Video footage of deck removal as landmark Californian bridge is replaced.
The Commodore Schuyler F. Heim Bridge was built from 1946 to 1948 by the US Navy. The striking north-south lift-span bridge casts a steel-pillar shape over the port landscape, carrying countless trucks and automobiles between Terminal Island and the mainland where Wilmington and Long Beach meet.
Several times a day, traffic is stopped as the bridge’s metal-plate roadbed rises up elevator-style to allow tugs, sailboats and other vessels to pass beneath. Painted green, the bridge’s profile features two cross-braced steel towers suspended by cables.
But no longer. The bridge is being replaced and, as you can see from this striking Caltrans time-lapse video, the original bridge is slowly being removed from the landscape.
