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
July 8, 2006:
C-2 Clean-up and more drilling

Sparky and Liza were out riding their bicycles over the Ravenel Bridge today. Look what they saw - cleanup from yesterday and more drilling

Not sure, but maybe this is Timmy cleaning up the top of the C-2 foundation. This is so when Mickey moves either New Copco or the John Henry, it won't slide off the top. I've got the speak to Mickey and Ken and encourage them to work on an implosion strategy that leaves the foundation clean and flat.

A better view

Here is the John Henry drilling the C-3 base

Here is Mickey's new Copco working on the C-1 foundation

A deep discussion.

Note the red Xs identifying the hole locations. Here is another view of the Copco drilling. The red cups are placed on top of already-drilled-holes so that the next thunderstorm will not fill the holes with water

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

C. Frank Starmer

_