October 11, 2005:
Dropping the Town Creek segment of the
Pearman Bridge.
I was out of town this week (bad timing) and thanks to many -
we accumulated a good collections of video and still images -
Amy Spires and her daughter, Miranda, captured the event with video:
Pearman Blast (6 Mb AVI video)
while
Bryant Stowe and Sparky Witte captured individual photos.
As I understand the process, the goal was to drop
the truss section as 11 segments between the pins that
link the truss to the cantilevered segments
as described
from looking at the Pearman segment from the Grace Bridge. The
buoys would mark each of the 11 segments.

This is the before - as seen from Sparky's boat

and this is just after as seen from Bryant Stowe's location

Here you can see that the left 3 segments broke up according to plan
while the right 8 segments remained connected

A different view from Sparky's boat

And at about the same time from Bryant's vantage point

And down they fell


Spash

Lots of sound and smoke (fury) - signifying quite a bit


This is a good view of the after - with the remaining cantilevered segments
still projecting beyond their supports on the left and right
