Tumbling Landmark -- Smokestack Bites Dust

RUSTON, Pierce County - The 562-foot brick Asarco smelter smokestack came crashing down early yesterday afternoon with a series of crackles and a cloud of dust.

When the sun set hours later, Commencement Bay and the snow-streaked Olympic Mountains stood as reminders of what's truly here to stay. And, for the first clear day since 1917, there was no smokestack shadow to slice the twilight over the old smelter site.

The shattering explosion at 12:35 p.m. ended the symbol of the town's industrial roots, and a legacy of environmental pollution surpassed by few in the United States.

About 400 pounds of explosives placed at the base of the stack went off first, inaudible to dozens of former plant workers gathered a little more than a thousand feet from the stack.

They saw dust kicked up around the base as the stack swayed south. For a long moment it hung there, stopped in time as if reluctant to join the past.

But a flash and a volley of crackles from 85 strategically placed explosives followed, knocking out steel bands that held the stack together. With that, 2.5 million bricks fell almost straight down under their own weight.

The stack had been unused since the smelter closed eight years ago. Asarco was forced to destroy the monument because the stack had weakened with age and begun to bulge at the sides.

The explosions were set by demolition experts but, when the countdown reached zero, it was a 12-year-old boy eyes and cameras fixed upon.

Justin Corp, from Puyallup, pushed down on a harmless plunger, symbolically reducing the memories of generations before him into rubble.

He won the honor of performing in the ceremony by winning a raffle to raise money for Mary Bridge Children's Hospital in Tacoma.

The demolition's organizers had rehearsed him for the role and reporters had interviewed him for two days.

The boy said he felt no sadness at the monument's passing. "I'm not going to miss it," he said. "It polluted the air and stuff."

That it did. For generations, the stack billowed arsenic-laden smoke and ash into the air. Asarco closed the plant in 1985 because of mounting environmental regulations and a declining copper market.

The closing laid off 700 people. In some families, they were the last of generations of workers at the plant.

The plant and the stack were the core of this town. The smelter lured the ancestors of many of the people who live here. Even after it closed, the stack remained a fixture, a lightning rod for memories.

For that reason, a crowd estimated by police at 70,000 jammed streets in Ruston and Tacoma, and more dropped anchor in Commencement Bay to watch the stack go.

Among those was E.W. Mason, who remembered hearing the plant's "mournful whistles" from his bedroom window as a boy.

There was Larry Ostlund, who wore a paper-towel roller painted brown like the smelter stack on top of his head.

"My mother used to work for Asarco and I remember when my dad would take me to pick her up, he'd say, `we're going to see the stack.' "

There was 18-year-old Lisa Wittmier and 15-year-old Crystal Blackett, who both said they remembered worrying as little girls that the stack might fall down on their houses.

There was also their 18-year-old friend, Holly Simon, who was there "for my mother," because her grandfather had worked at the plant.

And there was Jeff Tallman, who is 86 and worked at the smelter from 1926 to 1947. Tallman was pragmatic as he and the crowds waited for almost three hours for the demolition.

The countdown was delayed because of a late train passing by tracks near the smelter, boys sneaking into a restricted zone, and a news helicopter flying too close to the stack.

"That stack's been up for a good many years and we're sad to see it go." Tallman said. "But it's served its purpose."

When the stack finally fell, the crowd whooped at the spectacular crash.

But Tallman stood silent, his eyes full of tears. And then he walked silently away from the celebration.