PORT GAMBLE — As Monday morning dawned cold and slightly overcast, Port Gamble residents gathered to watch as pieces of history float out of Port Gamble Bay. With a tugboat leading the way, and one following, the pontoons R, S and T were floated as majestically as bridge sections can be from the waters neighboring the mill town and on to create more history.
The pontoons, which weigh a combined 19,000 tons, will be stripped of their road-tops and columns and refurbished with new, wider roadways to be used on the eastern half of the Hood Canal Bridge.
“It’s strange, a really strange feeling right now,” said Port Gamble resident Pat Menge as she watched the pontoons move past the old mill site. “It’s sad. Exciting, but sad. I remember when they moved those pontoons in 1980. I’m not sure what we’ll look at out of our window now.”
Menge was one of 10 residents who watched the pontoons depart on their way to Seattle’s Pier 91, where they arrived Tuesday morning. Before watching the pontoons towed into open waters, she and others gathered to share stories about the massive structures and the Hood Canal Bridge.
Tales abounded about when the west portion of the bridge sank on Feb. 13, 1979 during hurricane force winds. Menge was working with the Winslow Police Department at the time, and a coworker said he was heading north to watch the bridge sink. She asked him to grab any part he could for her as a memento.
“The last part of the bridge was about to go down, and he went out there,” Menge said. “The next day, he showed up and said he had a present for me. Turned out, he was able to grab a life ring from the last part of the bridge before it went down.”
“That really is amazing,” said Hood Canal Bridge communications manager Becky Hixson. “To still have something from the old bridge, that’s just amazing.”
Others had stories about the years following the bridge’s demise, like Poulsbo resident David Black, who was the manager of Marine Operation for Washington State Ferries at the time of the infamous 1979 windstorm. He and his crew had to determine how best to transport residents between Jefferson and Kitsap counties — something they did with different methods which resulted in varying degrees of success.
“Another idea we used was a tugboat towing a barge,” Black said. “It was not reliable at all. In theory, it looked like a good idea, but practically, it was not good.”
The barge served to carry noncommercial vehicles between Jefferson and Kitsap, with two school buses with their wheels removed for walk-on passengers to sit in. Commercial vehicles used a barge, the “Beach Girl,” that was a series of pontoons lashed together. It was much more reliable than the tugboat and barge idea, and is still operating today, Black said.
“It’s been good to hear these stories, to remind us what worked and what didn’t during that time,” Hixson said. “We’re going to do a lot of public outreach to help prepare people from the Olympic Peninsula and from Kitsap County so they are prepared for the six-week closure.”
The bridge is expected to close in May 2009 to allow for replacement of the eastern half and refurbishment of the western half, she said. The R, S and T pontoons, which were connected for storage and the move, served as temporary pontoons while the bridge was being repaired between February 1979 and October 1982, Hixson said.
