Bridge pier blast delayed until Thursday

A broken part on a drilling rig has pushed back the scheduled blast of the toppled concrete pier in the Mississippi River at Cape Girardeau from tonight to Thursday night, Missouri Department of Transportation officials said. No exact time has been set.

The blast won't be noisy because it will take place 18 to 24 feet under water, said MoDOT construction inspector Rick Lamb. There won't be much to see from the surface either, he said. "There will be very little splash."

U.S. Coast Guard officials said river traffic would be halted during the blast. The drilling work in preparation for the blast and the subsequent salvage work shouldn't disrupt boat and barge traffic in the navigation channel of the river, said Lt. j.g. Anthony Baird of the Coast Guard marine safety office in Paducah, Ky.

But Baird said the Coast Guard has advised boat and barge operators to alert the demolition contractor prior to passing through that area of the river.

The blasting contractor, Dem Tech of Dubois, Wyo., will have to erect a steel frame as a drilling platform over the concrete section of the pier that fell into the river unexpectedly during a Sept. 9 blast that downed part of the steel structure of the old bridge.

Closed in December

A series of blasts has taken down the steel spans that formed the 76-year-old bridge. The old bridge closed in December after the new Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge opened south of the old structure.

Lamb said the drilling rig will be set up early Thursday. The drilling and setting of explosives could take 12 to 18 hours, he said.

"Once we move in there, we really can't pick up and move," he said.

The contractor wants to get the work done as quickly as possible to keep the disruption of barge traffic to a minimum, he said.

A 60-foot section of the 14-foot-diameter pier is resting on its side on the river bottom. "It is a huge chunk of concrete," Lamb said.

There's no equipment available in the area that could haul such a heavy object out of the river so the contractor has to blast it into smaller pieces. Those pieces then will be hauled out of the river, he said.

Once this work is done, the remaining piers and partial piers will have to be exploded. That work could take until mid-November. All of the demolition work, including grading along the river banks, likely won't be completed until December, Lamb said.

Midwest Foundation Corp. of Tremont, Ill., is the general contractor on the project. Midwest crews are handling the salvage work.

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123