It was all over in less than ten seconds — but those who witnessed Club Med come tumbling down yesterday morning will be unlikely to ever forget the experience.

Whether you were on a boat, up a tree (several were) or watching from the grassy fairways of St. George's Golf Club, it was an awesome vision to behold; a spine-tingling few moments when the landscape literally changed before your eyes with a mighty roar.

And Bermudians who had lived with the derelict site for two decades weren't about to miss the opportunity to make a day of it.

At 8 a.m. a few early risers had already steered their boats toward the Narrows Channel, the stretch of sea overlooked by the hotel. By 10 a.m. the waters were thronged with hundreds of vessels, prows pointed towards Club Med, and jet skiers whizzing between them looking for the ideal vantage point.

At St. George's Golf Club, bustling officials armed with clipboards mingled with displaced residents who'd had to seal off their properties for the morning, remove their pets and leave a 1,000ft exclusion zone around the site.

Shorty, Fanny and Barbara Churm, whose home on Naval Tanks Hill is just below the site, had gathered up their dog Geronimo and were waiting patiently for the big bang. "I have mixed emotions you might say," said Mr. Churm. "It used to be a great place and then all of a sudden it was an eyesore."

Fort St. Catherine was the implosion nerve centre — the place where US demolition experts from D.H. Griffin Wrecking Co. put the finishing touches to their carefully executed plan, which involved 730lbs of explosives and 2,000 "charge" sites.

As the clock ticked toward the official "button pushing" moment, the numbers at the golf club swelled. Families arrived bearing picnic baskets and blankets and members of the media rushed around interviewing locals and checking camera angles.

Every Islander waiting for the implosion seemed to have a personal connection to Club Med. St. George Deputy Mayor Kenneth Bascome proudly showed off a knee scar acquired while helping to build the hotel back in the 1960s.

And Government's Director of Communications Beverle Lottimore was happy to spend a few minutes reminiscing about her father Donald, who was the tennis pro there when she was a child.

"In Bermuda it's six degrees of separation or probably less for everybody," she smiled. "I have absolutely happy memories of the place."

Parents said they brought their children along to watch history in the making. Fitzgerald Miller, who lives in the old town, said: "We have never witnessed this on the Island before so I guess it's why we're all out here. It's a part of history."

The anticipation as the Island's first ever implosion approached was palpable. At Fort St. Catherine, a five-minute alarm sounded, then two minutes, one minute, 30 seconds and finally the ten-second countdown.

A single button push from Premier Ewart Brown and a second from Works and Engineering Minister Derrick Burgess was all it took and in seconds the first jarring blast sounded from the glassless building, followed by a quick volley of 12 more, powerful enough to make the golf clubhouse shake.

Then the centre of the 11-storey structure collapsed and 28,000 tonnes of concrete came crashing to the ground in a vast grey cloud of dust. As it cleared, only the cannon which used to welcome guests at the entrance remained.

The reaction from those watching was instantaneous — cheers, shouts, applause and even gasps of emotion as it fell. "That was so heart wrenching," said Rodericka Freeman, who had brought along her seven-year-old twins Messiah and Isaiah. "I have very fond memories of that hotel."

Shane Morrissey, 23, drove from Somerset and climbed a tree in a graveyard to witness it. "It was pretty cool," he said. "I heard the noise then when I looked it just curled in at the middle and buckled. It took about five seconds."

Former taxi drivers Leonard Paul and Kenneth Thompson, who spent many years driving guests to and from the hotel, watched from the golf green.

"It was fantastic," said Mr. Paul. "It's a first for Bermuda and it will probably go down in history." Mr. Thompson said: "It was amazing. It was something that I would not want to have missed. It was so spectacular and so professionally done."

As locals packed away their cameras and binoculars, regaling one another with their take on what they'd seen, journalists gathered at a press conference to hear what was next for the site: a luxury $300 million Park Hyatt resort with low-rise buildings which will look vastly different to the 1960s box-like Club Med.

Yesterday lunchtime, firefighters hosed down the debris at the top of the hill, blowers cleared the dust from nearby Blackbeard's Hide Out restaurant and reporters from the Discovery Channel went in search of the cameras they had left to film the implosion from inside Club Med. An operation months in the planning was almost at an end.