. tonight it's a bay area landmark and workhorse of the daily commute. the bay bridge. we're going to trace its storied history talking to the brave men who built it and to a photographer who climb the cable and scaled the towers to chronicle the remarkable construction. plus the work to cover the hole that the loma prieta earthquake left behind. all straight ahead on a "a second look." hello everyone and welcome to a sc. tonight we're about iting to turn our attention to the bay

bridge, which turns 75 years old later this year. after all, it was built before most of they will were even born and although its younger sister, the golden gate might get more otension, it's a worse horse, making it one of the three busiest bridges in the entire world. as kutv's george watson tells us from this report in 1986 that was prepared for its 50th anniversary. the bay bridge is an engineering marvel, built at a time of financial turmoil and pioneering construction techniques. >> reporter: by 1930, the ferry boat were carrying 8 million motor vehicles and 60 million people a year. without a bridge the bay didn't even look that large. when all was said and done, those who would bridge the bay were complainting a bridge that would be 8 and 1/2 mile long the quette in 1930 was not can we do it, but how do we pay for

it? thegression made financing it an iffy project. the refinancing corporation created by the government purchased $62 million in revenue bonds. state kicked in another $13 million and $75 million was in place to begin the most expensive bridge project in history. men came from all over the country to work on the bay bridge. it was a well-paying, steady job in the darkest days of depression, but it was also a chance to work on something special. even today, workers remember what they knew then, they were building a great bridge. >> yeah, i thought it was one of the seventh wonder of the world. to me it would be the eighth. that made me want to be part of it and besides we were getting good money, $11 for eight hours and now they get $30 an hour and do nothing. we had to work. >> i have been interested in history all of my life, both

forward and backward. and didn't at the end of the any magician to know that bridge was going to be something very special. >> reporter: play laying the foundation was probably the most difficult task facing the bridge builders. specificply designed casons were lowered to the floor of the bay. credibling would take place through the holotubes until they reached bedrock of the this was not the most dangerous. once the foundations were laid, then work could begin on the towers. men would now be working hundreds of feet above the water, but they seemed oblivious to the dangerous and, in fact, many seemed to thrive ton. al was known known was the king of the high steel in his bridge- boyding days and now 82, he recalls the only doubt he had work on the bay bridge is that it might fall down. >> i worked on a lot of bridges and a lot of others burb nothing like this. this was new to me. >> reporter: what made it

different? >> well, the thrill, and just the guts to go up there and do it and all the thrills and every minute you think the whole thing is gone. i used to look across and all the way to the cable and see 28 and 7/8th diameter and i hope those engineers are right. [ laughter ] >> reporter: the engineers were right. for 50 years the bay bridge has been the workhorse of bay area traffic. when i talked tot men who built the bridge, i noticed a common trait amon them all of the not one of them gave a thought to their working conditions. hundreds of feet above the bay and gusty wines slippery wet fog, a bridge-builders agility and concentration were the only safety lines he had. not everyone is caught out for

this kind of work and those who weren't, found out almost immediately. a. >> aa lot of the football players about your size coming from usc, during the summertime they applied for the job and in applying for the job, the superintendent had a tag and they had pier 24. they walked over to the bridge, on the catwalk. a lost young men were fine, but the minute they were over the water, they would freeze. i think his name was worked the superintendent. about your size and had hands like a baseball glove. and when went boom and out they go and down they hauled him to the boats and he went off to work. [ laughter ] that was the end of that job. >> reporter: it's probably the best thing to those men who

froze unprotected high above the bay, because if they had gone on to build the bridge, their lives would be jeopardized and they would be unsure and twice as vulnerable. among the mens who could face the hazards the josh mistakes were still made. in the building of the bridge, 24 mistakes were made and they all proved fatal. al saw three men die during construction and remembers the first death as vividly as yesterday. >> one guy just pulled a choker cable and had when we called something else. he came up pinning him and knocking him over. i seen him go and looked down and he hit the water. he hit flat. you know? and so, i hollered that there was a boat down bottom and we got in the rowboat and he

floated like how you shoot a duck in the water and he floated. i think we would go down, but he didn't. so we picked him up. his gloves were split in two of the his clothes in the back were split in two and he still had his belt on with the wrenches and all. i often wondered, you know, we felt we were still alive seeing him floating on the water. the other if you please went straight down. >> reporter: concern for personal safety didn't seem to worry too many of the bridge workers. some of themselves went out of their way to court danger, even if it was against the rules. >> that was showmanship and it was against the rules. from the time i broke into the business, that has been against the rules, but we have always had, once into the raising gang, as we called them, they liked to show off and grab an opportunity to ride a beam, if there is a newsman out there with a camera. >> reporter: once the towers

were built, there was still much work to be done of the the largest bore tunnel was being gauged out of yorba linda island and the cantilever section, but there was something powerfully symbolic about the towers, pylons standing alone in the bay and now the time had finally come to make those towers a bridge. the cable-spin was probably the most dramatic element in building the bridge because now the giant towers would be limped together. here in the west, you can get a better look at the cable that did the job. 472 wire were spun together in a strand and then 37 of those strands were compressed into the final cable that did the job. the cable becomes the backbone of the suspension bridge. >> reporter: it must have looked strange, this majestic bridge linked together by a large spinning wheel, but for weeks the wheels went back and

forth, laying 17,000 strands of wire to form a single cable. >> the adjustment on the cabe, after the spinning wheel would come by, from one tower to the next, they would dog it off, meaning that they were tightening that one cable to a special machine there. so that it wouldn't go back. then the wheel would bring it down to the next tower. then the top of that tower, i would be on the telephone, and the center between the two towers, telling them that the wire is high/low or dogged off, meaning it was right on the money. it took like 17,000 strands of wire, which at 3/8th inch thick in diameter. after that, they had to put the cable around it to make it looks like one pike, as you see as you go by the bridge. you think it's a pipe, but it isn't. it's wires and it just wound up with the other wire all the way around it. it makes it looks like that.

>> reporter: during the spinning of the cable, the bridge-builders finally received some measure of safety b a catwalk was strung between the towers. it still looks like rather skirviny protection, but it was a confidence-pacific coaster, especially for the non-bridge- builders who had to use it. item speaking of the fim makers who shot the footage of the bridging of the bay. they were up there with the raising gangs, the cable spinners and riveters. when it opened, bridge officials were hoping for 5 million cars a year. at $0.65 a car and nickel more per passenger, the bridge would pay for itself in no time. 1985 the bridge handled for than 3 million vehicles of the the bay bridge is the best investment that state of california ever made. still to come on "a second look," george continues his history of the bay bridge and introducing us to another group of brave men, though those who scaled great heights to bring

us thus great pictures and tells us about photographing the bay bridge and some of the hollywood's famous stars.

. we continue now with our second look at the bay bridge. we have already shown you some amazing film footon of its construction 57 years ago and now we want to show you how that footage was record by men who braved the same danger as builders themselves. kutv's george watson brought us this report at the type of the bridge's 50th anniversary. >> reporter: imagine if you will the difficulty of actually working on the bridge and imagine being hundreds feet above the bay, carrying a camera, tripod, sound equipment and two car batteries to provide the necessary juice. it was a remarkable accomplishment, overwhelmingly difficult in the earl stages of the construction, but comparative easier when the catwalk were put in place. >> at that time there was no physical danger. it was uncomfortable and rather

taxing to carry the gear i had to carry around. the real physical danger was in the earlier shots made by a still photographer and made quite a name for himself in the like shots that he made in the early stages of the steel erection. and he made some spectacular scenes from the cables catwalks as well as the tower places, looking down some 300 feet to the ferry boats below. >> equally as brave and determined as the sailors are these men who are the answer to the slogan of california "send me men to match my mountains." through 24 hours of everyday over a period of three years, these men slung beams in a place, spinning over 1,000 tons of cable, and with precision exactness joined 152,000 tons of structural steel with clock

work timing across the bay. resting its two fingers on yerba buena island, the san francisco bay bridge is forming itself under our eyes into the most colossal engineering achievement of its kind in the mystery of the world. panelway that joined the charm of peninsula with a stretch of land is taking form under the impetus of these men who built with steel. by the concrete gonzaga, brought over 1,3 anyl,000 barrels the cement in the boxes to create over 1 million cubic yards of concrete. to form the base for those towers, that point tot high leavens, 519 feet above the the waterline. anticipating a worldwide celebration, a whirling propeller of our airplane gives us a perspective of the bridge in it's 8 and a quarter mile length and below it on theesha

the yerba buena shores. from the early clipper ship to this last-minute inspection of the new almost completed structure, it's anticipated by conservative traffic surveyors will carry at least 70 million people and at a 50 miles per hour our camera's eye probes the completeness of this cathedral of steel. >> reporter: what was an extraordinary accomplishment in 1936 was in a way duplicated in 1986, the bay bridge will be 50- yards november 12th, 1986. i am george watson and that is segment 2 for tonight. when we come back obsecond, you heard the name peter stackpool in that report and we'll hear from the man himself

on the career that took him to the touring heights to hollywood's. and later how do you fix a foo-feet hole in the bay bridge? we'll have the answer later.

stackpole >> men who bottle the golden gate and bay bridge in the '30s were known for their courage, walking the steel cables with nothing between them and the bay waters below, but equally courageous were the men climbing to those heights to capture the photographs and moving pictures that chronicles the construction of those two bridges. one of those men was peter stackpole and we talked to him about his life and work. >> reporter: when the golden gate and bay bridges were being built a 21-year-old photographer named peter stackpole was the first cameraman to climb up the towers and show what it looked like. stackpole became known as the man who would go anywhere to

get a picture, even underwater. life magazine hired him and sent him to hollywood where he came bun of the best and most popular photographers of the stars. >> reporter: he could do all of that stuff, i gathered. >> that was from his famous yacht and they raised me up and came up below. that is alfred hitchcock from home and he said get a picture of an englishman on eye cold, winter night. >> reporter: this guy is one of my heroes, orson welles. >> that is liz taylor on the m gm lot. >> reporter: was shirley temple a bright child? >> her mother coached her every night on her lines and she was devoted to her mother.

>> reporter: marlena she was tough? >> she was tough on photographers. she wanted control on the lighting and where you would be in relation to her. it's a wonder i got these pictures at all, because she wanted control of everything that was happening. >> reporter: this is stackpole's own house in the oakland hills before it was destroyed in last year's fire. this is how the fire looked as it approached the house. stackpole tried to save it by hosing it down, but had to abandon it along with thousands of re-replaceable negatives. >> you are regarding events and people of the era and so i feel great loss in a lot of the negatives gone. >> reporter: when we come back on "a second look," the 50-feet hole that shut down the bay bridge for a month, following the loma prieta quake and how it was fixed.

. >> one of the most memorable images from the 199 loma prieta earthquake was the collapse of

a a section of the bay bridge that led to something rare. the bay bridge closed to traffic if both directions while the roo payers were made. it was a project that ended up taking one month and one day. kuf's brought us this report as the work was in progress in november of 1989. >> reporter: even two weeks later this predict is still hard to believe. a 50-feet chunk of bay bridge gone. both decks, peer over the side, if you dare and you are looking at the bay. >>have you crossed this? >> oh, yeah. >> reporter: did it make you nervous? >> the first time. >> reporter: this morning at least a couple of dozen caltrans men were crawling about and hanging over the edge of the fractured span. a couple were sandblasting the cross frames, so new girders could be attached. only the other side of the bridge, caltran crews were moving around big steel beams.

those beams are cut and trimmed and painted and will be laid across the 50-foot gap. what goes on top of them is the road bed. 8,000-pound concrete slabs leek this one being poured day and night in napa. workers along an outdoor assembly line build the form and lay the rebar. the concrete is poured and the styrofoam and wood form chipped away. caltrans gave the work order for the job last tuesday night, 42 of these, please and gave the company one week. >> not much time at all, but we'll get it done. >> the hours these guys are working, getting out at 10:00 at night and showing back up at 5:00, you know it's the adrenalin in participating in the reconstruction of the bridge that is getting the job done. >> reporter: something you will all remember? >> always. >> reporter: the concrete must cure for pay week. caltrans hopes to start laying

the pieces november 8th. of course, before any of that can be done, the bridge must first we realigned. when the top deck fell the san francisco and east bay sides pulled way from each other 5 ervings and another 1.5" to the other sade. a hydraulic jack pulled the two sides together last night of the it's no sure thing that the bring could have snapped. dangerous enough that news cameras were prohibited during the operation. if you look at home video we obtained you can see the two pieces of metal sliding back into alignment. along other parts of the bridge, caltrans crews are using this extraordinary opportunity to do other long, overdue and difficult maintenance on the bridge. >> it's a perfect time to do it. we don't have to worry about getting run over. >> reporter: here a rubber expansion joint is being replaced. they expand and contract as the weather changes and allow the

bridge to undulate in an earthquake and you never know when you might have one of those. >> that is it for this week's "a second look." i'm frank somerville and we leave you with a famous voice singing a famous song on november 18th, 199. the day that the bay bridge re- opened offer the loma prieta earthquake. [ applause ] >> thank you very much. . ♪ i left my heart in san francisco ♪ high on a hill, it falls to me ♪ to be where little cable cars climb

halfway to the stars ♪ i don't care, my love waits there ♪ in san francisco ♪ above the blue and windy sea ♪ when i come home to you, oakland/san francisco ♪ [ applause ] ♪ your golden sun will shine for me ♪ [ applause

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