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

December 15, 2006 (afternoon):Unbuilding the last of the Grace truss

Manny does it again (3 MB mpg)

I think it is afternoon - about 14:44 - my Singapore time, East coast time and Sparky camera times are off by 12 hours or so - but we'll straighten this out. Here it is clear that Manny and the ironworkers are unbuilding a 2nd section of the Grace superstructure - so I'm guessing this is afternoon. Afterall, Sparky has to have lunch some time. So here is Manny

and an overview of progress to date (but which date, I'm uncertain). The triangle section is gone (on the right) which I think was done Friday morning

and Carlos, chillin a bit

and a big smile from Stan

and a small smile from Nugget with fuzz continuing to grow from his chin

Setting up the cables to stablize the next section

and of course, a Sparky art photo

and this one is even better. Gives a good idea of the boom length

Nugget starts cutting to attach one set of cables

while Carlos is fiddling around with the other cable

For me, this is the surgical skill displayed by Carlos, Manny, Nugget and Stan - placing the cables so that the to-be-removed segment is pretty well balanced. Once on the Pearman on ramp, Nugget and Stan actually used a measuring tape to position the lift bar over one of the concrete girders. Here, there is no lift bar - so, really remarkable skill required to correctly place the lift cables.