High-Stakes Steelwork Proves a Spectator Sport
August 25, 2003 1:07am

By EDIE GROSS

James East has been off the clock for hours, but at 8 o'clock on a Saturday night, the equipment operator from Spotsylvania County is standing just outside a construction zone at the Springfield interchange.

Dressed in a hard hat and work uniform, East says he's standing by, just in case they--they being a gaggle of steelworkers, crane operators and traffic-control specialists a few hundred yards away--need him.

"I didn't have to come up here if I didn't want to," said East, who works for Shirley Contracting Corp., the lead contractor on the massive project. "But I wanted to see 'em hang that steel bar."

East wasn't the only one who dropped by the work zone this weekend to watch contractors hoist 600 tons of steel 100 feet over the travel lanes of Interstate 95.

A patch of grass just east of the highway in Springfield had the feel of a block party as more than 100 spectators dropped by with lawn chairs, picnic baskets and binoculars to witness the massive undertaking. One steelworker's family drove down from Pennsylvania to see the action.

"This is a big, big deal for the neighborhood," said project engineer Ed Wysocki. "We have a few people come out and watch phases, but, by far, this is the big event."

It's not the first time steel girders have been suspended to form a new overpass at the interchange. The $676 million project has been going on for more than four years--and will continue until 2007.

But Saturday night was the first time the entire northbound section of the road was closed for more than 15 minutes at a time.

At 6 p.m., the Virginia Department of Transportation started shutting down lanes.

By 8 p.m., anyone heading north to Washington or west to Tysons Corner had to endure a seven-mile detour toward Baltimore before being able to come back toward Interstates 395 north and 495 west. The detour was in place until 10 a.m. yesterday.

Early on, highway traffic was backed up about 11 miles to Woodbridge, though it flowed pretty well past the construction site.

Saturday-night entertainment Trudy and Steve Sherick were among the first spectators on the scene, arriving as the detour kicked in.

"We're kind of boring people," Trudy Sherick said by way of explaining how the couple came to spend a Saturday evening at the Springfield interchange.

"It's just kind of interesting to see how it all goes together," she said. "When you're whizzing along the highway, you don't get a feel for how massive this project is."

Viswanatha Srinivasan of Springfield said he couldn't imagine skipping the Saturday-night event.

"I've been watching it every day, every development going on here," he said. "It's amazing. They're doing a superb job."

Don Rooney, a retired patent attorney from Burke, said the sheer novelty of the work brought him out.

"How often do you see something like this?" asked Rooney, who called his daughter on his cell phone to encourage her to come out. "That's incredible, isn't it? This is unbelievable, isn't it?"

After splicing together two steel beams, creating a 200-ton girder about as long as a football field, steelworkers from High Steel of Lancaster, Pa., hoisted the first assembly into the air with enormous cranes about 9:40 p.m. Workers, several of whom were lifted 100 feet into the air in buckets, bolted each beam into place.

"They haven't printed enough money to get me up there," said Rooney.

One man remarked that he'd like to bring his 3-year-old granddaughter to the site to snap her picture with the partially finished overpass in the background. By the time she's 7, he said, the entire interchange will look different.

Another said that if he'd thought of it sooner, he would have sold detour maps to tourists who wanted to find a way around the mess. The VDOT detour was expected to add at least 45 minutes to a motorist's trip.

VDOT had warned motorists for weeks that the lane closures and detour could cause major delays. They urged drivers as far south as South Carolina to find alternate routes.

State police pulled over one motorist who insisted on driving into the work zone about 7 a.m., but other than that, officials reported that traffic was pretty cooperative.

It appeared that warnings to the American Trucking Association paid off: Truck traffic near the work zone was lighter than usual.

By 1 a.m., traffic backups stretched only two miles.

Spectators enjoy drama Bob Serth and his "pre-fiancee" Joanna Bemisderfer rode their bicycles from their home nearby to the construction area.

"Only in America would we be like, 'Oh, they're building something. And it's big. Let's get on our bikes,'" quipped Bemisderfer.

"Why weren't we interested when they were doing that one right there?" Serth asked, pointing toward another nearby overpass.

"I don't know," Bemisderfer said. "Maybe it's the drama of stopping traffic."

Kristy Zipp and her three daughters came to the project site last weekend when the beams were originally scheduled to be lifted. That work was delayed a week because of rain and lightning.

So the Zipp family drove the 21/2 hours from Conestoga, Pa., again this weekend. Kristy Zipp's husband, Theron, is High Steel's foreman on the job.

They took turns watching the project, grilling hot dogs and hamburgers and trying to get a clear picture of "Saturday Night Live" on a small battery-operated TV set.

Kristy Zipp said she was surprised that so many had stopped by to watch the bridge's progress.

"I'm sorry," she said, "but if I didn't have some involvement in it, this isn't something I'd spectate."

After about 15 minutes, Carol McAlee of Burke had had enough. She and three girlfriends had walked to the site from a nearby restaurant after another friend called to say that the steel was moving. The four women had been celebrating the birthday of pal Carol Fisher, who wanted to see the bridge go up.

"On my birthday, I'm going to a male strip joint," declared McAlee. "We're not doing this bridge-building thing."

By 1 a.m., as steelworkers fitted two more beams into place, most of the curiosity-seekers had gone home. But East, of Spotsylvania, still kept an eye on things.

VDOT will close three of the four northbound lanes Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday between 10:30 p.m. and 5 a.m. as workers install spacers to shore up the steel beams hung Saturday night.

But a repeat performance of the entire road closure isn't slated until the evening of Sept. 6 and the early morning of Sept. 7, when workers are expected to hang another 600 tons of steel in the same spot.

"I'll be out here," said East. "That's for sure."

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Copyright 2004 The Free Lance-Star Publishing Company.