Another blast set to finish off Broadway Bridge

Concrete arches to implode today

Workers watch as a crane removes the last two steel arch sections of the Broadway Bridge from the Arkansas River Thursday morning after it was take down Tuesday. The job took 48 hours to complete, despite a 24-hour deadline given by the Corps of Engineers to have the pieces cleared from the Arkansas River’s navigation channel.
Workers watch as a crane removes the last two steel arch sections of the Broadway Bridge from the Arkansas River Thursday morning after it was take down Tuesday. The job took 48 hours to complete, despite a 24-hour deadline given by the Corps of Engineers to have the pieces cleared from the Arkansas River’s navigation channel.

The concrete arches of the old Broadway Bridge are to be imploded today, one day after crews cleared the Arkansas River of the debris from the span's steel arch and reopened the navigational channel to barge traffic.

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With demolition set for today, workers spent Thursday placing explosives on the Broadway Bridge’s concrete arches. The bridge’s steel arches were dismantled earlier this week.

Crews from Massman Construction Co. of Kansas City, Mo., which has the $98.4 million contract to replace the 93-year-old bridge that connects Little Rock and North Little Rock, worked Thursday to remove all of the six pieces of the steel arch from the 30-foot-deep channel.

As they worked, other crews were placing explosives on the concrete arches that extend out from the river's north bank.

The navigation channel, part of the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, reopened to barge traffic at 5:15 p.m. Thursday, Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department spokesman Danny Straessle said in a text.

[BROADWAY BRIDGE: More videos of explosion and bridge falling + traffic map, cameras, previous coverage, photos here]

The Corps of Engineers issued a navigation notice to mariners about 30 minutes later, saying the U.S. Coast Guard had "lifted the closure of the navigation channel."

But the notice added that a 1-mile safety zone in the vicinity of the bridge "previously established by the U.S. Coast Guard remains in effect."

The last piece of steel was removed from the channel about 2:30 p.m., nearly 24 hours past the deadline that the Coast Guard had given the department to reopen the channel, Straessle said. Crews spent the rest of the afternoon sweeping the channel to meet the satisfaction of the Corps of Engineers.

The next round of explosives is scheduled for detonation at 1 p.m. today. Much of the north bank of the river will be closed to spectators because of the arches' proximity to that shore, Straessle said. The explosives have been wrapped in fabric to minimize the dispersal of debris, he said.

Still, "there is some concern about debris dispersal," Straessle said.

Areas off-limits to spectators will include the parking lot at Dickey-Stephens Ballpark, Riverfront Drive and the River Trail, which are within the 1,500-foot safety zone established for the blasting, he said. Spectators will be allowed on the river's south bank and on the Junction Bridge to view the spectacle.

Unlike the steel arch, which was built in the 1970s, the concrete arches date to the original construction of the bridge, which was opened to traffic on Christmas Day in 1922 and was dedicated three months later.

The explosives have been placed in holes drilled into the arches rather than on them, as was done with the steel arch.

"It's going to pulverize the arches" into smaller, manageable pieces rather than the big pieces left from the demolition of the steel arch Tuesday, Straessle said.

The contractor has no deadline for removing the concrete debris because it isn't in the navigation channel. But Straessle said the contractor must remove all debris that's larger than a bowling ball and can leave no reinforcing steel in the water.

Scott Bennett, the director of the Highway and Transportation Department, will push the button to set off the explosives today. He did the same Tuesday, but that implosion didn't go quite as planned.

The steel arch withstood the strategically placed explosives and didn't fall into the river as expected. It eventually took six tries and almost five hours of workers using towboats, a platform barge, a crane and thick cable to pull down the arch.

Today is the 17th day since the bridge was closed to traffic. Under the terms of Massman's contract with the Highway and Transportation Department, the contractor has 180 days to remove the old bridge and open the new one.

Massman could lose $80,000 for every day it goes beyond the 180 days, or collect $80,000 for every day the project comes in under that time limit.

Metro on 10/14/2016

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