Unbuilding the Grace and Pearman Bridges


For Sparky and myself, curiosity drives passion which in turn fuels our life's engine. Our passion was capturing the story of both unbuilding the Grace (1929 - 2007) and Pearman (1966 - 2007) Bridges and discovering the unbuilders. It takes a lot of passion to track a project from July 2005 until April 2007 - rain, shine, hurricanes or moving to Singapore. We discovered the joy of discovery learning. Ken Canty opened the front door for us - then Steve Testa, Ponch Billingsley and Mickey Rogers opened many side doors. Below are the highlights of what we discovered, who we met and what we learned.

And a reminder from T.S. Eliot (East Coker from the Four Quartets) 

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
Home Meeting St East Bay Drum Island Mt. PLeasant Pearman Stories Grace Stories Implosions Enginnering Insights Stories of unbuilders Learning Links Bridge Video Bridge Blog Unbuilding Archive All Unbuilding Segments Building the Ravenel Bridge Photo Essays About me
April 12, 2006:
Pearman Drilling and Cleanup

Not only is there the P-11 to P-13 dropping of Grace's truss, but there is Pearman retrieval of the east Pearman cantilever as well as Mickey's guys are back drilling - C-2 with the jackup barge and the D-28 substructure with the John Henry
A nice view of the Grace and Pearman Cantilever trusses

from a different position

One Sparky's way out to the Grace worksite - he passed some of the recently retrieved Pearman truss debris

A submerged section

and retrieval

and more stuff

cleanup - which is retrieve, bite, chew and pile it up

a shear bite

one word: Jaws

a closer view of a shear bite

While cleaning up, Capt. Bill (I would guess) is repositioning the jackup barge so that Mickey's guys can resume drilling on C-2. Here is 11:07

11:09

11:12

11:15

11:41 - in the working position

Drilling and blowing

11:44 Drilling C-2

Meanwhile, over at D-28 (Jodi - this comes after D-27) the John Henry is drilling vertical holes for imploding the D-28 substructure

and another view of D-28 and the John Henry (is Silas doing the drilling?)

But you know Sparky - a budding young artist who cannot resist inside looks at anything - whether at the macro-level (watch the blast) or micro-level (explore the inside of a truss section)

Sparky art

More inside looks

Sparky is just an inside kind of guy

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C. Frank Starmer

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