The transport company will blow up the depot in Hloubětín on Saturday

Prague - The Prague Public Transport Company (DPP) will have the tram depot building in Hloubětín blown up on Saturday morning. The building has a roof in a state of emergency, which is irreparable. DPP representatives informed ČTK. A total of 126 kilograms of explosives will be used, and the actual explosion will last for nine seconds. During the explosion, tram and car traffic on Kolbenova and Kbelska streets will be stopped for about 10 minutes. A new depot is set to be built between 2020 and 2022. The entire site will be rebuilt along with the aforementioned hall.

Explosives will be placed in 902 locations. Seven people participated in the preparation, and on Saturday, twenty-five people will carry out the explosion. The charges will be detonated remotely without the use of long cables. "Above us is the rail, underground is the metro, trams are everywhere, so stray currents are a daily issue. Hence, we chose a non-electric system; there are no wires at all, everything is based on micro-detonators," said master shooter Vladimír Pravda.

According to the master shooter, the structure of the depot does not differ significantly from other industrial buildings. "Here, I would say that there are just more so-called reinforced load-bearing elements, and we found out that they are more numerous than in the drawings," Pravda stated. The charges will be placed on load-bearing columns, and provisional structures will also be drilled. "Partially, there are wooden structures and partially reinforced concrete columns," Pravda said.

Before the actual explosion, the top layer of waterproofing and insulation was removed from the depot's structures. "There were no hazardous substances there," said Marek Martiška from Trepart.

Firefighters will be present at the site during the explosion to sprinkle water on the building due to the dust. Water bags will also be placed inside the hall to assist with the so-called wetting. Residents of the surrounding buildings will not be endangered by the explosion. Only the residential building of the DPP located in the area will be evacuated during the explosion. According to the master shooter, people in the vicinity will simply hear the explosion. They should not open windows due to the dust. "The pressure wave will be limited to the depot building and will only manifest in the surrounding area as an acoustic impulse," Pravda said.

In addition to the hall, DPP will demolish other buildings in the depot area by the end of this year. No explosives will be used during these demolition works.

Tram traffic between Poděbradská and Kolbenova streets will be halted during the explosion. Car traffic on Kolbenova and Kbelska streets will also be stopped for about ten minutes. The electrical power substation and transformer station located in the area will be disconnected. Gas will be shut off. Only the water supply, which firefighters will use for wetting, will remain in operation. Flights at Kbely airport will be suspended. A no-fly zone will also apply above the depot, and drones will not be allowed to fly there.

For safety reasons, the immediate vicinity of the depot will be closed, including sidewalks and roads, and people will not be able to access it. The hall is also in a depression, and there is a two-meter high concrete fence around the depot, behind which visibility is blocked. The police will be patrolling the site.

After the demolition, construction of the new depot will begin, which is expected to be completed in 2022 and is preliminarily estimated to cost 1.8 billion crowns. Until its completion, trams will be placed on newly constructed parking tracks at the central workshops of DPP in Hostivař. The operation of the Hloubětín depot was suspended last January.

DPP operates seven depots, namely Hloubětín, Kobylisy, Motol, Pankrác, Strašnice, Vokovice, and Žižkov. The company has a fleet of over 900 trams, part of which are modifications of the T3 type. In recent years, the company has purchased low-floor vehicles 15T Forcity. The annual operating costs for trams in Prague exceed three billion crowns.