comment
With cracks as sharp as the frozen Arctic air, a 1,375-ft-tall steel communications tower in Port Clarence, Alaska, was demolished on April 28, the first step in the decommissioning of the U.S. Coast Guard’s network of LORAN radio navigation facilities. The 400-ton, 45-segment triangular tower is the tallest structure to be felled by explosives, says Controlled Demolition Inc., Phoenix, Md., which performed the operation as a subcontractor to Jacobs Field Services North America. The remote installation, located 75 miles north of Nome, was one of 24 land-based LORAN stations in the U.S. that broadcast low-frequency signals to help ships and aircraft determine speed and position. The increasing precision and reliability of GPS technology has made the towers obsolete.
Sign in to Comment
To write a comment about this story, please sign in. If this is your first time commenting on this site, you will be required to fill out a brief registration form. Your public username will be the beginning of the email address that you enter into the form (everything before the @ symbol). Other than that, none of the information that you enter will be publically displayed.