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N0KFQ > TODAY 12.09.10 21:12l 54 Lines 2296 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 16337_N0KFQ
Read: GUEST VE7HFY
Subj: Today in History - Sep 12
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Sent: 100912/1930Z @:N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA #:16337 [Branson] FBB7.00i $:16337_N
From: N0KFQ@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
To : TODAY@WW
Sep 12, 1993:
New floating bridge opens in Seattle; I-90 stretches from coast
to coast
On September 12, 1993, the rebuilt Lacey V. Murrow Bridge over
Lake Washington opens in Seattle. The new bridge, which was
actually the eastbound lanes of Interstate 90 (the westbound
lanes cross the lake on a separate bridge), connects the city and
its eastern suburbs. It replaced the original Murrow Bridge, the
first floating concrete bridge in the world, which was destroyed
by a flood in November 1990.
In December 1938, Washington governor Clarence Martin and Lacey
V. Murrow, the director of the Washington Toll Bridge Authority,
broke ground on what would be the largest floating structure in
the world: the Lake Washington Floating Bridge, also known as the
Mercer Island Bridge, between Seattle to the west and Bellevue,
Washington, to the east. (It was renamed for Murrow in 1967.) At
the time the bridge was built, it carried US Route 10 across the
lake; a few decades later, that highway became Interstate 90. The
bridge was a Public Works Administration-financed project
designed to give work to unemployed Washingtonians and to make
the towns across the lake from Seattle more accessible to
suburban development.
When the bridge opened in 1940, the Seattle Times called it "the
biggest thing afloat." It was almost two miles long, contained
100,000 tons of steel, floated on more than 20 hollow concrete
pontoons, and carried 5,000 cars each day. (By 1989, its daily
load was closer to 100,000 cars.)
In 1990, while the bridge was closed for repairs, construction
workers punched giant holes in the pontoons that kept it afloat
and went home for the weekend. A few days of rain and high winds
filled the pontoons with water, and the bridge broke apart and
sank.
Repairing it was no easy task: The sinking pontoons had pulled
more than a half-mile of highway into the lake with them, and the
structure needed to be rebuilt from scratch. This project took
three years and cost $93 million. When the bridge finally
reopened, it closed one of the last remaining gaps in the
interstate highway system: a person could drive from Boston to
Seattle without ever leaving I-90.
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
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