MEDELLIN, Colombia (AP) — A six-floor apartment building in Medellin that Pablo Escobar once called home was demolished Friday in an emotional ceremony that officials hope will dampen some of the fervor for the notorious drug lord's criminal life and instead showcase the city's rebirth.
Rogelio Gomez, the engineer in charge of the demolition, said that 180 detonators were used to topple the Monaco building and a 328-foot security zone was designated around the area.
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"1,500 people who live nearby were evacuated for security," Gomez said. The explosion took place at 11:53 local time and sent a cloud of dust 33 feet into the air.
Colombian President Ivan Duque, who was still a teenager when Escobar was killed in 1993 in a rooftop shootout with police, said the explosion "means that history is not going to be written in terms of the perpetrators but by recognizing the victims."
The white concrete building in Medellin's leafy Poblado neighborhood was gutted by a car bomb in 1988 and has remained an unoccupied eyesore ever since, drawing mostly foreign tourists who sign up every day for tours of Escobar's former hometown haunts. The Netflix "Narcos" series has also popularized such attractions.
But Mayor Federico Gutierrez had been pushing to raze the building and erect in its place a park honoring the thousands of victims, including four presidential candidates and some 500 police officers, killed by Escobar's army of assassins during the Medellin cartel's heyday in the 1980s and 1990s.
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"We are paying back a historical debt with our victims," Gutierrez said prior to the demolition.
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