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 five remaining girders are removed one at a time using two grapples - the right one stabilizes the girder while the left one pulls it away from the pier cap
You can see the left side pulled back while the right side begins to drop
and here the two grapples gently lay the girder down
And now there are four - with grapples at each end
The left side pulled back while the right side drops
and sort of put to bed
and now there are three
with the third gently lowered to the ground
Removing the last edge girder - the right grapple stabilizes the girder while the left grapple disrupts the structural integrity
by pulling the left segment back
and then a controlled drop
Nice job - and all removed
Removing the Piers and Cap
Our Testa surgeon grabs the left side of the pier cap
Pulls it forward a bit
and a little more
releases and a small free fall
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
C. Frank Starmer