Nerves for steel on the Mississippi

Moving around tons of concrete and metal above the fabled river is dangerous duty, but builders say they love it

By Scott Moyers ~ Southeast Missourian

Each morning, Dayrl Reece's wife, Lisa, sees him off to work with the same apprehensive request -- to please be careful and to make sure he comes home in one piece.

The Cape Girardeau iron worker thinks about that sometimes as he's almost 100 feet in the air, his dusty work boots planted on a thin, wooden board that is the only thing between him and the potentially deadly waters of the Mississippi River.

Such is the life of a bridge builder.

It's a life that Reece shares with 100 or so other workers who swarm daily to the site of the new Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge, the $100 million project that requires 12-hour days amidst a mix of iron, concrete and sweat.

"Sure, sometimes you get nervous," said Reece, who is also protected by a safety harness in his work connecting steel reinforcements alongside the new bridge. "But it's a job. It's what we do. You have to watch your step, and everybody watches out for each other."

To an outsider, the work seems like it should be reserved for daredevils and stuntmen. Spend a day on the bridge site, and you'll see workers being carried through the air in a metallic cage, hanging beams on the underbelly of the bridge, straddling girders, standing on the sides of the bridge and climbing ladders to heights normally reserved for mountain climbers and recreational airplane pilots.

But the men -- and yes, a few women -- go about their business on the 100-foot-wide, 4,000-foot-long bridge as if they were working safely in a ground-floor office.

"I've always felt like the most dangerous part of the job is the drive back and forth to work," said Pier 2 foreman Steve Ferrell of Union City, Tenn. "After that, this is easy."

No deaths, some injuries

There must be something to Ferrell's philosophy. The project is considered fairly large by construction standards, but in the seven years since the groundbreaking ceremonies, there has not been one fatality.

"We expect zero fatalities," said project manager Larry Owens of Traylor Brothers Inc., the firm handling the majority of the project. "Back in the old days, bridge building was much more dangerous. These days, we work hard to keep injury rates down."

There have been some injuries, Owens said. One man smashed his hand, and there have been a few broken bones and back strains. Even that's too much, he said.

"That's more than we'd like to see," Owens said.

Owens said Traylor Brothers requires a 100 percent fall protection system, which means that if workers are ever in a situation where they might fall, they are required to wear safety harnesses hooked to something stable.

There are also handrails and guardrails, and the workers are required to wear hard hats and safety glasses. Men working near the water also have to wear life jackets.

An on-site safety committee makes periodic audits of the site.

"We want our guys to be protected," Owens said. "It might look dangerous, but we do everything necessary to make them safe."

Comic relief

Al Mahoney, a veteran bridge builder for Traylor Brothers, is greeted rudely with a loud belch by one of his crew as we walk on the deck of the uncompleted bridge.

"This Budweiser's coming out of me, Al," the worker says, joking.

"It will be coming out of you all day, too," Mahoney shoots back, without looking.

Mahoney has a friendly rapport with the 30 or so workers he oversees as structural superintendent for this project. It's to be expected when you spend that much time under such stressful conditions.

Traylor Brothers hires much of the work out to area tradesmen, such as carpenters, equipment operators, iron workers, laborers, teamsters, concrete finishers and electricians. Then the Evansville, Ind.-based company puts its own people, like Mahoney, in charge of those workers.

"They're good guys," Mahoney says of his crew, mostly iron workers from Paducah Local 782. "I've worked with some of them on other jobs."

Mahoney's men, on this particular 93-degree day last week, are working on Pier 2, hanging a 35-foot, 140,000-pound section of steel on the bridge's main span.

That steel will be the bottom structural layer for four panels of concrete that will be secured onto the steel. It has been a long process.

"Right now, there are 10 million tons of concrete and steel on this side of the pier," Mahoney says.

After the concrete is secured, the men have to reinforce the concrete with cables and steel that run through the concrete. Later, they pour concrete in the narrow spaces left between the panels.

Two men have to stand off of the bridge, in the gap between the two piers, on a metal floor as they operate two drills to tighten bolts. If those two men took three steps backward -- and they weren't wearing the safety harnesses -- they would fall into the river.

"It can be dangerous," Mahoney says, during a break. "Everything we're working with is heavy. Anything can happen."

Nobody's fallen into the river, Mahoney says, though strong winds and the Mississippi River have claimed a few hard hats.

Mahoney got on this job in February 2002. He and his wife rent a house on the outskirts of town. Others travel in mobile homes, taking them from job to job.

It is a life he has lived for decades, throughout his 23 years working on other Mississippi River bridges in Louisiana, through his two jobs in Kentucky over the Ohio River and now his time in Cape Girardeau.

Mahoney will be at this job until October and then, as he always has, he will move on. It's the same story with many of the workers.

"Then we'll go on to the next bridge," he says. "It's moving around, but I don't mind it. I like it. I get to meet a bunch of different people and see a bunch of different areas."

Good money

The work is tough, but the men and women are well paid. A few of the iron workers said they make between $22 and $23 an hour.

They grab breaks when they can, usually one in the morning and one in the afternoon. They get a half hour for lunch, when the lucky among them can find a spot of shade and time for a smoke.

Some take a practical approach to the danger.

"Work's work," says Lloyd Bowers, a carpenter and general foreman who was in charge of building concrete forms for the two big towers. "Everything out here is dangerous. Everybody's got to watch everybody else. We know that."

It would be a rough life for someone accustomed to air conditioning and break rooms. Denise Marshall, a 35-year-old mother from Paducah, Ky., isn't such a person.

Marshall is an apprentice iron worker who has been on the job since August. She looks tough, but laughs when it is suggested.

"My daughters would tell you I'm not tough," she says. "You don't have to be that tough up here, just careful. I just look tough because I'm all sweaty."

Marshall can't deny she did a tough job, with others atop the two towers, working to pull in the strands that make up the stay cables to the top, which is 300 feet above the river.

Her children have different takes on mom's job.

"It excites the 10 year old, it's like Six Flags to her," Marshall said. "The other one doesn't like it as much. But they've gotten used to it."

Short morning ride

Those who operate the big cranes that tower over the new bridge start their day with a ride on a pontoon boat, heading out to the river rigs anchored to the bottom of the Mississippi with long poles, called spuds, that are deeply embedded into the river's sand bed.

Other workers, who help connect steel frames and other bridge material to the crane, also get to cruise at about 20 mph from the shore to about the middle of the river.

Chick Lyons, 23, of New Madrid, works with others to connect steel beams to the crane before men like Daniel Lewis of Vienna, Ill., or Roy Kranawetter of Cape Girardeau County tug and turn on the crane's controls to get the beams to the bridge.

Lewis, who maintains the crane and operates it when Kranawetter needs a break, takes his job so seriously that he even wrote a "Crane Operator's Prayer" that he carries with him.

"Pray for the eyes and that he see clear," he wrote, "and that he should guide the load close but not too near."

He realizes that he's moving tons of material with a crane with people nearby. He recognizes everyone's good fortune that no one has been killed.

When lunchtime comes, a few of the men find some shade on the barge, open their Playmate coolers and pull out lunch. For one, it's ham sandwiches and purple Gatorade.

One worker uses an extra lifejacket as a pillow.

One of the men talks about his stepson's baseball game. Then the one resting brags about a 9-pound bass he'd caught the weekend before.

"It was a monster," he says, without opening his eyes.

Such breaks help get the workers through the day. One of the men agrees with this assertion.

"They just don't come often enough."

Before long, the break is over. It's time to get back up and at it. The men do so without complaint. Some even do so with a sense of pride.

"I've been taking pictures the whole time," says Reece, the man whose job sometimes calls for him to stand on the board alongside the river. "It's part of history. Thirty years from now, if I'm driving across this bridge with my kids, I can say, 'I helped build that.' Everybody here is a part of that."

smoyers@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137