was at the port in Cleveland, Ohio right behind the Cleveland Browns stadium, Rock and roll hall of fame, and science center. They had two hammer bases that weighted in at 250,000 lbs a piece. They were seven feet tall and seven feet wide and sixteen or seveteen feet long. I was really young at that time and can't remember the exact dimensions but they were large and in charge. They were sunk into the ashpalt at least two inches to add to my problem of removing them. We had to cut them into approx. 50,000 lb pieces so they could be loaded out and put on a low boy. It took me about eight hours per cut to start out. I eventually got that down a few hours after trial and error. That was a pain in behind cutting through seven feet of steel is no short order. The torch was only five feet long so I had to make enough of a cut to get two feet of my arms through the cut to finish the bottom of the cut. I remember leaving on a Friday and it rained a few inches that weekend and coming in on monday morning and there being no moisture on them or anywhere around them. It heated them up and the ground up that much. I got a good laugh out of it at the time. I did enjoy all the specators though. I always wondered what they were thinking when they saw me blowing huge smoke and tons of sparks. I remember filling up a twenty yard lugger box with slag from it. There were spots of burnt paint on it from loading glowing hot slag into it. Those are the only two jobs I can really remember saying to myself why am I doing this scrap job. I guess its how I earned the name superman.

Probably an old freighter that had been sunk for 17 years. It was full of asbestos and oils and chemicals so it was a real delight. We even had to dredge the mud around it and carry to a disposal sight. We used a 30 ton guillotine to chop it into pieces and a 400 ton sheerleg to lift the pieces to shore for abatement and scrapping.