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

March 29, 2007: Quartet for cleanup

Watch the trio in action (1.6 MB mpg)

Its cleanup time at the Port of Charleston. Here is the cleanup-site

And look at the difference - Drum Island

And the Port of Charleston

King of the mountain

Scoop up

Rotate and

Dump into a

with Kevin and his front end loader on the receiving end of the debris post processor (a stone crusher?)

That processes the rock and dirt and then drops it out the other end

Watch Jim operating his giant tweesers attached to his 345

and Kevin and his front end loader walking up the hill

and getting a bite

Russell in the 1250 with Jim and Kevin - Our trio of clean-up surgeons

Looks like Jim concentrating on micro-managing his giant tweesers.

And Kevin doing the fetch and tote solo.

Russell with the 1250 that Michael broke in. Still looks as new as it did when it first arrived almost a year and a half ago.

and something new - what I call giant tweesers with Jim at the controls

In the open configuration

and in the holding position

A duet for Tweesers and Grapple

and a trio for Tweensers, mega-Grapple and micro-Grapple

Another view of the trio

and on it goes

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

C. Frank Starmer