According to BNSF spokesman Amy McBeth, the railroad scheduled a detonation at 5:30 p.m. to destroy an old pier. The demolition was in conjunction with ongoing construction on the new bridge, but something went wrong, creating what fire officials called “a muddy mess” by the bridge.
http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/BNSF-explosion-013011
More information supposed to be forthcoming.
Photos of project.
How old was the pier they were trying to demolish? Concrete? I remember here in Binghamton, NY abou 15 years ago contracters building a baseball stadium on former Lackawanna RR yard acerage tried to demolish bumper blocks. Wrecking balls and jack hammers had no effect so they drilled hole and packed dynamite in. Charge missled out because the concrete was so dense! Down in Scranton a contractor attempting demolishing of the DL&W station’s Bush trainshed quit when they couldn’t crush and remove the concrete under the posts.
Reportedly built in 1893, the original piers appear to be cut stone. If the pier being blasted was a subsequent redo with concrete, unknown.
I was reading about BNSF having problems with the officials out west in one of the parks they go through. The park officials said they wanted BNSF to not use explosives becuse it endangerd some wild life or something of that deal. They wanted them to expand snow sheds and build new ones. It must be a very humbling expierience to see BNSF rail through glacier national park. ( hope that is the right location) GOD BLESS ALL and stay safe out there
EDITED [comments added]:
Butch Cassidy: [anticipating] Well, that ought to do it.
[after blowing the train car to smithereens]
Sundance Kid: [sarcastically] Think ya used enough dynamite there, Butch?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064115/quotes?qt0409684
That’s too bad - the project seemed to be going pretty well until this. One of the comments to the “Hawkeye” article linked above says that the blast raised the lift span about 2 feet, and a post in another thread here said that the bridge may have been damaged and was closed to rail traffic for a few days.
Even the New Kate Shelley Bridge had some problems with its foundations as construction was nearing the end a couple years ago. So it appears that erecting big new railroad bridges over rivers has more risks and hazards associated with it than at first would seem to be the case . . . [:-^]
See also the “Mountain Men” sub-plot in the 1996 “Jack Ryan” series novel Executive Orders by Tom Clancy, which involved using a concrete mixer with the drum loaded with Ammonium Nitrate fertilizer + diesel Fuel Oil = “ANFO” as the explosive.
At least it seems they must have learned the lesson from the Katy’s staged locomotive collision at Crush (Texas ?) - stay back plenty far enough !
http://www.burlingtonderailed.com/index.php?blogid=1&archive=2011-1-31
Somebody posted a photo of the bridge deck after the blast. It looks like the force of the blast went up instead of out.
Thanks for that link. Although the photo isn’t very clear (understandably), there’s a lot of debris on the tracks, and it looks like the first cross-beam that’s visible towards the top of the photo has a bit of an ‘S-curve’ in its bottom flange - worse yet, the next one appears to be broken, with a ‘V-shaped’ notch in it ! The comment with it says the track was lifted by the blast about a foot - all that is major damage in anyone’s book.
However, I see that the update in today’s “The Hawk Eye.com” at - http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Bridge-folo-013111 - says that 90 ft. of the 356 ft. span was damaged - primarily to the floor or deck of the bridge - and has a couple new long-distance photos of the heavy-duty hi-rail trucks and ‘snooper’ / ‘cherry-picker’ cranes that were being used to inspect and repair it. The BNSF spokeswoman was quoted as saying that the bridge would be back in service by Sunday night ??? So maybe the damage wasn’t that bad and just some pieces had to be reset, or quickly re-fabricated and replaced ??? In time, I’m sure more juicy details will leak out . . . [:-^]
Another web service says one track was restored last night, and the second track today–no detour moves for Amtrak today.
If the blast actually blew the span upward a couple of feet and brought it crashing back down (as one report stated), I could understand some buckling damage. And, if it’s like any drawbridges I was familiar with, there are sliding joints that secure the gap in the rails when the bridge is in the closed position, as well as electronic connections (interlocked, no doubt, to the joints) that give trains clear signals when the bridge is closed and secured. Any sudden raising of the bridge would have destroyed or heavily damaged those connections.
One wonders what this does to the project’s timetable. The navigation season normally opens on this stretch of the Mississippi in early to mid March. Most of the Army Corps of Engineers Winter Upper Mississippi lock and dam projects are scheduled to be done before the 2nd week of March.
Could this problem interfere with the opening of navigation upstream from Burlington?
In Calgary in the late 1970’s they had to demolish two roadway bridge piers built in the late 1890’s. The City could find no plans for the piers, so the contractor went on the heavy side with the dynamite. Well, he pretty much turned those two piers into very fine powder! He could have saved himself a lot of money on explosives.
Bruce
Some floor system damage in the immediate area of the blast is what I see on the slides.
RWM
From today’s The Hawk Eye.com, at:
http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/BNSF-Bridge-Explosion-020111
“BNSF spokeswoman Amy McBeth said about 30 feet of tracks and about 90 feet of the 356-foot bridge deck of the liftspan needed to be repaired.”
They may have been lucky in avoiding serious damage to the bridge’s superstructure precisely because it’s a lift bridge, and therefore designed to be somewhat ‘loose’, mobile, and flexible so it can move upwards, and also absorb some impacts on settling down again onto its bearings when closing - not like it was torn off its piers or anchorages by the blast energy. Railroad bridge loads are large/ heavy enough - much more than the ‘dead weight’ of the span structure itself - and so require very heavy-duty framing by their nature. The ladder-like shape and network of the ties and rails of the track structure may have acted as a kind of 'blast screen ’ and absorbed and dissipated the worst of the blast, so as to attenuate and absorb some of the shock from the steelwork. All speculation on my part, but it’s kind of miraculous they were able to repair the damage that quickly - I’m skeptical that a bunch of railroad bridge engineers would allow the tracks to be put back into service if there are any lingering questions or doubts about the integrity of the structure.
The US Coast Guard permit that allows BNSF to keep the bridge closed expires on Feb 16, at which time they have to be ready to allow boat traffic. The door, she is closing!!
http://www2.mvr.usace.army.mil/NIC2/Reports/icemiss.0600
If Feb. 16th is missed, there maybe an extension. The Corps of Engineers is working on navigation locks downstream until the March 4th. After March 4th the locks are scheduled to be working.
BNSF Railway officials are saying little about an apparent explosion that happened onboard a contractor’s barge Wednesday near the railroad bridge, but noted the bridge itself was not damaged…
BNSF officials said, regardless, the bridge project is expected to be completed this month and before the navigation channel reopens.
http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/BNSF-021011
Another boom in Burlington.