3rd implosion brings down last big chunk of Miami bridge

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

By SYDNEY STONNER/Staff writer

Sydney Stonner/Democrat-News [Order this photo]

The old Missouri River bridge in Miami went out with a bang Wednesday, Nov. 11, as Missouri Department of Transportation engineers imploded the third and final section of the truss bridge built in 1939.

A large group of people assembled to view the implosion from the public river access area, their vehicles nearly filling the parking lot.

The Miami bridge project involves a partial replacement of the bridge. When completed, the bridge will have new decking and girders and be 26-feet wide (11-foot lanes with 2-foot shoulders). The life expectancy of the new bridge is 50-plus years.

Last year, explosive charges were used successfully in the demolition of the Missouri River bridge at Glasgow, which was a project nearly identical to the Miami bridge project. The Glasgow bridge reopened earlier this fall.

Contact Sydney Stonner at marshallbusiness@socket.net

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Apparently a bridge built in 1939 is too old and needs replaced, but schools that were built in the 20's are not. Just saying.

-- Posted by mtownresident on Thu, Nov 12, 2009, at 8:42 AM

Was the photo shot with one those cameras that shoots multiple images per second for as long as you hold the button down, or tell it to continuously shoot in some other way? Timing is critical when photographing, unless you have one of those digital cameras. Then it's basically just selecting which frame of your "digital motion picture camera's" images you like best. Yes, technically, multiple frame per second digital cameras are still considered to be digital still cameras, but it appears digital still cameras and digital motion picture cameras are becoming more alike with each technological update.

-- Posted by Ray on Wed, Nov 11, 2009, at 3:20 PM

Response by Eric Crump/Editor:

The camera Syndey used can shoot stills in rapid succession, as you describe, but the photo on today's front page was a still image extracted from the video footage Sydney shot.

Would it be correct to say, "The bridge was imploded using explosives?"

-- Posted by Ray on Wed, Nov 11, 2009, at 3:04 PM

Response by Eric Crump/Editor:

Sounds good to me!

Great picture, Sydney - you caught it just perfectly! Very cool.

-- Posted by koeller77 on Wed, Nov 11, 2009, at 2:17 PM

Never mind all I had to do was open my eyes

-- Posted by Gal66 on Wed, Nov 11, 2009, at 1:42 PM

Is there video of this somewhere?

-- Posted by Gal66 on Wed, Nov 11, 2009, at 1:40 PM

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