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 17, 2006: Sparky and the Jay Cashman - aka 995
Clean-up after Mickey is taking on a new meaning.

The 995 is a mega scooper-upper, or I suppose in technical terms, a mega grapple. We first met the 995 on June 20. Then when C-2 was dropped, Mike Grice asked how one cleans up after Mickey. Here is more of the 995 story from Sparky.

You would not believe the Excavator! They put a new engine in and it cost 
$ 1,000,000.00. It makes a lot of noise and is very powerful! They are 
rebuilding the old engine at the tune of $ 600,000.00. They just finished 
installing the grappler and all the lines and by the weekend or next week 
it will be in full operation. They will have someone that was running 
before come down and take control of it.

Body Parts

Meet the 995's mouth

and neck

and neck extension

and body

from below

The engine

Is this the fuel injection system?

Exhaust and fuel lines?

Control position

Sparky at the controls

Mufflers and exhaust

This is the array of tubes that pass the hydraulic fluid from somewhere to the grapple and neck. Thus spake Sparky !

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

C. Frank Starmer

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