Bridge Over Frozen Water 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
This is a personal account of an episode I witnessed as a child during the spring of 1970 in a small South Dakota town I dare not mention because I still have relatives living there who will get the cold shoulder (or frozen shoulder, perhaps?) if I do.
This town is situated on the banks of the Big Sioux river, and of course, the river would freeze up solid in the winter, being South Dakota and all that. Naturally enough, you had your normal attempts at Darwin Awards with people driving their cars out on to the ice, and so on.
But this episode really took the cake.
The particular spring in question was very late in starting after a viciously bad winter, and the river was still frozen thick with ice. So in early April, the town officials, who were getting pressure from various companies who used the river to transport barges, and irate fisherman and boat owners (who were far worse than the barge owners), to find a way to clear the river of ice, as the weather forecast indicated no warming in sight.
The town officials found their answer from the biggest local employer - a quartz quarry, who used dynamite to blast the rock.
Word got around town that the town officials were going to use said dynamite to clear the ice from the river. Sensing a free show and a good laugh, most of the residents turned up to watch, including yours truly with my parents.
The officials (police chief, fire chief, and mayor, none of whom had experience with explosives apart from firecrackers and bottle rockets) arrived with the head of the quarry (who had only slight experience in handling explosives) at the riverside. Being a cold day, they had all taken generous nips from the fire chief's hip flask filled with brandy (later confirmed by the local bar owner, who had filled it), and were nicely "warmed up". They were armed with a crate of dynamite, fuses, and matches.
The idiots, er, I mean, officials, with great show, proceeded to walk carefully onto the ice. They then put several sticks of dynamite together in a bundle with a fuse, laid it on the ice, and lit the fuse.
The bright amongst you will have already noticed the problem: they were standing on sheet ice. When they attempted to run away, they just fell over. They got up, fell over, got up, fell over, and so on while the fuse merrily burnt away nearby. It was like a Road Runner cartoon come to life.
One of the officials started to crawl on the ice and, finding it worked, signalled the others to do the same, which they did. They all just managed to get to the side when BLAM! went the dynamite.
Nothing. No impact. River still frozen solid. Very scared officials and lots of noise, but no good.
So, undeterred, shaken, and still a bit drunk, they decided to try again, but from a safer position.
This time, they decided to walk under the nearby stone bridge that spanned the river, put the rest of the dynamite there, leave one man to light the fuse, and pull him back up onto the bridge with a rope tied around his waist. Which they did.
Once again, the bright amongst you will notice the problem. Dynamite (and lots of it) UNDER bridge.
The officials were admiring their handiwork and watching the fuse burn from their position on the bridge above when one of them sobered up sufficiently to hear the shouts of the crowd, yelling to get off the bridge. Putting two and two together to get "boom", they started to run for it.
Too late.
KABLAM! went the dynamite, and the ice was instantly cleared under the bridge. Unfortunately, so was the main bridge support that the dynamite was near, and the bridge promptly collapsed into the river, sending our heroes into the ice-cold waters below.
Sadly, because the bridge was only about ten feet above the river height, they survived and were all saved within minutes of their adventure with only shock, hypothermia, cuts and bruises. We can only hope their gonads were frozen, and perhaps they were, as none of the gentlemen in question had any more children.
The bridge blocked the river completely to river traffic for three months while it was dredged out, and several homes were moved off their foundations by the force of the blast. Windows in a half-mile radius were blown in. All in all, the damage ran into seven figures.
The mayor, police chief, and fire chief, all lost their jobs shortly thereafter, while the head of the quarry took early retirement.
All in all, quite a show. But it shouldn't have been too surprising, as the fire chief had earlier destroyed a brand new fire engine after driving all the way to a barn fire with the parking brake on, and while they were putting out the fire, noticed the water pressure from the pump going down, because the fire engine was on fire. Both the barn and the fire engine were burnt out total losses as a result. Submitted on 09/26/2002
Submitted by:
Cupid Stunt
Reference:
Personal Account - 1970
Copyright © 2002 DarwinAwards.com
|
