Each morning, demolition workers don powered respirators with full hood assemblies, battery packs and air hoses to prevent exposure to the lead paint that covers most of the nearly 80-year-old steel structure of the East Span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
The team has spent more than 18 months working hundreds of feet above the San Francisco Bay on the $93-million first phase of the multiphase project. Phase one includes removing the 2,420-ft-long cantilevered truss of the double-deck span. In the process, workers not only contend with lead paint, they must cut through stubborn multi-ply steel members and prevent damage to the environment as they disassemble the nearly two-mile-long bridge—flanked to the north by its $6.4-billion self-anchored-suspension replacement.