Kingdome Implosion, 2000, by Bethany

From MemoryArchive

Who: Beth Sullins 
What: Implosion of the Kingdome 
Where: Seattle, Washington 
When: March 26th, 2000

Things blowing up are cool. Really cool. If I could see an explosion every day where no one got hurt, I would be the happiest person alive. Of course, one can’t see an implosion every day. There simply aren’t enough things to blow up. It’s one of the saddest facts of life. When my sister called me and told me that the Seattle Kingdome was set for demolition over my Spring Break, I was the proverbial kid in a candy store, a giant exploding candy store. This was well worth flying to Seattle for. Yes, I would get to see my sister, but more importantly at the time, I would get to hear loud noises and see smoke.

The days leading up to the explosion in Seattle were filled with all sorts of beautiful sentiment. REM’s song “End of the World as we Know It (and I Feel Fine)” had been remade into a song about the Kingdome. A feat in itself that was very impressive. People were being interviewed about seeing their first Seahawks game there when they were wee lads and taking their kids to their first game when those kids again were wee lads. I was a Denver Bronco fan, so none of this mattered. Denver had lost the following football season to the Seahawks 17-20, so I reveled, only slightly, in their childhood being destroyed.

March, 26th, the morning of the implosion the crowds gathered really early. My sister and I showed up to the Belltown/Waterfront area around 7:30 in the morning, and there were families out with picnic baskets eating breakfasts and talking about their memories of the Kingdome. One of the ladies nearby us was honest enough to admit that she didn’t care about “the football and the baseball” and just wanted to see Seattle’s skyline change forever. This was the same lady, who, as it was leading up to the implosion was looking at her watch, yelling how many seconds we had left. As she was counting down the number eight smoke began to shoot up from around the sides. You could notice it on top first, I was watching in awe as ripples of smoke filtered up the dome. Next, you could see the smoke getting higher and the buildings getting lower. It made a cracking sound like a log in a fire, and then a noise like a fire being dowsed with water, and then it didn’t exist. And it was awesome.