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.
You get to the work site when you get there and already a truss segment was being lowered.
Down
On the Port side, our acrobats are preparing to free another segment
with the crane stabilizing it.
While on the other side of Town Creek - the elevator is taking another group of acrobats to their worksite
The context - a quartet: two cranes and two cantilever segments
Port side, they are cutting through the transverse girder
while on the Drum Island side, our acrobats are getting into position
On the Port side - the burning is just starting
a closer view of the cuts through the base of the girder on each side
A better view of cutting through the base of the I beam
almost complete on the nearer side
Then cuting through the top of the I beam on the near side
Cutting through the top of the I beam on the far side and you can see the nearer side gap at the completed diagonal cut
a little twist
and the I beam is free
rotated and
lowered to the barge
Meanwhile the Drum Island team continues preparing another segment for removal
cutting on the left
Lifting the segment
and lowering it to the barge
down
down
then on to the next segment
cutting to remove the cross bracing
while on the Port side, work starts for removing another segment
More cutting on the Drum Island segment
cutting the far sides of the cross brace
almost freeing it - and then
cutting through the far end
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
C. Frank Starmer