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Med Center building destroyed in seconds
Naheeda Sayeeduddin, HOUSTON CHRONICLE Sunday, January 8, 2012

It took 17 seconds Sunday morning for the first skyscraper built outside of downtown Houston to turn into a pile of dust and rubble.

The demolition process of the 20-story structure at 1100 Holcombe began nearly two years ago when the last M.D. Anderson employees moved out of the building that opened in 1952 as the regional headquarters of Prudential Insurance Co.

After more than two decades it became office space for the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, which officially renamed it the Houston Main Building in 1980.

"In its glory days, it was an impressive building, but it was time for it to come down," said Sarah Watson, a spokeswoman for M.D. Anderson....

Demolition crews placed 1,250 copper-clad explosives in the columns, said Jim Santoro, project coordinator for Controlled Demolition. Crews reinforced certain structures in the east end of the building so that the structure would fall away from the adjacent MD Anderson's Mays Clinic.

...In its last hours -the implosion was scheduled for 7:52 a.m. - the building sat with its insides stripped and windows gutted. A blinking light on the roof was the only sign of life remaining in the 500,000-square-foot structure.

...Dense early morning fog delayed the implosion by more than three hours.

The light stopped blinking at 10:30 a.m. The first of the loud bangs were finally heard at 11:15 a.m....