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.
The procedure consisted of attaching cables to each girder, cutting the bolts that coupled the girder to the caps, lifting the girder, rotating it and then lowering it. I have tried to capture most of the steps in the procedure. I shall fill in the details a bit later
Continuation of removing the girders on the east side of the overpass
After all the east girder were removed - here is the I-26 overpass.
First - clean up the debris from removing the roadway between the overpass girders
Erecting the crane that will be used to life the girders
Moving the lifting cables into position between the edge girder and the one next to it
Lowering the cables between the girders
Looping the cables around the outside girder
Moving the loops into position
Initial lifting of the girder
the lifting the entire girder
rotating the girder and lowering it to the ground
Decoupling the cable loops
Rotating the lift cables back to the next girder
Positioning the left cables
Cutting the attachment between the girder and the pier cap
An initial lift from below
Then lift - slowly slowly
Rotate and lower
Note the protective blankets placed over the I-26 edge barriers
to the final resting place
Decouple the cable loops
And so it start again with lowering the cables between the next pair of girders
Making the loops
Raising the loops and moving them into the lift configuration
and so the process starts again
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
C. Frank Starmer