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.

August 19, 2005: Unbuilding Coleman Blvd and recycling

This is what remains of the beginning of Coleman Blvd.

and the mixture of concrete and rebar is all for recycling

Here you can see the rebar that has been separated from the concrete. Bill Callanan has provided a great description of the separation process:

The concrete is removed from the rebar using concrete pulverizers and 
"Universal Processing" attachments. These tools pulverize the concrete and it 
falls from the steel. Then the steel can be down sized using a shear 
attachment on the excavator or down sized at the scrap yard. Either way the 
down sizing of the steel prepares it for a smelter to be melted down. 
By removing the concrete from the steel it can be recycled rather than 
disposed of at a land fill. The concrete can be recycled as well once the 
steel has been reused.

Looking up the Pearman and Grace on-ramps from Coleman Blvd.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

C. Frank Starmer

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