Original subtitles

Narrator: In los angeles...

Yo!

Narrator: ...This team of elite engineers

Is racing to build an epic earthquake-proof bridge.

It just is amazing responsibility.

Narrator: Costing nearly half a billion dollars,

The new sixth street viaduct

Is the biggest bridge project l.A. Has ever seen.

I've worked 36 years building bridges,

I've never built anything like this.

Narrator: To construct this 120,000-ton colossus,

The team must break new ground in bridge building...

We have created new material that has never existed before.

Narrator: ...Push their pioneering designs

To the limit...

If we don't meet the requirements,

A lot of people are gonna have to explain

Why our calculations didn't come up correctly.

Narrator: ...And work down to the wire.

They are not gonna have months.

We are gonna only have hours.

Narrator: This mega bridge brings in a league

Of ambitious new engineering wonders

That are bigger, faster, taller, and more advanced

Than anything ever constructed before.

This is the inside story of the extraordinary challenge

Of building these giants.

♪

-- Captions by vitac -- www.Vitac.Com

Captions paid for by discovery communications

♪

Los angeles,

The home of hollywood.

The city itself has been featured on the silver screen

More times than any movie star.

One of its most iconic features

Is the historic sixth street viaduct.

It's been in any number of movies and adventure films

And post apocalyptic disaster stories.

♪

Narrator: But today, one of the city's

Most famous sites is on the brink of collapse.

What you see here is a sample of concrete

That came out of sixth street viaduct.

Narrator: The bridge's concrete is starting to fall apart.

There's a chemical reaction in the concrete

That is otherwise known as concrete cancer

And what happens is a gel

Is created within the concrete that expands over time

And when it expands it causes the concrete

To crack apart and break.

Narrator: Specialists have tried to repair the cracks

But this it the end of the road.

We had hired international experts to come in and look,

Is there anyway to save this bridge?

And they all said the same thing -- no.

Narrator: City engineers have no option

But to divert the traffic and demolish this bridge.

But they're planning a sequel.

What's exciting about the new bridge

That we're gonna be building

Is that it's an opportunity to improve.

Narrator: The city has challenged los angeles architect

Michael maltzan with designing a new viaduct

That echoes the old one but looks to the future.

The competition brief was to make a new structure

That had the same iconic presence in the city

As the bridge that came before it.

Narrator: This is the spectacular bridge

They plan to build.

At over 3,000 feet long,

The new sixth street bridge

Will follow the same route as the old structure.

Soaring over the busy 101 highway,

City streets, railroads,

And the famous l.A. River.

Nicknamed "the ribbon of light"

The new bridge will feature 10 pairs of huge arches

Running along its entire length.

Giant steel hanger cables will suspend the road deck

From the arches.

Each cable is strong enough to hold more than a million pounds.

♪

Below, each support column

Will sit on huge sliding bearings.

These columns are designed to withstand a once

In a thousand year earthquake.

Costing nearly half a billion dollars,

This pioneering new structure

Will ensure the sixth street bridge

Remains a los angeles icon

For the 21st century and beyond.

♪

Building this enormous bridge

Would be a difficult project anywhere,

But the crowded inner city location

Will make this construction particularly difficult

For principle engineer julie allen and her team.

Many bridges are constructed over a single obstacle,

A river or a roadway.

We're crossing over a six lane freeway, four city streets,

18 railroad tracks

That are operated by five different agencies,

Along with the los angeles river,

Which can vary from a trickle to a raging,

All the way up to the banks flow of water.

Narrator: Crossing streets and railroads

Is not the only challenge.

The entire city is built in an earthquake zone.

The whole west coast is known for major seismic events,

California in particular.

It could be any time that the next big one'll hit.

Narrator: This is their plan.

♪

To build this monumental new bridge,

The team must first tear down

The original viaduct piece by piece.

Next, they'll build up 23 supporting columns

And position the special sliding bearings on top

To protect the structure during quakes.

On top of the bearings,

Engineers will construct huge y-shaped supports

From an intricate mesh of steel reinforcing bars.

♪

And a special high strength concrete.

♪

Carpentry teams will then custom build wooden molds...

♪

...Section by section

To form each of the complex curved shapes

That will give the bridge its sweeping lines.

When the concrete beams and arches are built,

The team will hang the 388 hanger cables

That hold up the road deck.

When complete, this elegant design will be tough enough

To carry 100,000 cars a week.

The first challenge is to remove the existing viaduct.

But the quickest method is off the table.

You can't come in with a big dynamite like we see in cartoons

And just destroy it or implode it.

You've got to deconstruct it.

Allen: Demolition is scheduled to be for about a year.

It's time consuming and meticulous.

It's got a lot of concrete, a lot of steel.

Narrator: The first 200 feet of the old viaduct

Will be the most difficult stretch to take down.

We're starting on the eastern end of this viaduct

To start the demolition and bad news,

It's right over major freeways,

So we're gonna have to actually shut down the freeway.

Narrator: The crew must demolish the first section

Of this huge bridge in less than 40 hours

Over a single weekend

To minimize the los angeles gridlock.

♪

First, trucks dump earth beside the freeway

To create an access ramp for the demolition machines.

And cover the six lanes in a foot thick layer of soil

To prevent huge chunks of falling concrete

From shattering the freeway tarmac.

Next, a squadron of high reach demolition excavators

Will move in.

Their 65-foot long arms shattering the famous bridge.

♪

Teams of workers will use water cannons

To prevent clouds of dust

From blocking the demolition crew's view.

Once the section is torn to pieces,

Iron workers with powerful cutting torches

Will slice through the remaining forest

Of tangled steel reinforcements to clear the way

For the new sixth street bridge.

♪

Friday, February 5, 2016.

While cameras snap the last pictures of the iconic old

Viaduct in one piece...

The wrecking crews move in.

It's a shame that it has to go

Because everybody knows the bridge.

♪

If it's structurally bad, it has to come down.

Either we take it down or an earthquake takes it down.

Narrator: Principle engineer julie stands by

To witness the end of an era.

I won't be here the whole night, but I want to make sure

It's moving smoothly, yes, for sure.

Narrator: The old viaduct puts up a fight.

But slowly, the machines wrestle it down.

♪

Looks like there's no turning back now.

Narrator: The demolition teams work non-stop

And by Sunday morning,

The rubble is cleared

And the freeway below is running again.

The first span of the old viaduct is gone,

But the marathon has just begun.

From spring until christmas,

The demolition crews tear and cut their way

Towards downtown los angeles.

♪

Once the dust settles,

Work can finally begin on the new sixth street bridge.

We have a long way to go, long way to go.

♪

Watch it!

♪

♪

Narrator: In los angeles,

Workers are racing against the clock

To construct the new sixth street bridge.

They did huge 130-foot deep foundation piles

And begin to build the 23 columns

That will support the bridge.

But deep foundations are no help

When california's biggest threat strikes.

The entire west coast is very seismically active.

There's a history of large earthquakes

Up and down the west coast of the u.S.

Narrator: In 1994, a earthquake measuring

6.4 on the richter scale

Strikes the northridge area of los angeles.

The city's elevated freeways snap at their joints.

57 people lose their lives and chaos chokes the area's

Road network for the next 12 months.

Protecting the bridge from earthquakes

Is the team's single biggest engineering problem.

This particular bridge,

We actually have it designed to withstand

An earthquake that would only happen once every 1,000 years,

So it's a very large earthquake event.

Narrator: The team is building the bridge

As one seamless piece of rigid concrete to eliminate

Any weakness at the joints.

But they still need a way of protecting it

From the violently shaking ground below.

♪

Seismic engineer victor zayas

Is working on a solution to this problem.

We have a magnitude eight level earthquake

On average every 80 years.

And the last one was 1906.

So we're about 30 years past overdue.

When the big one happens, everywhere will be affected.

♪

Narrator: Julie and the team in l.A.

Have given victor a bold challenge.

He must not only stop the bridge from collapsing,

But also keep it open to vehicles

After an earthquake hits.

Zayas: If the bridge isn't functioning,

Well, then the ambulance can't take you

From where you're injured to the hospital.

When we need that bridge most is after the big earthquake.

Narrator: Modern structures can be built

On special movable bearings

That isolate them from an earthquake.

But doing the same for this 3,000-foot long,

120,000-ton bridge

Will need some seriously heavy engineering.

Even with the strongest columns, a major earthquake would shake

The heavy bridge deck off its supports.

To keep it from collapsing,

The team will install special bearings

Into each of the bridges 23 support columns.

Inside each bearing are three curved elements.

An outer plate,

An inner plate,

And the core.

These lubricated discs can slide from side to side.

They allow nearly three feet of movement in any direction

Without the deck coming off of its supports.

This means that in an earthquake,

The enormous bridge can safely ride

The violent movements of the ground below.

And the bearing's curved surfaces mean that after

The earthquake stops,

The bridge will return to its original position.

♪

Victor's idea works well on paper,

But in practice, the challenge is to make sure

These giant moving metal discs stay lubricated.

Each one of these isolators in the sixth street bridge

Will have about 10 million pounds of load on it.

Narrator: Under that pressure,

Traditional means of lubrication are useless.

The temperature in these isolators

Will rise up to 300 degrees centigrade.

If we put oil in there, the oil could catch on fire.

Narrator: Victor's ingenious solution

Is to insert a wafer thin sheet

Of a special solid polymer that self-lubricates.

We have created a new material that has never existed before.

So this is the lubricating material

That comes to the surface during an earthquake.

So it is self-sacrificing

Solid lubricant polymer composite.

So, without this the isolators would be worthless.

♪

Narrator: Every element of the bearing mechanism

Is precision cut

And polished to perfection.

♪

The slightest defect could cause a catastrophic collapse

So victor doesn't let a single bearing leave his factory

Without testing it in an enormous

Earthquake simulator.

I call it the monster.

It has so much power.

If we use the energy in this machine to launch a rocket,

We could launch a rocket from california to new york city.

I believe this is the most powerful

Piece of equipment in the world.

Narrator: The machine pushes down on the bearing

With millions of pounds of pressure

To match the weight of a building or bridge.

Okay, miguel, let's run that first one.

Narrator: When they flick the switch...

This is going to be a big of an earthquake

As anybody would like to ever see.

Narrator: ...Pressurized hydraulics

Force the bearing sideways

To mimic the back and forth movement in an earthquake.

♪

♪

These isolators are a pass.

♪

While the bridge is just coasting along,

The ground could be shifting 30 inches in any direction

And that will allow the bridge to be stable

And remain undamaged during a major earthquake event.

Narrator: Once the team has installed bearings

On each column,

Workers enclose the y-shaped sections with giant

Pre-made panels and fill them with concrete.

♪

But above that, the mesh of steel and concrete

Gets even more complicated.

Our tolerance is maybe an eighth of an inch either way.

So we don't have a lot of room.

♪

♪

Narrator: In los angeles,

A construction team has reached a crucial

And complex stage of the sixth street bridge build.

One of the challenges on this project

Is the amount of reinforcement

That's in the structure so for example,

What we call the knuckle region here,

Each of these elements joins together and all of the rebar

And the post-tensioning coming from every direction

Has to be uniquely combined and meshed together

So that everything fits.

Narrator: These key parts of the bridge structure

Are so complex

That the team must devise a different way

To create the concrete molds.

♪

On top of each isolator bearing, workers simply used big,

Pre-formed panels

To cast the giant y-shaped supports.

♪

But at the knuckle region,

The junction of three large beams

Forms a complicated shape of sweeping curves

With a tangle of connecting steel reinforcement bars inside.

♪

These elements are so important and so complex

That the team can't enclose them within pre-made panels.

Instead, master carpenters have to build the molds by hand,

50 feet up in the air.

One flank and sheet at a time.

♪

Lead carpenter ryan tagliapietra

Heads one of the teams building a form work.

Come in the middle of those two right where your left hand is,

Bring that one and that one and bump it out an eighth.

Narrator: The bridge's swooping design

Requires ryan's team to create the perfect shape

To hold the tons of steel reinforcement

And liquid concrete.

♪

Transforming square planks and beams into the smooth

Curves of the architect's vision is no simple task.

The amount of angles, the amount of detail,

The amount of complexity that we've got here

Is nothing I've ever seen.

Narrator: The complicated framework constantly throws them

Curve balls and today is no different.

Into the top cap is gonna hit

Where the bottom cap of that last bent is.

We can't have it splitting.

As soon as it does that, it's worthless.

That's a bummer.

Narrator: Two of their wooden supports called bents

Are not meeting up properly

And ryan has to call in the site engineer.

We might have to just custom cut it.

Narrator: Shannon tynon is one of three resident engineers

Responsible for the whole bridge.

She must devise on the spot solutions to avoid delays

And keep the team on track.

You tell me what you want me to do.

I can get this in, get the sofit done.

Well, looks like we'll be able to bring it under this one

And have it hit to here. -Okay.

And then that would allow us to keep those posts

In the right spot. -Okay.

Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

Cool. Anything else?

-No. -[ laughs ]

♪

Narrator: Ryan and the team power on under the hot sun

To finish the framework.

Next, they line the frame with wooden panels to create a mold

That they will fill with concrete.

♪

They can't leave any gaps or the concrete could escape.

Some of these holes would leak like crazy

If you poured concrete on 'em.

And generally always try to get it as tight

And perfect as possible.

And hopefully, this does it.

♪

Narrator: This accuracy is even more important

In the knuckle area.

Here, the team has to use a special concrete

That is far less viscous than normal.

A 16th gap in plywood and it'll spray, just spray out.

It's awesome. Pour days are fun.

You don't want to have concrete

That flows through the form and, you know,

Pours out on top of the freeway or into the l.A. River,

So we'll have to make sure that the forms are water tight.

Narrator: But when the time comes to pour concrete,

Leaks are not the team's only worry.

♪

Mullins: Anything left yet? No? [bleep].

♪

♪

Narrator: At los angeles' new sixth street bridge,

Workers are tackling the next stage of this mammoth build.

Using a special water-thin concrete

To fill the huge so-called knuckle sections

Of the 3,000-foot long super structure.

Within this zone in particular there's a lot of congestion

So it's very challenging for the contractor

To be able to make sure everything fits

And be able to get concrete in all of those spaces.

♪

Narrator: It's the day of the concrete pour.

Construction manager dale mullins has brought his men

In early to beat the l.A. Gridlock.

Yeah.

It is about 4:15,

Our concrete truck should be arriving any minute.

Narrator: Sticking to a strict timetable

Is crucial to having the concrete set properly.

The constant flow of trucks is really important.

Being in l.A. You always have to deal with traffic

And the concrete trucks getting here.

Narrator: Even with the early start,

This job will take the crew an entire day.

Mullins: This pour should take between 10 and 12 hours.

Big day for us.

We like pouring concrete, that's what we do.

Narrator: But as the minutes tick by,

There's no sign of the trucks.

Mullins: I'm gonna call and see where the trucks are at.

Anything left yet?

No? [bleep].

All right, well, let me know when he leaves.

Narrator: Additional testing at the concrete plant

Has delayed the trucks

And thrown dale's plans way off track.

4:35. [bleep].

I bet you we don't get a truck here till 5:00.

Narrator: Over an hour later,

The first truck finally arrives.

But dale's wait isn't over.

The concrete has to be tested again

Before the team can pour it.

Mullins: This is where we lose [bleep] time right here.

Narrator: If the concrete is left to sit in the truck

For longer than two hours,

It will spoil and the entire truckload will be wasted.

Mullins: So we've got two hours.

So at 4:06, this was batched.

So we've got till 6:06 period, we will not go over.

Narrator: Dale's team's in a race against time.

Mullins: Concrete always has a time limit.

From the time it's batched to the time

You can put it into position.

It's kind of the science of concrete.

Which is a little bit above my head. [ laughs ]

I only got 20 minutes left on this truck

So I know you guys got to do

What you got to do but please hurry.

They're testing the consistency of the concrete right now.

-Good? -Yeah.

Okay.

Narrator: With just minutes to spare...

Mullins: I'm gonna back him in.

Narrator: ...The truck begins to pour.

♪

Keep it going, baby, keep it going.

And we made it.

All right. What have we got?

Two minutes to spare, just barely.

♪

Narrator: The next truck pulls in and things are looking up.

Each truckload goes into a pump, which pushes concrete up

Through long arms and down into the hollow form work.

About 45 more of them and we'll be done.

♪

Narrator: But with day break comes the next danger --

The baking california sun.

Concrete warms as it sets, and weakens if it gets too hot.

So the team needs a way to cool each truckload

Before they pour it.

Luckily, dale has a secret weapon.

This build site has its very own liquid nitrogen plant

That injects each truck on arrival.

♪

This instantly cools the concrete mix

By over 30 degrees.

The first couple of times I saw it,

I've stopped and stared at it probably for 10 minutes,

It was like, man, that's cool.

Narrator: As the heat rises, the concrete trucks

And the liquid nitrogen are in full flow.

♪

How's it going?

Everything's going good right now.

We're a little bit behind schedule

Due to some concrete service but we worked out the kinks,

We're about half way on all four knuckles

And things are going pretty good.

Narrator: The team can't stop

Once the concrete pour is underway.

Eventually, more than 12 hours after they began,

The knuckle pour is complete.

♪

A relieved dale can finally get some rest.

That's the final truck, we're all done. Hallelujah.

We started in the dark and we finished in the dark,

So, pretty long day.

One step closer to the coolest bridge

I've ever worked on.

♪

Narrator: Over the next six months,

Workers cast another 36 knuckles

To top each of the bridges' y-shaped columns.

Now, the team faces their next big challenge.

They need a way to hold up a heavy road deck

And 16,000 cars a day across the long,

Unsupported distances between the columns.

♪

This is it, we're almost at a million pounds.

♪

♪

Narrator: In los angeles, the team building the city's

New sixth street bridge needs a way of supporting

This 3,000-foot long structure between its giant pillars.

♪

Maltzan: Each part of the new bridge has a very long span.

200 feet from column to column.

Narrator: Architect michael maltzan's

Solution is to borrow

The iconic river arches of the old bridge.

I thought the arch was something

That maybe we could make more out of

By taking the two arches that span the river only,

And stretching those so that they're now 10 pairs of arches,

20 arches in total tying communities together.

Narrator: Each arch acts as a suspension bridge,

Holding up its own span.

But michael wants something slender and elegant

Compared to the thick girders of the old bridge arches.

So the weight of the enormously long spans

Will need to hang on thin metal cables.

♪

Compared to the old viaduct,

The new bridge's supports are far more spread out.

The concrete arches rising from the arms of each y column

Will support the roadway along these longer spans,

Just like a suspension bridge.

The arches will lean outwards by nine degrees

To make the road feel more open

And hold up the road deck with an array of steel cables.

Each one is strong enough to hold a million pounds...

♪

...But slender enough to disappear

When the spectacular ribbon is illuminated at night.

♪

To design the super strong cable they need,

The l.A. Team works with tim klein,

One of america's leading cable experts.

The structural strand that we produce is made

By alternating the layers of wires.

We produce them from the right to the left

And continue to build those layers on top of one another.

So we're taking 176 wires

And spinning them in alternate directions

To provide that ultimate strength.

Narrator: The steel strand

For l.A.'s newest bridge will be produced

On one of the industry's oldest machines.

We produce cables for the new san francisco

Oakland bay bridge, the manhattan bridge.

We produced cables for the brooklyn bridge.

And the san francisco golden gate bridge.

So over the years, we've produced

Millions of feet of strand on this machine.

♪

This is what we call a planetary strander,

Meaning the bobbins move around the center of the wire,

Like planets around the sun.

Narrator: The safety of the entire bridge

Rests on these cables,

So a practical test of their strength is critical.

If we don't meet the requirements a lot of people

Are gonna have to explain

Why our calculations didn't come up correctly.

♪

Narrator: At this special facility

In long beach, california,

Structural engineer kyle reed

Is about to put tim's hanger cable to the test.

♪

We're gonna be pulling these cables with the hydraulic ram

That can pull up to three million pounds.

So seeing these cables perform today

Is crucial to the path of the project.

Narrator: The testers rig up one sample

From each lot of cables tim's team produced

And pull it until it snaps.

If any sample breaks before it reaches

The required tension of one million pounds,

Kyle has to reject the entire batch.

We're getting ready to start the test if you wouldn't mind

Stepping in behind the scatter shield, please, thank you.

Narrator: Everyone retreats to safety.

You good to go?

♪

Narrator: As the huge ram fires up

And the cable takes the strain...

♪

♪

Reed: If the sample does fail, that entire lot will be scrapped

And we'll have to go back

And start all over and make new cable.

Narrator: The tension builds.

Reed: We're at 750,000 pounds,

The cable seems to be holding up well.

We're gonna take it to the final strength

Any minute now.

♪

This is it, we're almost at a million pounds.

At any moment you should hear this cable snap.

♪

Narrator: Under immense force, the first wires begin to pop...

♪

...And the cable goes.

♪

They calculate the final numbers

And to tim's relief, it's a pass.

Good job out there.

Narrator: Kyle has cleared the first batch of hanger cables

For use on the project.

♪

And the team is a major step

Closer to completing the mammoth sixth street bridge.

But there's one critical gap in the structure

Still left to tackle --

Across the active railroad tracks.

We have 18 total railroad tracks

That we're crossing with five different rail agencies.

They cannot relax.

They got to stay on their toes at all times.

♪

♪

Narrator: In los angeles,

The brand-new sixth street bridge is taking shape.

♪

The iconic y-shaped columns have been cast and engineers

Are strengthening the beams intended to hold the road deck.

But there's one crucial gap in the structure

Still left to bridge

Across these busy railroad tracks.

To pull off this feat, the team must first construct

A temporary platform

Onto which they can then safely build the roadway.

Well, going over railroads,

You have to build a bridge on a bridge.

So you build this shield over the railroads.

Narrator: This shielding platform

Has to sit at precisely the right height

Or the final roadway won't be level.

And the problem with building across these railroad tracks

Is that the trains loaded with goods never stop.

These rail lines cannot be out of service

Or the department stores will have no goods,

There won't be food.

It just is amazing responsibility

To not stop the work these railroads do on a daily basis.

Narrator: The rail companies have agreed to halt their trains

For just one weekend,

Giving the team a razor thin window of 59 hours

To build the huge framework across the tracks.

♪

As soon as the main tracks are clear,

Forklifts carry in 40-foot long metal pipes.

Then iron workers place them in a row

And join them with huge girders at the top

And bottom of the pipes

To create a frame called a bent.

The team cranes it upright

And secures it against large concrete blocks.

♪

The top of ever bent must be exactly the same height

So that steel beams placed on top

Create a perfectly level base

For the huge mold for the concrete road deck.

They must finish the job within 59 hours

Or risk bringing the rail network to a screeching halt.

♪

Friday, 6 p.M.

Superintendent saul macias leads the first of five shifts.

Macias: We need to build two bents.

Try to get them ready for the morning shift.

The goal for tonight is to get those two bents stood.

♪

Narrator: With so much time pressure,

The crammed patch of railway track

Is a relentless stream of machines and materials.

♪

Well, there's a lot of dangers in here,

We got forklifts coming in, in and out.

We got cranes going in.

We got powerlines up overhead.

A lot of people, it's a very small area.

So we need to make sure everybody know what it's doing.

Narrator: They lay down one pipe after another

To create the bent.

So we're gonna built the bents right there

In the middle of the tracks.

They're gonna be built flat

And then we'll stand them up with the crane.

Because the morning guys are gonna come in,

They're gonna start setting those beams.

So yeah, we got to make sure

We get these bents up before they get here.

Narrator: The crew raises the first bent.

But just as it becomes vertical, they spot a problem.

The first pipes were the wrong length

And the top of the bent is too low.

Guys, you're a wedge back are not lining up with your pin.

Looks like it's going downhill.

Narrator: If the deck doesn't sit level,

The whole bridge above it will be misaligned.

♪

The crew grabs extra blocks

And wedges to achieve the correct height.

It takes a long night shift

To line up the first bent correctly and set it into place.

♪

They're now a quarter of the way through the weekend

And running behind schedule.

Macias: It was a long night, we got one up,

But we could have done better.

Rolando's coming over to take over my spot

So hopefully their crew has got a good day.

It's got to be done.

♪

Narrator: With the whole operation at stake,

Foreman rolando's day shift

Has to work twice as fast in this race to the finish.

The rest of the huge bents go up quickly.

Barraza: We still got a lot to do.

We're supposed to be off the tracks by Monday morning

At 5 a.M.

Failure's not an option here.

It's one of those things, we just -- you can't do it.

Narrator: By Sunday night,

The crews are shuttling in the long beams

As fast as they can.

We got a limited amount of space here, so everything's long

And everything's gonna be real tight,

So we got to be careful.

♪

Narrator: At 1 a.M. On Monday morning,

Four hours ahead of schedule,

The crane lifts the final beam.

That's it, that's all she wrote.

Touchdown. Final one.

Narrator: The team has finished the most crucial

And dangerous stage

Of the build in time and unscathed.

I'm really happy.

Big milestone for us, you know, zero incidents, no injuries.

You know, one more big step.

♪

Narrator: The crew pushes on to bridge the remaining gaps

And install the road deck.

♪

Knowing that I'm building something

That's gonna be standing for what they figure over 100 years,

To me, it blows me away.

I've been doing this for 14 years,

There's nothing else like this.

Narrator: When it opens,

This bridge will stand strong well into the next century

Becoming a bold, new icon for the los angeles skyline.

It's really one of a kind structure for the entire world.

There's nothing quite like it anywhere else

In the united states.

♪