Lake Champlain Bridge between New York & Vermont demolished

December 29th, 2009 - 1:06 am ICT by Aishwarya Bhatt ( 1 comment )

Lake Champlain Bridge New York, Dec 28 (THAINDIAN NEWS) The legendary ‘Lake Champlain Bridge’ between New York and Vermont has been brought down by controlled explosives. It was closed for the public on 16th October, because the engineers certified that it wasn’t safe to be used, as there was severe erosion to its concrete piers.

It was a controlled explosion and the onlookers watched in the snow, as the 2,184-foot-long span between Crown Point, N.Y., and Addison, Vt., was dropped into the water and ice at the narrow south end of the lake Monday morning. Due to the explosions there was a sharp concussion and huge mountains of smoke as the bridge made of steel and concrete, collapsed and was laid to its final rest.

The corroded bridge was 80 years old. And the Idaho-based Advanced Explosives Demolition handled the detonation of the bridge, using a whooping 800 pounds of explosives packed into more than 500 charges. And since the bridge collapsed, the debris got scattered all over and they will be removed completely only by spring. The construction of the new replacement bridge will start in 2011 summer.

The Lake Champlain bridge demolition marked the collapse of the bridge, which opened 80 years back, in 1929 for traffic. It started as a toll bridge, which connected New York 185 in New York to VT 17 in Vermont. The toll system was removed in 1978. This bridge was also one of only two bridges that allowed travelers to cross Lake Champlain. The only other way to cross is by the Ferry.

Video: Lake Champlain bridge demolition

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Posted in World News |

One Response

  1. C Dub Says:

    You’d think in New York they’d have enough controlled demolition folks around to not outsource it to Idaho. Or maybe they all went home after the last big job there.

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