Owner Of Crane That Hoisted Bus Off Collapsed Pittsburgh Bridge: 'It's Almost Like A Video Game'
By: KDKA-TV News Staff
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Kyrk Pyros is a Pittsburgh guy with 20 plus years of experience using joysticks inside a massive crane, and his team successfully removed the Port Authority bus Monday evening from the Fern Hollow Bridge collapse site.
If the City of Pittsburgh needs something heavy lifted, Pyros tells KDKA his phone starts ringing. He's the president of Allegheny Crane and Rigging, a full-service crane company that provides complete engineering plans and a 400-ton crane for rent.
Pyros tells KDKA's Meghan Schiller he felt all the eyeballs on him Monday.
"It's almost like a video game, to a point, with really big consequences," said Pyros.
He served as the lift director and was ultimately the person responsible for getting the 44,000-pound Port Authority bus back on solid ground. He gave step-by-step instructions and served as the "eyes" for a fellow team member who could not see the bus.
WATCH: Shelley Bortz reports
KDKA's Meghan Schiller asked him if he was nervous.
"We sort of live for that stuff and it really is kind of fun," Pyros said. "The guys really step up their game, but like I said, we're really blessed. Pittsburgh came together and everybody in here helped us out."
From McGann and Chester pulling the bus to a safer spot, up and away from the wall to the City of Pittsburgh firefighters using chicken ladders to rig the bus up to Pittsburgh Public Works salting the work area so nothing (or no one) slipped.
"Our goal was to stop the knuckle from moving, said Pyros. "That bus has a knuckle, its articulating, and that was a really big problem for us, a concern. So we want to make sure it wouldn't lock, so we built our own lock with timber inside."
For Pyros and his team, practice makes perfect. Plus, it helps that this bus was not the first.
"I picked the other bus up in the sinkhole, I picked the plane off the runway," said Pyros. "Our team, not just me but our entire team, we picked the garbage truck that fell through a parking deck, we picked trains off the side of the mountain when the train derailment happened."
The 400-ton crane did its job so now Pyros tells KDKA it will take three days to break it down and load it onto 18 semi-trucks.
It required 308 thousand pounds of counterweight to make sure the crane did not tip over and fall into the ravine.
