Redcar steel worker says demolition will be 'emotional'

The demolition of an industrial Teesside landmark will be an emotional day according to one former employee.

Dave Cocks started at Redcar steelworks in 1978 and worked in the blast furnace, which is a well-known sight on the Teesside skyline, for more than 30 years.

It was one of about 100 blast furnaces to be built along the River Tees since the late 1800s but is the last one standing.

It will be demolished on Wednesday.

Engineers are set to detonate 175kg of explosives at 40 separate locations to level the site.

"All that passion, heritage and hard work will disappear forever," Mr Cocks told BBC Radio Tees, adding: "The Redcar Blast Furnace is such an iconic and organic shape and for so many people it's been part of the landscape forever.

"It's as permanent as the Transporter Bridge, Roseberry Topping or the cliffs at Saltburn and to see that gap where it used to be will be very strange."

Mr Cocks, who went on to volunteer for the RNLI, was part of the team that mothballed the furnace in 2010 and then re-booted it two years later when new owners took over.

It was his job to empty the blast furnace of raw materials and drain the "salamander tap", so-called after the salamander lizard which was said to be one of the few things that would survive a forest fire.

He said he would always be proud to call himself "an iron maker on Teesside" and, as sad as he is at the loss of the furnace, he hoped new industries would "rise out of the ashes and we're going to have a very prosperous Teesside again".

Mr Cocks said he will be there taking photographs when it becomes the latest part of the former steelworks site to be cleared.

Although there had been attempts to try and save the structures as a possible attraction, Mr Cocks said it might not have been long before they started to decay and collapse.

"It will be a day of emotion," he said, adding: "My plan is to go and to watch it and capture it by taking photos.

"It's important I record it for me, it's closure.

"It was a terrible shock for the whole of Teesside when we lost the industry.

"To see [the blast furnace] disappear off the landscape will, I think, give quite a lot of people closure.

"Then we've got to look forward to the future and hope that the things do get delivered in the ways they've been promised."

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