Subdued Booms at Ground Zero

Yesterday the bedrock blasting tests at Ground Zero went off without anyone really noticing. Tishman Construction is clearing the way for the Freedom Tower's foundation, and project manager Mel Raffini explained to NY1 that the blasting means there won't be "2,000 hours of drilling and chopping with a huge jackhammer. Versus this which takes several seconds. A total of fifty to sixty blasts, production blasts, which we expect to do in the next two months equates to about fifteen minutes total with a noise that many people didn't hear it." Well, just because there won't be drilling at Ground Zero doesn't mean all the residents will be free of noise - there's always another development or roadwork that leads to some jackhammering at 7AM on a Saturday morning.

Now it seems like actual blasting will start on Wednesday. What's also intriguing is that seismologists from Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory were also on hand to "record seismic data they could compare with recordings made on 9/11," according to the NY Times.

Did you hear or feel any of the blasts? They were at 10:30AM and 12:05PM yesterday.

Photograph of test blast (see the puff of smoke under the mats?) by Shiho Fukada/AP