For more than 100 years it has been enthroned above the roofs of Wiemelhausen, very close to the Bochum “south bypass” A448 and the cult event hall “Zeche Bochum”: The 60 meter high chimney of the former thermal power station on Wohlfahrtstrasse. Since this Saturday he disappeared forever – with a big bang.
The chimney was brought down in the morning with a total of twelve kilograms of explosives. The first blast was intended to drive away nearby animals, followed by the big bang, which, however, caused the tower to collapse with only a very small cloud of dust.
However, the company that carried out the blast had set up huge water tanks around the scene to collect the dust.
Plant supplied Opel and Ruhr University
The old power plant and its tower can look back on a long history: from 1905 the former Prinz-Regent colliery was supplied with energy from the plant, and from the 1950s it also supplied the Bochum district heating network. It also supplied district heating to the former Opel plant and the Ruhr University.
Opel closed down, the contracts with the Ruhr University expired – the combined heat and power plant became less important, so the operator RWE it finally shut down in 2018. A group of companies initially bought the entire site in order to develop it, but then gave up the plans and handed over the area to Bochum Economic Development. They now want to develop the 90,000 square meter property.
This requires free space and so the chimney had to come down.