Post by vgp on Aug 8, 2008 9:22:40 GMT 12
SAS played Eden Park before destruction
By MICHAEL FIELD - Fairfax Media | Friday, 08 August 2008
Eden Park's Springbok tour era trapdoors have been exposed, but only after New Zealand's ultra-secret special forces got to practice on them the night before.
Demolition of the South Stand at the Auckland park began yesterday with Sports Minister Clayton Cosgrove pounding a ditch-digger into the terraces, for the benefit of the media.
He said the new $320 million stand, for the 2011 Rugby World Cup, would be an "outstanding project of benefit to not just Auckland, but the nation."
He also got to see once secret trapdoors in the stand designed to get the 1981 apartheid era Springboks out of the building quickly in the event of a bomb blast or attack.
It was obvious from the odd kind of cuts in the windows, surgical incisions in the doors and dozens of ammunition cartridges on the ground that something more recent had happened.
On Wednesday night, local workers said, the Special Air Service, the Special Tactics Group and the Armed Offenders Squad used the once hallowed stand for a secret hostage exercise.
One worker described the incisions on a couple of the heavy doors as "amazing. I don't know how they did it." Explosives of some kind were used, but the neighbours did not hear a thing.
"I'm one house away and I slept soundly," Eden Park Residents' Association spokesman Jose Fowler told Fairfax Media.
Bruce Hanvey, project manager for the demolition, said they had found escape doors built in the grandstand ahead of the infamous flour bomb test in 1981.
Most of them had been cemented over, but they were all designed to get the players, and the All Blacks, out of the building quickly in the event of some kind of incident.
Local builder Terry Henshaw put them in three days before the test and kept the secret until recently.
"We didn't need to be sworn to secrecy, it was just expected that we wouldn't talk to anyone who might be a protester," he said.
Salvageable items including the seats, lighting towers and signage are being stripped out of the old South Stand opening the way for Fletcher Construction to bring in heavy demolition machinery.
The old stand will be levelled within the next six weeks with up to 90 percent of the wood, steel and concrete recycled both on and off the site.
Eden Park Redevelopment Board chief executive Adam Feeley said as well as unearthing past history, the salvage of the Park had generated more than $13,000 in Trade Me memorabilia auctions, the proceeds of which will be given to local community groups.
"While we're focused on building a new stadium, it's been good to see that some of the history has been preserved in a way that benefits locals."
www.stuff.co.nz/4648251a1823.html
By MICHAEL FIELD - Fairfax Media | Friday, 08 August 2008
Eden Park's Springbok tour era trapdoors have been exposed, but only after New Zealand's ultra-secret special forces got to practice on them the night before.
Demolition of the South Stand at the Auckland park began yesterday with Sports Minister Clayton Cosgrove pounding a ditch-digger into the terraces, for the benefit of the media.
He said the new $320 million stand, for the 2011 Rugby World Cup, would be an "outstanding project of benefit to not just Auckland, but the nation."
He also got to see once secret trapdoors in the stand designed to get the 1981 apartheid era Springboks out of the building quickly in the event of a bomb blast or attack.
It was obvious from the odd kind of cuts in the windows, surgical incisions in the doors and dozens of ammunition cartridges on the ground that something more recent had happened.
On Wednesday night, local workers said, the Special Air Service, the Special Tactics Group and the Armed Offenders Squad used the once hallowed stand for a secret hostage exercise.
One worker described the incisions on a couple of the heavy doors as "amazing. I don't know how they did it." Explosives of some kind were used, but the neighbours did not hear a thing.
"I'm one house away and I slept soundly," Eden Park Residents' Association spokesman Jose Fowler told Fairfax Media.
Bruce Hanvey, project manager for the demolition, said they had found escape doors built in the grandstand ahead of the infamous flour bomb test in 1981.
Most of them had been cemented over, but they were all designed to get the players, and the All Blacks, out of the building quickly in the event of some kind of incident.
Local builder Terry Henshaw put them in three days before the test and kept the secret until recently.
"We didn't need to be sworn to secrecy, it was just expected that we wouldn't talk to anyone who might be a protester," he said.
Salvageable items including the seats, lighting towers and signage are being stripped out of the old South Stand opening the way for Fletcher Construction to bring in heavy demolition machinery.
The old stand will be levelled within the next six weeks with up to 90 percent of the wood, steel and concrete recycled both on and off the site.
Eden Park Redevelopment Board chief executive Adam Feeley said as well as unearthing past history, the salvage of the Park had generated more than $13,000 in Trade Me memorabilia auctions, the proceeds of which will be given to local community groups.
"While we're focused on building a new stadium, it's been good to see that some of the history has been preserved in a way that benefits locals."
www.stuff.co.nz/4648251a1823.html
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