Crews assemble crane to demolish Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge

Piece by piece, crews put together a 250 ton crane that will be used to knock down the collapsed Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge in Big Sur.

“The crane consisted of eleven loads coming from various parts of the state and it’s essentially being put together here on site,” said David Galarza with Caltrans . “It’s quite a task. They’re using a crane to put a crane together.”

After everything is assembled crews will attach a 6000 pound wrecking ball to the crane and use it to bring down the bridge.

“He’ll take it to a certain distance above the bridge deck and essentially drop it on there,” said Galarza . “Do that repeatedly and it will cause the bridge to fail. The key with that is making sure that the bridge fails in the location that we want it to.”

Residents are giving a warm welcome to construction on the bridge. Brian Mazurek has been unemployed for the last month. He can’t get to work because the bridge is down.

“It’s tough, it’s an adjustment for sure,” said Mazurek . “It’s hard on the community all around. It’s impacted everybody.”

Local businesses say they’re also feeling the pinch.

“It’s costing us thousands and thousands of dollars to be closed,” said Alan Perlmutter , owner of Big Sur River Inn. “We have 60 or 70 people unemployed. We have a skeleton crew here just to help them out and to allow local people to come in and get a hamburger, have a beer.”

Caltrans believes it will take them about two days to put the crane together. Demolition of the bridge is set for early next week.

Caltrans said they are confident the demolition will take only about a day, but they do not know for sure.

They’re also working out when construction will start on the new bridge, which they say will be made out of steel.