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 Unbuilding at the port

Watch Manny lift, rotate and lower (3 Mb mpg)

Joe is unbuilding the box girders while

Here is Chris Wakeman and fellow acrobats are taking on the Grace superstructure

The remaining Grace truss and temporary support. Manny is holding it all together

Nice view of the Grace skeleton, Manny's crane and a lonely Pearman pier

To the left - you see the support cables to Manny's crane and an acrobat in disguise, cutting one of the interior cross members

A closer view

and Carlos on the left, making a parallel cut. You can always tell Carlos because he wears a white hard hat (but Paul does also).

4th of July on Dec 15th

About a year ago, Nugget was demonstrating the 6 major ironworker acrobat position. Here is Carlos in position 4

cutting away

This looks like Nugget in position 0

and Stan in the getting ready position

With both sides cut - Manny takes over, slowly lifting

Did you ever think about Manny's job. He sits in the cab, with baseball cap in position, looking up and using fly by wire - lifts these sections while nagivating structural obstacles.

Carlos and Stan and Nugget maintain the communication - but, watching Manny work is really something!

Now clear of all the obstacles

and on its way down

down

and gently laying it down

slowly

Down and now decoupling and the next stage of unbuilding. Paul (you can tell by his white hat and his white shirt) is pleased

Our ground team

removing the cables

and Manny moves his rig back to the top

where the support cables are attached

by our acrobats

step 2

step 3

and a Sparky art photo looking up the boom

Ready for taking up the slack

and back to cutting

A view of cutting on both sides

Carlos starting his cut

and not sure who this is

A good view of the cross piece stabilized by Manny

Carlos making the final cut

Then

and away

Manny navigating again and then lifting the section

nd slowly rotating over the top

and to the left

slowly

to the left

all clear and now down

down

and down to the ground

The stress on various Grace members is showing. Here the base is cut in order to reduce the stress on that section - enabling our acrobats to remove a front cross-member without movement from the back section being transferred to the front.

The other side

and an overview

Another Sparky art photo - simply wow!

where Michael and his buddies are working on the excavators

and a hydraulic hammer

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

C. Frank Starmer