What does a demolition site smell like?

He’d find some old clothes and one shoe upside down. Maybe some canned goods.
If it rained earlier there would be muddy spots of white dust and trails of powdered sheet rock.
A mouse would scamper across the pile as his footsteps disturbed its new hiding spot.
Unless there was a fire there would be little odor. I am assuming this is the 21st Century and the demolition was by machine.

dusty I imagine and stale… dry air…earthy…there would be a sense of emptiness

Demolition of old brick buildings have a fairly distinctive sort of smell, its sort of like a gun powder smell. Easy to get if you are able to smack a few bricks together. So a lot of that and concrete or mortar dust. If the demolition is finished these smells will be less pronounced because their carried in dust from disturbance. There maybe sewers and old drainages exposed, releasing those delightful smells that are familiar to most of us.
Any metal with scrap value is likely to have been cleaned up fairly thoroughly, particularly copper. Apart from that, all sorts of random rubbish could be lying about, workers lunch rubbish, screws and nails etc. But a demolition site for the most part is fairly clean, when finished. The small bits about the place before the final sweep are bits off things smashed in the demolition, think small bits of brick and roof tile, off cuts off pipe, strands of insulation material, maybe a twisted pile of steel pipe waiting to be taken for scrap.

@Arbornaut oh yeah…metally too…

…and pigeon poo sometimes too….

Thank you, thank you! I have never visited a demolition site but you have given me some great idea. I had a feeling there would be some sort of distinctive smell Arbornaut. While I am writing fiction, I still want it to be realistic. All the responses here are very helpful. Isn’t this a great site! I love it.

@Mz_Lizzy it is a great site indeed! welcome xxx

@nebule yeah.. how could i forget the pigeons?
@Mz_Lizzy The other thing is the type of building it was and what it was used for etc, like a mechanical shop would be sure to have a lot of petroleum stains on the concrete slab and smell of it in the mix with everything else.
Glad i could help:)

@Arbornaut is correct about the limited smells once the debris is cleaned up to the point you describe, particularly if it has been graded and the basement filled in. It would be dirt with little bits of brick as you describe. Now, depending on where in the world you are, the soil itself would have distinctive smells particularly if wet (most contractors bring in “fill-dirt” if they are backfilling a basement sized hole and the fill-dirt could come from wherever you want it to if you need distinct smells). The time of day will also change the smells of any nearby vegetation.

The bits of ground up debris have a tendency to look like piles of broken shells on a beach and they can be pushed up into little drifts. You might see tiny green weeds poking up through the dirt. There might be remnants of cement slabs. The debris can be quite colorful, although in kind of somber tones (rusty bits of metal, brick, sand and dirt, cement, dried broken off wood chunks and saw dust shavings, tar and black top from the street, bits of white ceramic from bathroom tiles and toilets and sinks, random nails, screws, washers, mixed with dried up bits of paper and plastic sheeting and lots of dust and occassional bugs.) You might also see garbage left over from the workers lunches: aluminum soda cans, plastic soda bottles, fast food bags and greasy french fry wrappers, empty used ketchup packets, straws. A piece of garbage might be blowing around in the breeze, caught up in a little whirlwind. There is likely to be severa dented dusty old trash cans sitting around and maybe a broom or an old shovel or a hammer and maybe a big rusty old dumpster (with the remnants of the dumpster company logo chipping away from the paint). The scent would be mainly of dust, and if there has been some rain, it might have a similar smell to when rain first hits hot cement in the summertime. There can be that stinky garbage smell if there are any muddy pools of water that have been sitting there for awhile. Those pools (although likely to be shallow) will be dark and murky with a kind of oily rainbow looking swirl sitting on the surface. You might actually be able to see the reflection of the sky and clouds above in the tiny pools. You might see a few pieces of rusty gnarled rebar sticking up out of the dirt, looking like a broken metal human spine. If the site is in a hot area, you might see a scurrying lizard. If there is a bit of a breeze, you might hear and see some gritty dust being swirled around.