Blast that rocked Yellowknife driven by planned blasting says the city

Key takeaways:

The blast sent a gigantic plume into the sky at about 5:40 p.m.
The blasting was being done by Break-Away Drilling and Blasting Ltd. and would have the explosion of a single quarry burst.

The City of Yellowknife said a blast that stunning buildings left a billowing plume and resulted in firefighters probing the scene was the outcome of planned blasting.

On Friday afternoon, Richard McIntosh, a representative for the City of Yellowknife, said in an email that the city had been told that blasting would be taking place at RTL’s quarry, located around the Solid Waste Facility, between 12 and 8 p.m.

The blasting was accomplished by Break-Away Drilling and Blasting Ltd. and would have the blast of a single quarry burst.

The email offered the first facts on the event provided by the City of Yellowknife and the RCMP since the explosion occurred at 5:40 p.m. on Thursday.

Fire trucks were spotted running north along Highway 4 toward the dump afterward.

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The City of Yellowknife said a blast that stunning buildings left a billowing plume and resulted in firefighters probing the scene was the outcome of planned blasting

McIntosh said firefighters were at the scene as the unit got calls from concerned citizens.

Dispatch sent a fire truck and water truck as a public safety effort, McIntosh said, to assure the place where the explosion happened was secured and safe. No injuries were reported.

Dennis Nelner, on the phone with his wife at the time, heard and felt the explosion.

“My first thought was thunder,” he stated. A few seconds after, he photoed some pictures of the plume. “Could hear emergency cars running to the scene; that’s when I became concerned,” he said.

It’s not unusual for scheduled blasting near Yellowknife, and such incidents have left citizens rubbing their heads in the past — like a blast that took out at a quarry about the Solid Waste Facility back in 2018. In 2009, seismologists with Natural Resources Canada even mistook a deliberate shot at the extinct Con Mine for a small earthquake.

Source – CBC News