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.
