The smokestack at the former Ohio Edison power plant goes down Friday afternoon after a second blast from demolition company B&B Wrecking out of Cleveland. Staff photo / Allie Vugrincic

WEATHERSFIELD — Breanna Bube’s grandfather called the smokestack at the former Ohio Edison power plant the “big cigarette.”

“He’d say, yeah, the big cigarette and the two cigars,” Bube, of Niles, explained, pointing to the comparatively smaller 300-foot smokestacks rising out of the 12-story building. Bube promised she would record the demolition of the larger 400-plus-foot stack for her grandfather, who couldn’t come out to watch it.

The stack was slated for demolition at 9 a.m. Friday, but the first blast — delivered via 85 one-pound sticks of dynamite, each in its own respective hole around the foundation — only caused the stack to lean.

“We wish it’d gone down the first time,” admitted Brian Baumann, president of Cleveland demolition company B&B Wrecking, in the interval between the first and second blasts. The first explosion did push the stack past a critical point, but the stack settled back down at an 11-degree angle.

Baumann said the next blast would be bigger.

When the event finally came around 4:40 p.m., a crowd of approximately 200 people had gathered on a hill at the dead end of Clearfield Avenue to watch the spectacle, while others watched from the bridge on Belmont Avenue and other spots around the township.

“The community coming to watch this — I think it’s great, because it’s history,” said Weathersfield fire Chief Tom Lambert. He recalled the beacon on the smokestack — which was disconnected prior to the blast — and the way people used to look to it in a storm or when they were coming back to the area after a long time away.

“When you saw the flashing light, you knew you were home.”

“It’s sad. It’s really sad,” said John Cooper of Florida, formerly of McDonald.

Cooper started working at the power plant in 1954, one year after it was built. He was 17 years old and had just come to the area from England.

“I started as a janitor and worked up to yard supervisor,” Cooper said of his 38-year career at the plant, which was first operated as Ohio Edison, then First Energy, then GenOn, and eventually NRG, according to Cooper.

Cooper retired in 1991 and moved to Florida, but happened to fly home to visit family Thursday — just in time to see the demolition.

He swapped stories with Dominic Smaldino of Austintown, who worked in operations at the plant at the very beginning of his career when it was GenOn and NRG. Smaldino was one of the last people out the door when the plant closed in the last decade.

“We had a plant closing party and signed the turbines,” Smaldino said.

Smaldino and Cooper agreed the plant was a great place to work.

Before the demolition, Lambert warned children in the crowd to cover their ears because “this was going to get loud.” A horn sounded the five-minute warning, then a second sounded at one minute.

An inital puff of dust blew out the bottom, then through the middle and out the top. Then came the monumentous boom, a sound that could be felt in one’s stomach.

With the top of the stack smoking again, it really looked like a big cigarette.

It took about 10 seconds for the stack to fall. A second boom rocked the air as the ground shook. Car horns honked and people cheered. Families sitting on their four-wheelers and dirt-bikes high-fived.

Weathersfield firefighters and Lane Life Trans had been on the scene since around 8 a.m., keeping safety precautions in place, especially as demolition crews worked around the leaning tower after the failed first blast.

Lambert said the demo crew did an outstanding job and made safety a priority, which is why the second blast came so late in the day.

The rest of the building is slated for demolition in October after the abestos is removed, according to Baumann and Lambert. That blast is expected to be larger than Friday’s — and will likey draw an even larger crowd of people who want to say goodbye to the local landmark.

avugrincic@tribtoday.com