Hat tip to my favorite Mick Jones band for the title of this post. I hiked a long ways today, humping some very heavy gear all over the Bismarck-Mandan area to capture lots of photos. I also had a hand in shooting high-definition (HD) video of the area today too, but I don’t own that footage. Sorry. My personal camcorder was rolling, but the footage didn’t turn out as well as my footage of Span One going down. So I’ll stick to my primary objective: here are the pics!

People were lining the hills from above the railroad bridge all the way to the hill north of I-94. Doing so only provided a view of the middle span.

Speaking of the middle span, there was a lot of confusion as to why it came down in one giant piece. I’ll tell you what the explosives expert of the demolition crew told me. Before they install their shape charges, they cut the bolts anchoring the bridge spans to the pilings. They can’t be cutting them with a grinder and sending sparks all over their explosives once they’ve been placed, after all. They had the east span rigged as well as the bottom of the middle span, but then the winds came up. They didn’t want to risk their guys being on the top of the middle span if the wind blew it over, so they opted to drop it and finish cutting it on the ground with torches. Notice that in the days before the demolition, they pushed rocks and dirt out below the bridge. That allows the crews to have land on which to salvage the steel, much easier than hunting around the water.

Notice the piece on the right hand side, the top of the pier that underwent repairs in an attempt to help the old bridge limp along. The repaired areas served their purposes, keeping the old bridge in operation until the crews were ready to take ‘er down.

Thanks to the guys who let me poke around a little bit where the cleanup occurred. I liked the arch of this digger reaching over the pillars of the last remaining bridge support. In the background, the big nasty machinery is chewing up the metal as we speak. As of this evening, they pretty much had the east span cleaned up.

How about those jaws? This machine reminds me of that James Bond villain. This guy’s got a pretty fun job, I bet. Chewin’ up steel. I can see how a feller could derive a great deal of satisfaction from it.

By the way, I heard they’re saving chunks of the bridge like this in order to put them in the park on either end of the new bridge. Obviously they have a lot of work to do on those areas, and are making a lot of progress on the west end, but now that the other bridge is going away I imagine they’ll make quick work of the memorial park on the east end too. They just have a lot of rubble and debris to remove first.

Coolest souvenirs of the day: these are pieces of shrapnel from the shaped charges that brought down the mighty Memorial Bridge. I got them from the demolition crew that was doing the aforementioned cleanup. They appear to be copper, and I guess they flew away from the detonation at an extremely high rate of speed. Thankfully these two managed to land in my hands. I’ll keep them forever as a souvenir of the old humming bridge.

Coolest unexpected shot of the day: this guy was flying circles around the area reminding everybody to vote McCain-Palin next week. I’m not going to tell you who to vote for, but I suggest you vote against socialism. Against rabid gun control. Against infanticide. Against domestic terrorists. You get the picture. I Photoshopped this shot to bring the banner in closer to the plane…the drag line was actually a lot longer.

By the way, hats off to Brad Feldman for his coverage of this thing from start to finish. I was present videotaping at the symbolic groundbreaking with Senator Conrad way back when, and I think he was there as well…and he’s followed this project tirelessly. He had cool ideas like putting cameras in one of the houses next to the bridge blast, and loves Bismarck-Mandan as much as I do. I asked my wife to record KFYR and KXMB coverage on DVD here at the house, and can’t wait to go back and watch them both.

So…what’s next? Got anything else we need to blow up?