Ship Hits New Memorial Bridge

Friday, March 7, 2014 — A 600-foot tanker hit the north pier of the New Memorial Bridge a glancing blow about 5:26 a.m. this morning. According to the New Hampshire Department of Transportation, damage to the bridge was superficial. We captured these images from SebecTec’s wonderful PortsmouthWebCam. The NHDOT’s press release is below: Memorial Bridge in Portsmouth-Kittery Struck by Ship At approximately 5:15 AM today (March 7, 2014), a ship struck a pier on the Memorial Bridge that carries US Route 1 between Portsmouth, New Hampshire and Kittery, Maine. The 600-foot long oil tanker “Seapride” was outbound on the Piscataqua River when it struck a …

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Lowering the Weights

Sunday, March 25, 2012 — The last section of a 500-ton counterweight was lifted from the south tower of Memorial Bridge between Portsmouth and Kittery about 1:45 p.m. yesterday. At about the 45-second mark, three guys can be seen shoving the 250,000-pound hunk of concrete and steel into place on the barge.

Rhourd Enouss entering and leaving Portsmouth Harbor

Wednesday, December 21, 2011 — Sonatrach’s Rhourd Enouss is shown entering Portsmouth Harbor at about 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, December 14th, and leaving at about 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, December 18th. The ship is 670 feet long, has a beam of 108 feet, and carries a little over 2 million cubic feet of propane. Owned by Sonatrach, Algeria’s government-owned petroleum company, it was built by Kawasaki Shipbuilding of Kobe, Japan, and delivered in 2008. The video is made up of a succession of screenshots taken from a pair of webcams owned and operated by Sebtec, of Derry, NH, and converted to a .mov file by …

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Memorial Bridge Funding in Danger

Saturday, February 19, 2011 — This just in from Ben Porter at SaveOurBridges.com: Today the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution to continue funding the U.S. Government for the balance of this fiscal year. Missing from this continuing resolution was the funding for the TIGER Stimulus Grants that would have provided $20 million for the Memorial Bridge replacement project.* This puts the project in jeopardy. There are several things that we can do to reinforce the importance of this critical infrastructure investment project. This note summarizes what can be done, and the critical timing of getting it done. There are two parallel efforts that …

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Maine Gubernatorial Visits — Part III

Another update from Ben Porter on the effort to educate the next Governor of Maine on the importance of our bridges: Subject: Two Final Gubernatorial Candidate Schedules Date: Wednesday, September 8, 2010 5:49 PM From: Save Our Bridges! This note provides you with the schedule for the final two gubernatorial candidate visits here in Kittery, and provides a quick summary of the positions of the candidates who have visited so far. On Wednesday, September 15th, Independent Candidate Kevin Scott will be at the Weathervane Lobster in the Rough on Badgers Island at Noon. He will be focusing on listening to all of us about the …

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