PORT GAMBLE — Port Gamble Bay will be more crowded than usual until spring due to 10 gigantic anchors which arrived Tuesday morning. They’ll be difficult to miss.
Each coffee-can shaped structure is roughly two stories tall, between 46 and 60 feet in diameter, and weighs between 995 and 1,385 tons — almost two and half times the weight of the Space Needle.
They will remain in Port Gamble Bay until May, when they will be sunk at the Hood Canal Bridge site in preparation for the replacement of the east half of the bridge in 2009.
The Washington State Department of Transportation has used the bay as a storage area before. Three pontoons were placed there when the bridge was damaged in a 1979 windstorm. The pontoons were moved to Seattle earlier this year and are being retrofitted for the bridge improvements, making room in the bay for other sections of the bridge project to be stored.
“The anchors did float out this morning,” said Hood Canal Bridge communications manager Becky Hixson on Monday. The anchors were transported from a dry dock in Seattle and made their way to Port Gamble.
“We’re using Port Gamble Bay because it’s a protected bay, that will protect the anchors from most weather,” said Hood Canal Bridge project public information officer Sarah Lamb. “It’s the same location we lease for R, S and T (pontoons), and we lease it from the state.”
The bay is also near the Hood Canal Bridge, and is deep enough to store large equipment and bridge pieces, Hixson said.
While the bay is safe, security will be put on the shoulders of residents, to some degree. Several neighbors enjoyed having the pontoons there before they were moved, Hixson said, so the safety plan includes having residents keep an eye on the site.
“We did pass that information on to the security contractor,” she said. “He worked it into the security plan we have for the anchors. We’ll also have cameras watching the area. Those eyes out there really help.”
“There’s a 500-foot perimeter and fencing around the anchors to make sure no one falls in,” said WSDOT construction manager Scott Ireland. Each anchor is shaped “kind of like a big coffee can,” Hixson said, and could be dangerous if anyone were to fall in one.
Another set of 10 anchors will replace them once they are moved to the bridge, though they will only remain in Port Gamble Bay for a couple of weeks before they are installed at the Hood Canal Bridge site.
