Update, 11:50 a.m. Tuesday: The Caltrans contractor hired to knock down the once-unnoticed, now-troublesome Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge in Big Sur has run into a problem: Its wrecking ball was not up to the job of demolishing the span.
The take-down project began Monday. The Monterey Herald's Tommy Wright has the details on what didn't happen and why:
The contractors tasked with the demolition had trouble getting the crane’s free-fall function operating properly as they tried to slam the wrecking ball into the bridge.
“The crane, in its current configuration, will not free fall the wrecking ball with the required force needed,” said Susana Cruz, a Caltrans spokeswoman, in an email. “New parts have been ordered and should arrive (Tuesday).”
Work could resume on the demolition as soon as Wednesday morning, depending on the delivery and assembly of the new parts.
David Galarza, Caltrans’ structure representative for the project, said crews disconnected the bridge’s metal railing in preparation for the demolition.
“Everything’s in place for it to go, but some of these new cranes have a lot of different safety features on them and they’re all computerized,” he said.
Galarza said the crew has specific locations identified where they can expose the primary reinforcement and cut it.
“That should assist with the bridge dropping in a location we want it to,” he said.
As soon as crews work out all of the kinks, Galarza said the demolition should take two days at most.
Rather than swing the 6,000-pound wrecking ball with the crane’s 305-foot arm, the operator dropped it on the bridge from about 5-feet high once work got started at about 12:30 p.m. Monday. By dropping the ball instead of swinging it, crews avoided nearby power lines. Jim Shivers, a Caltrans spokesman, said it’s also part of the strategy to bring the structure down in a controlled, methodical way.
“There’s precision when we build these things and there’s precision when we take them down,” he said.
Original post (Monday): Caltrans went to work Monday tearing down a Big Sur bridge that began to collapse last month after a long siege of heavy rain.
Crews positioned a heavy crane near the Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge on Monday morning, and just after noon began the mind-numbingly repetitive process of picking up and dropping a wrecking ball on the span to break it up. It looked like it would take awhile.