SAFETY ZONE ESTABLISHED AROUND SEATTLES KINGDOME FOR IMPLOSION, 2000-03-23 (photo)

A quarter century after it ushered big-league sports into Seattle, the still functional but ugly and outdated Kingdome, shown in this view from Beacon Hill in Seattle March 23, will collapse in a rain of concrete dust on March 26 to make way for a new football stadium. Contractors have finished stripping the skin off the giant concrete bubble and removing more than 60,000 seats from the former home of the Seattle Seahawks football team and Seattle Mariners baseball team. Only dynamite and implosion await. At 8:30 a.m. PST, crews will detonate two rounds of explosives sunk into some 6,000 holes in the Kingdome's roof and its support columns, collapsing about 50,000 tons of concrete in a thick cloud of dust. APB/SV