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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 12

Location:
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Issue Date:
Page:
12
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

PITTSBURGH TOST-GAZETTE CTDNESDAY, JULY 23, 2003 LOCAL MEWS Bricfce was marvel of engineering li t' r. -I After 121 years, viaduct laid down BRIDGE FROM PAGE A-l' 4 Brian D. EmDergPooi pnoio Twisted steel from the 301 -foot-high Kinzua Viaduct sits on the floor of the gorge yesterday in McKean County. The center of the viaduct collapsed Monday in the face of a tornado. LOCAL STATE NEWS BRIEFS gjFjAGK A-12, A-13, jSOUTH Luc ELIZABETH BOROUGH Payjrash fee, avoid arrest LBorough residents who have' net paid their annual $115 garbage bill will not only be cited, lrniemay be arrested Mayor John Yacura said last night.

Yacura said property owners "who have not paid the fee but are putting 'their garbage out next to their neighbor's garbage for pick up, will be arrested for theft of ser- part of council's, crackdown cm garbage fee collection, i Next week, a borough employee will ride with the garbage truck point out which properties have not paid the fee, and their garbage 'will be left at the curb. Council President Randy said 87 percent of the residents have paid the garbage fee, but the borough financially needs to bring that number up to 100 percent. I BETHEL PARK SCHOOLS I Cook to fill Manion seat The school board last night accepted the resignation of board member James Manion and appointed Donna M. Cook to fill the remainder of Manion's term, which expires in December. Manion resigned for health reasons.

i Cook is the president of the district's PTA-PTO council and is a candidate for a full term on the board in the November election. She received the most votes "on both the Republican and Denlibcifa-'' (tic tickets in the primary election. The original bridge was iron; in 1900, that structure was demolished and replaced by a duplicate design of steel. Passenger service ended in 1949, and the Erie Railroad abandoned the line in 1959 because it was too expensive to maintain. The viaduct was sold for scrap, but Nick Kovalchick, the man who bought it, changed his mind and sold it to the state.

Kinzua Bridge State Park was created in 1963. In 1986, the Knox Kane Railroad began running a steam locomotive to give tourists a look at the astonishing structure and the view from its span. The park drew up to 100,000 visitors a year. Last year, though, engineers determined that the bridge was badly deteriorated and vulnerable to high winds. Though it was designed to flex under wind pressure, rust and years had taken their toll.

"After approximately 100 years of aging, a lot of things that would allow it to move were rusted or frozen solid from rust," said Comoss. "The structure loses its flex and becomes more rigid." The state closed the bridge to rail traffic in June 2002, then later in the summer to pedestrian traffic. In February, crews started a $10 million renovation project. The towers they had completed all stood firm in the wind, "so at least there's some validation to our work," said Comoss. By Lillian Thomas Post-Gazette Staff Writer The Kinzua Viaduct had survived many travails before a tornado sent its center section toppling into the floor of the Kinzua Valley.

It was conceived as an attention-getting engineering marvel by Gen. Thomas Kane, who owned a coal company and wanted to draw people to the area as well as move his coal across the deep gorge. The original bridge was built in 94 days in 1882 by 40 men, who used each completed tower as a platform for the next one. The finished viaduct had 20 towers supporting the 301-foot-high span that ran about 2,100 feet across the gorge and at the time was the tallest viaduct in the world. It was the fourth tallest before its fall.

"This was a unique structure," said Eugene Comoss, chief engineer for the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. "The design method was fairly unusual for those days. In trade publications at the time, the design engineer was criticized by his Eeers. Typically a bridge that igh and that wide has cross bracing braces that resemble the letter Xi. He just used horizontal members.

Some engineers at the time thought it would fail." It took 121 years for them to be proved right. them and blocked their route. Then came the booming sounds -apparently the death knell of the deteriorated viaduct collapsing at its center into twisted heaps on the valley below. Decades ago, the span was proclaimed as the "Eighth Wonder" of the engineering world. In February, work began on the $10 million renovation project; now, officials must decide whether to rebuild it or demolish what remains.

"As the crew was leaving the site, trees were falling down across the access road," said Steven Brode of W.M. Brode Co. of Newcomerstown, Ohio, the company working on the bridge. "That's when my superintendent said he thought at first he was hearing more trees falling; he heard this series of booms boom, boom, boom, boom. Later he realized that was probably the towers falling.

He called me to tell me he thought part of the bridge had fallen." crew also contacted Barrett Clark, manager of Kinzua Bridge State Park, before evacuating. He arrived to find trees snapped off, a tangle of debris and a park worker trapped inside a collapsed shed. After the worker was freed, Clark crawled through the debris to look at the Kinzua Viaduct. A section of the It was classified as an Fl tornado, which has winds from 73 to 112 mph. The engineer on the bridge renovation project, Brian Emberg, drove up from Harrisburg when he got the word, arriving around 8:30 p.m.

"It was very eerie. The whole valley was filled with fog, it was very dusky, and it almost looked like a battle scene, with the fog and this structure crumpled up," said Emberg, vice president of Herbert Rowland Grubic, an engineering firm in Harrisburg. Meteorologists from the National Weather Service were on the scene yesterday, along with engineers and officials from the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, which runs the park. Officials will continue their assessment of damage today and start to consider whether the state will rebuild the bridge or demolish what's left. bridge had "just laid over on its side." Six of the bridge's 20 support towers still stood on the park side of the gorge, three on the other side.

The ones that remained standing had been recently renovated. The other 11 towers crashed onto the valley floor after bolts on their bases snapped. One tower had been twisted 180 degrees before it toppled. In addition, thousands of trees were down, reminding Clark of the Agent Orange deforestation he saw three decades ago in Vietnam. The National Weather Service reported yesterday that a tornado touched down between 3:15 and 3:30 p.m.

in a wooded area about a mile west of the viaduct. It continued moving northeast for 3' miles, packing winds Df 100 mph and cutting a one-third-mile-wide swath that took down thousands of trees, including black cherry, beech and maple. Walk In Reach In Closets STORAOC SOLUTIONS FOR: Clowta ol Any Stat Mud ffoomi Laundfy toomi Whole House; up to 8 areas Clark, who is from Juniata County but had come to the area every year since the 1950s before becoming park manager last year, said he can barely comprehend how the landscape changed in a matter of minutes. "Looks like somebody took a lawn mower down through. The devastation is incredible." Brode said that as he and his crew tried to salvage equipment yesterday, he thought about the months of work ana the uncertain future.

"It's pretty tough," said Brode. "We have 25 guys out here that have been working this thing since February, going hard at it. We won't know where we go from here, and of course, it's a beautiful structure that we've put that work into." I Patrick Hernan is a freelance writer. Staff writer Lillian Thomas can be reached at IthomasQ post- g02ette.com or 412-263-3566. tiKm 2 AT' II I ill I I li i IV S'i i per room PanttlM Horn OfflcM Unn CIomN a 15-25 OFF Any OftOanriation tlorags Syitam WMH iMt coupon tomt wMTicliom apply Classic Mm CM 3 room it MM .11111 I1IIIUIII 5 1 1 1 It 111 i iui I T'V 1 1116 dCdlS IWO'alCP 1 1 CHW Expires 71 503 Deep-Clean Process call now We don't lust remove dirt.

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Severe storms cause ma camp Menu m. 412-389-8930 724-779-9590 1 -i widespread damag STORMS FROM PAGE A-10 't' f' Jyj -trof Termini- i tial rain that swamped much of the state's northern tier, dumping more than 5 inches at Franklin Airport, said Bob Davis, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. In Oil City, Venango County, scaffolding was blown down at a Salvation Army building under construction, high winds tore off roofs from buildings in the Oil City Industrial Park and most of the 11,500 residents were without power last night. Two F-l tornadoes touched down in McKean County, and one coK lapsed the Kinzua While the most violent weather is behind us, unsettled conditions persist and more showers and thunderstorms can be expected in the next few days, said Jeff Warner, a meteorologist at Penn State University. Flood watches and warnings were also posted again yesterday for much of northwestern Pennsylvania.

But there's one silver lining amid the thunderclouds. "We don't expect any hot weather anytime soon," Warner said. Post-Gazette staff writer Lori Shontz and The Associated Press contn6uted to this report Mackenzie Carpenter can be reached at rncarpentertfi post- ga2ette.c0m or 412-263-1949; Jan Ackerman can be reached atjack-ermandt or 412- 263-1370. Patrick Hernan is ajree-Jance writer. amount of damage they cause, with winds estimated at 70 mph.

Damage was widespread, affecting 26 of the county's municipalities. Two houses were destroyed Monday afternoon near Carrollton. In all, 900 incidents were reported to the emergency operations center between 1 p.m. Monday and 1 a.m. yesterday.

Most calls related to street flooding and downed trees. Frank Heinecke, 70, a resident of Lakeview Estates Mobile Home Park in New Lebanon, said he was looking southeast from his unit and saw a cloud of swirling debris at about 2 p.m. "It was really raining, and wind was blowing," said Heinecke. "I said, 'Come look at this, Bernice. It's just like on TV'" The tornado toppled trees onto at least two units, including one occupied by Gladys Maskrey.

"I feel lucky to be alive," said Maskrey, 69. About a quarter-mile away, a trailer occupied by Jamie DuMond was lifted from its blocks and set backdown. A microburst, the meteorological term for straight-line winds, also did damage to a one-quarter square mile area of Mercer County slightly farther north, near Carlton, which is near the Crawford County border. Its winds were actually stronger than the tornado's, at 75 miles per hour. Franklin, in Mercer County, appeared to be hardest hit by torren- REFINANCE NOW WITH OUR HOME EQUITY LOAN LIMITED-TIME FIXED-RATE OFFER jiiilipniitim APR for 20 years A smart alternative to traditional refinancing Pay zero closing costs (save as much as $2400) Also great for bill consolidation.

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