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.
- Video segments
- Synthesized video
(1 Mb mpg)
Here is the action - video to follow
Shelly and team - at the transmitter (orange box)
Before
Clearly, Mickey's shock containment strategy worked perfectly. Very little debris scatter. Look carefully at the metal and rubber blankets on the top of the T-2 base.
Here, you can see the shock wave is projected toward Town creek with minimal upward movement of the blankets
Here the blankets appear to be falling downward continuing to constrain the upward blast shock wave.
The residual smoke from the blast. Another sign of a successful containment strategy
and Mickey checking out the results
Well T-2 is gone
What remains of the base
Now to reposition the barge to continue work on the Grace pier
Another view of repositions
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
C. Frank Starmer