[WRE UPDATE | PROJECT]
O’Connell Electric line crew working from the “Island” to hang pendulums on the cable.
Photographs courtesy of O’Connell Electric; Photographer: Keith Meehan; RK5 Construction Marketing “Crew deployment was much easier at Niagara Falls
because you could just drive right up to the site with all your equipment,” Fletcher observes. In fact, the helicopter could not accommodate the 8-ton tight-rope cable, manufactured by Wirerope Works in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. T e wire is comprised of six bundles of smaller steel wires wrapped around a wire core and is strong enough to bear the weight of a Boeing 747. “Because we could only have the puller and tensioner on one side of the gorge, we had to rig up a special fi ber line to a turning block to draw the cable across canyon,” he said. “T at added to the complexity of the project.” T e team began work on June 17 and rigged the wire, measuring 1,400 feet from start to fi nish, on June 21. T e wire, set at a tension of 62,000 pounds, has a breaking strength of 190 tons. T e following day, they hung 20 pendulums, weighing 40 pounds each, along the wire at precise 60-foot intervals to prevent the wire from twisting beneath Wallenda’s feet. To accomplish this essential aspect of the project, crew members traveled to each point in safety baskets suspended from the wire.
We knew he had confi dence in us, asking us to come back and work with him
a second time. -Randy Fletcher, O’Connell Electric’s General Foreman
Once their work was fi nished, they took turns in the safety baskets to “test the job” before they’d let Wallenda set foot on the wire. “Everybody wanted to do it,” Fletcher recounts. “We had confi dence in our work.”
Walking a Fine Line into History Finally, the big day arrived. All eyes focused on record-setting Wallenda, who peered into the Grand Canyon poised to pursue his eighth world record. Unlike his Niagara crossing, for this skywalk he would honor the Wallenda family tradition of not wearing a harness or a tether and not using a net. He’d rely on his own skills, his 43-pound, 30-foot
WIRE ROPE EXCHANGE JULY-AUGUST 2013 77
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