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.

November 15, 2005:
Dropping Pearman Cantilever and Drum Island Segments.

An overview of the Pearman Town Creek Sections - 10:03

What follows is a sequence approximately 3 frames/sec from my camera.

Frame 2

Frame 3

Frame 4

Frame 5

Frame 6

10:05 am

10:16 am

Tom Trusk captured this frame at the moment of ignition from his composite realtime and slow motion video (78 Mb wmv)

From the my video (link at the top of this segment), Jonathan Coultas extracted the first individual frames to highlight the early ignition process.

t = 0

t = 33 msec

t = 66

t = 100 msec

t = 133

t = 166 msec

t = 200

t = 233 msec

Andy Sierra captured this video from near the Aquarium and extracted these images that reflect a different angle

Gary Eaton, who shares a bridge addiction with me viewed the implosion from near the Morrison St on ramp - which shows a different perspective

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

C. Frank Starmer

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