New Earthquake Defenses For an Iconic Bridge

Workers lifting the first 2.3 million pound, 525-foot section of the new Bay Bridge tower into place.

This one steel tower, which weighs 1,200 tons, more than 2.3 million pounds, will be one of four legs that will come together, tapering towards the top, to form the one tower of the Self-Anchored Suspension Span

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said the Eastern Span's Self-Anchored Suspension Span is the largest public works project in California's history.

Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums on hand to praise the work being done on the Oakland side of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

Mechanical platform, seen in the center-right of this image, called a strand jack gantry is slowly lifting the 2.3 million pound segment from its horizontal position along rails on the barge into a vertical position over the tower's foundation and will then lower the sections into the marine foundation mounted in the bedrock.

Looking toward the east, construction continues on the Eastern Span roadway

Bart Ney, CalTrans Public Information Officer, led a boat tour to show off an up close view of the engineering processes under way.

The tower sections, which are manufactured in China, are the first shipment of 20 sections that make up the four individual tower legs. Three more will be anchored to rods in the foundation over the next three weeks, and the next sections arrive here in October.

Unlike a typical suspension bridge that has two cables running end-to-end with the roadway suspended from these main cable, this single-cable design is anchored within the eastern end of the roadway, and the cable is carried over this single tower and wraps around the two side-by-side decks at the western end.