Mar 10, 2019 3 min read

WEIRTON, W.Va. – In seconds it was over, a half-century of steelmaking history erased from Weirton’s skyline by a couple dozen strategically-placed demolition charges in the belly of the old basic oxygen plant.

The blast shook windows throughout town, creating a huge cloud of black smoke as debris toppled to the ground. Initial reports were that the demolition went off without a hitch, Frontier Group COO Rob Zuchlewski said minutes after the explosion.

“Everything went according to plan, that’s the first real official comment,” Zuchlewski said, adding crews would be fanning out into nearby neighborhoods to look for ancillary damage throughout the morning. “But as far as the charges detonating, it was good.”

The BOP had been dubbed the “mill of the future” by former Chairman Thomas E. Millsop because it brought together three state-of-the-art technologies – basic oxygen steel production, vacuum degassing and continuous casting – for the first time in an automated, high-tonnage operation in the 1960s. Millsop, who earlier in his career had been president of Weirton Steel and Weirton’s first mayor, died weeks before the first heat rolled off the production line in November 1967.

It was part of the 1,100-acre parcel Frontier acquired in 2017 from ArcelorMittal, which no longer needed it for steelmaking.

“Thing is, Weirton’s so frozen in time because we’ve always had the mill here to support us,” Connell said.

“It’s creating the next way of life,” Zuchlewski chimed in.

Weirton resident Glen Cork, one of several dozen residents gathered at the north end of town to watch the mill come down, seemed wistful.

“I worked there for 40 years, I actually watched them build it,” he said. “I was in that part of the mill a couple times – I know how big it was, how mammoth it was.

Follansbee resident Chip Pellegrino was there, even though he only worked in the mill for four or five months.

“I was the last man hired by Weirton Steel, when it was ‘Weirton Steel,'” he emphasized. “Then ISG (International Steel Group) took over and laid a bunch of people off. They laid me off, then they wouldn’t hire me back.”

Zuchlewski said “outright demolition” isn’t necessarily Frontier’s goal, though in the case of the BOP it was unavoidable.

“A hundred years ago when the owners chose to build these things, they invested (what was) a lot of money at the time and put them in strategic locations,” he said. “We clean them up, then bring (the sites) back to productive reuse.”

Zuchlewski said Frontier’s been working with local leaders for about a year on a reuse plan, adding it’s “about four to six-weeks away from being finalized.”

DeeAnn Pulliam admits her daughter, Ari, balked at getting up so early and coming out in the cold to watch the plant come down, “but I told her this is a part of history (she) can be part of.”

“She can be part of it,” said Pulliam, Weirton’s city clerk. “I think that’s very important. Now her generation will get to watch new things come up, the rebirth of Weirton.”