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The Oklahoma Department of Transport has sent the Grand River Bridge to the bottom of the Grand River in a massive five-second controlled detonation.

The bridge, officially called the Richard D. Newkirk Bridge, was built in 1949 and named after an engineer and long-time employee of the Oklahoma DoT. Newkirk died in 1998 at the age of 80 at his cabin on Fort Gibson Lake, close to the bridge.

Newkirk began his career as a highway labourer working for 35 cents an hour. By the time he retired in 1987, he had served as Division 1 district engineer for more than 13 years.

Italian contractor General Smontaggi has carried out a successful bridge demolition project in the south of the country. Explosives were used to remove the redundant Viadotto Caffaro Bridge carrying the A3 Autostrade. The 390m long structure had been found to be unsuitable for modern traffic requirements on the route, located in Calabria. The demolition project was not straightforward as the new bridge had already been constructed alongside the redundant structure. The extensive pre-weakening work for the old bridge included cutting into the deck to ensure it collapsed downwards.

It took 500 explosive charges to bring down a 108-year-old truss bridge in the US city of Pittsburgh and crews had three days to clear up the debris, according to local news stations.

The blasts dropped the spans of 407m-long Jonathon Hulton Bridge directly into the Allegheny River. It was the first major bridge designed by Allegheny County in the state of Pennsylvania and connected the eastern Pittsburgh city suburbs of Oakmont and Harmarville.

A 100-year-old Parker truss bridge in western Canada had no official name until its 90th birthday, in 2007. Now, The Traffic Bridge – across the South Saskatchewan River in the city of Saskatoon - is no more, after its demolition earlier this month.

The Traffic Bridge, nearly 6m wide and 290m long and took a year to build, and was Saskatoon’s first bridge across the river when it opened in 1907. The bridge was built by Winnipeg city-based John D. Gunn and Sons.

A bridge demolition project is being carried out in Boise, the capital of US state Idaho.  Work is being carried out on the removal of the Broadway Avenue Bridge. The project also includes upgrades to the stretch of road that connects University Drive and Front Street in the city. A fleet of excavators fitted with demolition attachments is being used to remove the old structure and the new link will not be ready until the third quarter of 2016. Idaho Department of Transportation has set a series of diversions in place in the meantime.

In Chattanooga Tennessee, an overpass for the SR153 route was demolished at the weekend using a fleet of excavators fitted with hydraulic worktools. The work was carried out during an overnight possession during which traffic was halted, with the highway then able to open again in the morning. A new overpass will take the traffic in place of the old structure.

Locals turned out in large numbers to watch the demolition of a redundant bridge in West Virginia on the east coast of the US. The 65 year old bridge located near the town of Lilly was removed by a specialist demolition crew following careful preparations. The area now has a new bridge as the old steel cantilever truss structure was no longer able to cope with local traffic needs. The remains of the old bridge, one of the last cantilever steel structures in the state, are now being cut up for scrap.

Explosive demolition techniques were used to remove a bridge structure in the US at the weekend. In California on the west coast, the removal of a pier from the old Bay Bridge structure was carried out. The explosive demolition was organised by 5246 Caltrans, with around 10tonnes of explosives being used to blast the redundant bridge pier. Protective layers of wood and steel were used to prevent debris from the massive 24.4m x 42.7m bridge pier from being thrown into the air.

Demolition work has been carried out on a bridge crossing the busy A90 route in Scotland, just to the north of the capital, Edinburgh. The bridge carried the B900 over the A90 but had to be removed as its narrow design prevented the route from being upgraded to full motorway status. The first stage of the demolition work was carried out on October 24th and 25th, with the second stage on October 31st and November 1st and final remedial work to be carried out on November 14th and 15th.

Construction of a 10-lane bridge to replace a congested river tunnel in Vancouver, Canada, is still on target to start in 2017, despite details remaining sketchy.

The bridge will replace the 60-year-old George Massey Tunnel between the local cities of Richmond and Delta along the provincial Highway 99. But the cost and – importantly – whether it will be a toll bridge have not been declared by the British Columbia provincial government.