The disused Cantabria Residence building is a mountain of metal, cement… and asbestos. The 4,000 tons of this carcinogenic material that it contains are distributed across the roof, the walls of the facades and the slabs and pavements between floors of its main building, a 45-meter-high tower in front of the Marqués de Valdecilla University Hospital in Santander. Its removal and treatment will cost 10.17 million euros, most of the 17.5 million that the Government estimates it will cost to dismantle a complex of four buildings and whose site will be occupied by the future Health Technology Park.
As if the asbestos were not enough, the mass of the Residence contains radioactive material, especially with regard to the units that were Radiology, according to the summary of the dismantling plan that the Government of Cantabria has sent to the regional Parliament consulted by elDiario.es.
The demolition of the complex was going to begin after last summer, but it is being delayed, not so much because of the extraordinary complexity of the process – it is supposed to last 24 months and will have to be carried out by hand and with heavy machinery – but because the Cantabrian builders have The contract granted to the public company Tragsa to do so has been appealed, apart from the fact that there is still no municipal license for the demolition, which the Cantabrian Health Service requested in October.
Virtually the entire political opposition in the Parliament of Cantabria has protested to the Government chaired by María José Sáenz de Buruaga (PP) for the scant information provided by the Ministry of Health headed by César Pascual (PP). It has been justified by the volume of the documentation, inviting anyone who wants to consult it to go to its offices, sending only a 13-page report as a summary.
The contract is paralyzed by the Administrative Court of Contractual Resources (TARC), since the Association of Builders and Developers of Cantabria (ACP) appealed it, alleging that it goes against the principles of transparency and free competition in public procurement. However, the regional Executive considers that Tragsa, specialized in work with a high environmental component, is the ideal company to do it.
40,000 square meters
But what do the walls of the complex, which stands right in front of the Valdecilla Hospital, hide? The demolition work report states that there is an area of 40,000 square meters in the abandoned main building that contains this carcinogenic material, to which is added the presence of radioactive material, among other solid compounds and toxic liquids.
The Cantabria Residence was built in 1969 and was a health complex composed of a main building 45 meters high on the base of a central building, another building to the south for the IDIVAL (Valdecilla Research Institute), the Provincial Directorate of the Service Cantabro de Salud to the west and an auxiliary maintenance building to the east. All of them are disused and closed, except for the Idival.
After several renovations over the years, a Facade Pathology Report was carried out in 2017, after which rehabilitating the complex was ruled out and demolition is now opted, which given the configuration of the buildings, especially the tower, will require machinery very specialized heavy work and above all work by hand given the large presence of contaminating material.
The Tower Building consists of 13 floors with similar characteristics, reaching a height above ground of 46 meters high from the ground floor. It has a metal structure on which floors and floors were installed, all contaminated, as well as the walls of the façade, which are combined with large windows and blind areas of the curtain walls that are made with chrysotile, a variety of asbestos.
The buildings were generally built with roofs based on corrugated fiber cement plates (material containing asbestos) which, over the course of time, have been gradually partially covered by metal elements based on profiled sheet metal.
Regarding the false ceilings inside the main building, the report consulted by elDiario.es estimates that they may also have asbestos; the formwork of the floor has already been drilled to hold various installations. The floors are also contaminated, both ceramic and terrazzo or synthetic. Even vertical downspouts are suspected of containing asbestos.
The conclusions of the report not only speak of asbestos, but also of the existence of radioactive material: “The treatment and management of waste will be a fundamental part of the works, highlighting the presence of a large amount of fiber cement, together with the presence of various types of hazardous waste typical of healthcare use (such as equipment with dangerous substances and elements with radioactive materials such as smoke detectors or lightning rods, or exposed to radiation in x-ray areas, such as coatings with lead sheets).”
It is estimated that there is asbestos in 6,500 square meters of roofs, 40,000 square meters of pavements and formwork plates and 2,500 square meters of façade. The amount of material affected by asbestos could exceed 4,000 tons, and the amount of inert demolition waste will reach approximately more than 36,000 tons.
Demolition procedure
To dismantle the buildings, the complex will first be isolated from the rest of the city, diverting or disabling all connections with urban networks, mainly those corresponding to the water supply, sanitation, lighting and electricity. A scaffolding system must be implemented that will reach 50 meters in height in the tower building.
When the phase of manual dismantling of the interior of the different floors of the building complex is entered, the interior will be emptied. “All false ceilings, carpentry, glassware, doors, installations and equipment must be removed with the aim of clearing the area for the following phases. At this point, it will be key to detect elements that contain hazardous waste to proceed with their correct management,” the report says.
“In the third phase, activities related to the removal of elements composed of asbestos-containing materials will be undertaken. Currently, several elements have been detected, the most important being the lost formwork used in most of the floors. The removal of this element must be carried out by isolating the area of action, forming a bubble with a depressed atmosphere. From there, the different teams of duly equipped operators will proceed to manual chopping and lifting from the lower area, collecting the waste and transporting it for management,” explains the document on the demolition.
The synthetic pavements will be removed using an asbestos removal system, which will also be applied to the corrugated plate roofs, certain downspouts and the cladding of the curtain wall façade.
Once the above is completed and free of the asbestos problem, the fourth phase will be entered, corresponding to the demolition of the structural system of the buildings. The total volume to be demolished would reach more than 120,000 cubic meters, divided into 60,000 meters for the tower building, 30,000 for the central building, 10,000 for the services building and 20,000 for the management building.
The most important milestone will be the demolition of the tower building due to its great height. To do this, heavy machinery must be used with long-arm cranes and large tonnage, for which only specialized companies at the state level have the capacity and experience.
“As the fifth phase, the activities of loading, transportation and management of waste generated in the development process of the previous phases will be entered into. It is important at this point to control all the tonnage associated with the different materials in general, however, with special interest in those affected by asbestos, which could reach quantities greater than 4,000 tons, if the thickness is taken into account as affected. of support for the forged pavement”, concludes the brief unsigned report, of just a dozen pages, with which the regional Executive justifies the awarding of the work to Tragsa.
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