Big Bertha was all set to dig a nearly two-mile tunnel in Seattle, but just 1,000 feet into her journey she mysteriously came to a halt. Now, crews are beginning the process of rescuing her, in what could be the world's largest recovery mission.
The New York Times has an in-depth account of exactly what needs to happen to get Bertha digging again, and it's a massive undertaking. Crews will dig a vertical shaft down adjacent to where Bertha came to rest, then swing an enormous crane down to remove the 2,000 ton nose—the actual digging apparatus which came grinding to a halt after hitting a buried steel pipe in January.
The detached nose will be hoisted up and laid on the ground for repair by the Japanese company that built Bertha. The repairs will fix damage from debris and grit that contaminated Bertha's precision bearings, and technicians will add about 200 tons of reinforcing steel. Here's an animation detailing the process, supplied to Washington State's DOT by Bertha's manufacturer, Hitachi Zosen:
Crews compare re-fitting the repaired and modified nose onto Bertha's body, sitting 120 feet underground, to removing the engine from your family car and replacing it with a modified, hot-rodded powerplant.
"An engine mounts in there a certain way, it weighs a certain amount, everything connects in a certain way—now you're going to put it back in the car and it's a little different," Matt Preedy, the deputy program administrator for the construction project, told The New York Times. "So obviously they're doing a lot of planning and engineering work to ensure that it will fit back in there."
If all goes according to plan, the newly-repaired Bertha will go back to work in March of 2015—nearly a year and a half after she came to a halt. The rescue alone could cost north of $125 million, added to the $3.1 billion cost of the overall project Update: a Washington DOT representative informs us that Seattle Tunnel Partners is paying for the excavation, and Hitachi Zosen is covering repairs to Bertha. Check out NYT's full article for much more information on the rescue, the construction project, and the controversy surrounding Bertha's malfunction. [NYTimes]