The staging was set. Trucks were in place. A fire hose stretched from a hydrant at the school all the way to the apartments, a good city block away. Odd that a hydrant in the development wasn’t closer.
The detritus left behind lay spattered around the contaminated front lawns where children used to play
and the windows of the deserted apartment high rise stared blankly at the deserted homes around it. 
The men took a lunch break and then returned. Motors were started up and the wrecker went to work, it’s maw chewing up the roof of the first structure and spewing out plaster and roofing as it moved across the building. There was a whoosh as
the hoses were turned on, spraying out water to contain whatever particles were flying off the first apartment.
The demolition had started. These apartments were at the Northwest corner of the development. Far away from prying eyes. There were only two of us watching as the wrecker obliterated the structures that had sheltered 700 people who had played, slept, eaten, and procreated in them. We were standing at the top of a hill on the school grounds which gave us the height we needed to see over the closed in fence.
It was the end of an era of housing developments gone horribly wrong.