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
November 16, 2005: Marching across Drum Island

I have been so preoccupied with watching the work on the Pearman that I almost forgot that there is another bridge that requires watching. Today I walked down to the other side of the Grace only to watch dropping a segment of the Grace roadway and supports. Here is a photo from November 4th

and here is today's photo. A single span remains to the right of the Ravenel ramp and then just a few Drum island spans remain

Note that the Grace roadway has been removed almost up to the edge of Drum Island

By Saturday, Sparky found that there was little Grace presence on Drum Island

On Monday (21st) Sparky checked up on the Drum Island cleanup of the Grace. Here is what remains of the infamous aortic aneurysm (chase you curiosity with Google, don't ask) where you could park a disabled vehicle.

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C. Frank Starmer

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