Local News

Hancock Forest Management and DeBriae Logging were able to move a steel railroad bridge away from the Elochoman River on Tuesday.
Last winter’s floods eroded the bridge’s footings, and it had slipped several feet toward the river. Local residents felt the bridge clogged the river channel during high water and caused flooding. The road over the bridge had long been closed, and Hancock decided to take it out.
It wasn’t easy.
Hancock contracted with DeBriae for removal, and the logging company brought in a yarding tower. They welded mounts to attach cables to the bridge end on the south bank and cleared an open area in which they could work. To pull the bridge, they hung three blocks on it and strung the yarder’s skyline and skidding lines through them; the lines pulled through blocks strapped to tail-hold stumps near the yarder to create a mechanical advantage for pulling the 400,000 structure.
They contracted with Campbell Crane for one of the firm’s two biggest cranes to lift the end on the north bank.
They placed logs on a gravel bar at the north bank and along the skid road on the south bank. Bulldozers would have lines attached to the top of the tall bridge to keep it steady as it was pulled.

The plan was to have the crane lift the north end and set it on the north bank logs as the yarder pulled.
An engineering firm from Eugene, Ore., OBEK Engineering monitored the plan.
“It’s a good scheme and it should work,” engineer Dave Gordon told Jerry DeBriae and Hancock’s project manager Dave Boyd on Monday.

It worked well for a while on Tuesday. The crane’s lift was quickly completed, but as the yarder continued to pull the bridge, it started to veer to the side under the influence of one of the pullin lines. The crew hung the block on another stump and braced it with a bulldozer, but that stump was displaced almost as soon as the yarder started pulling again.
"They went back to Plan A and hung the block back on the first stump," Boyd said. "They hooked their second line to another hold and were able to steer it. They pulled for a while then stopped and pulled with the second line to straighten it up. It worked very well."
Valley residents said the bridge was built in the mid-1930s. Crown Zellerbach Corp. operated the logging railroad until 1957 or 1958, and then the trains were ended and the track was converted to a roadway for logging trucks.