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NEW ORLEANS – New drone footage from the scene of the Hard Rock Hotel collapse shows the extent of the devastation nearly three weeks after the fatal collapse. One of the twin tower cranes that once stood over the construction site can be seen embedded in Rampart Street. Officials orchestrated a complicated implosion of the cranes using strategically placed explosives. That simultaneous implosion was supposed to have brought the crane towers, each of which weigh in at 145,000 pounds, directly down onto the remains of the building. Instead, one crane speared down into Rampart, causing extensive damage to the main thoroughfare.
The bodies of two of the three workers killed in the catastrophic October 12 collapse remain buried under tons of rubble. NOFD chief Tim McConnell said yesterday that he is overseeing the process of bringing in contractors to begin removing the remains from the building. “The recovery of the victims, we’ve made that a priority for them, so any plan they have has to include whether it’s even feasible to get the remains, and their plan has to address how they would go about doing that,” McConnell said. It will be a long time before the bodies are safely removed, McConnell said, and even longer before the rest of the building is taken down.