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.

January 17, 2006: Imploding D-23 and the D-25 substructure

While I was in Singapore, Mickey got the action of Ken and the guys with a double barreled day - dropping D-23 (at the edge of Drum Island) and taking the top off of D-25. Here is the before.

Here, D-25 has started

D-23 is resting and the top of D-25 in the background is fractionating

The D-23 ignition sequence is almost complete

and the cap ignites

and starts to fractionate and drop

down

down

Its all over but the smoke

D-25 and D-23 after the smoke cleared

D-25 after

Ken with a smile, actually big smile

D-23 after

Testa moves in and starts the cleanup

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C. Frank Starmer

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