A friend of mine was on the Discovery Channel video crew for the show “The Detonators” during the demolition of the old Liberty Memorial Bridge. Their crew followed around the guys in charge of bringing down the old bridge as they sized up the job, rigged their explosives and shaped charges, and pulled the trigger on those big explosions. It may also answer a couple of questions for you as to why they dropped the spans the way they did, and whether things went according to plan.

An excerpt is available here on Discovery Channel’s website.

If you’re like me, you will want to download the full episode for $1.99 on iTunes. Here’s the link (you must have iTunes installed, which is free).

If you have visited this site for a while or watched the news, you may recall that I was the last person to drive across the old bridge before it was closed to the public. The last vehicle to cross the bridge was a motorcycle!

The demolition guys gave me a couple of strips from the shaped charges used to bring down the last part of the bridge. Oh yeah, they’re ranked highly on the list of things in my big souvenir box!

In my conversations with guys from this demolition crew, I found out that they were VERY concerned about wind, something that’s addressed in this episode. For a really neat perspective on the crew that pulled off this impressive feat of demolition, and how they did it, check out the episode! $1.99 is cheap for a souvenir about such a prominent part of Bismarck-Mandan’s history.