Legally doing the work does require much in the way of licensed behavior in the States. Where I used to work was responsible for the blasting permits for the 2nd most-populous FL county. That includes maintaining control over the supplies which were kept in a magazine that was inventoried weekly and under lock & key, naturally in a secure location that was heavily patrolled. Any blasting permits were issued by my division, and we were responsible for issuing the permits, supervising the placement of the charges, monitoring the blast, including placement of machines to monitor the force of the actual event, and subsequent clean-up.
For more on State of Florida requirements, please refer to
Florida Administrative Code, Chapter 69A-2:
https://www.flrules.org/gateway/ChapterHome.asp?Chapter=69A-2
I went on one demo of a bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway. The charges were placed around the pilings underwater, and while this was going on, thousands of cars, trucks, and pedestrians transited the bridge, blissfully unaware what was going on. The day of the blast, I was one of the monitors, and was on a boat on the water by the bridge. The clearance for the blast took awhile while the final connections were made and of course, this day, the bridge was shut-down. There were containment barriers above the charges to stop flying debris.
When the order to execute was given, a siren sounded, final approvals from the safety monitors around the work area were given, boat traffic was halted, and the sequential charges were activated. Not much sound as the charges were below the waterline, but you felt it in the boat. Then thousands of fish floated to the surface, and confirmation of the blasting packages all having been fired were made. After that it was clean-up time.
The video won't load for me. I tried multiple times. From the description, it sounds like things were not done to follow recognized practices of demolition management. I'd have to think that someone lost their job after something like this, and that the backhoe/front end loader operator was one lucky guy who was operating in a fashion he shouldn't have been.
In the fire service, they used to teach you that you needed to be a certain % away from an unstable wall in case it collapsed, and after people were killed because the % figure was tragically proven to be unreliable the figure was revised to be the same as the height of the wall. In many cases that is physically impossible, of course, so there are other methods used to maximize safety for firefighters, including each FF being responsible for passing through to the Safety Officer in the ICS (Incident Command System) signs of imminent structural failure. The Safety Officer can make the call to remove fireground scene members, he informs the Incident Commander of his decision, the order goes out over the radio from Incident Command HQ, and four blasts from the apparatus airhorns is sounded to alert all personnel to abandon the building immediately.
