I'm pretty sure whoever laid out the the blast pattern and was in charge of the shot should have been embarrassed that it was even put on RU-vid you have huge Boulders lying there's rocks flying everywhere. My dad was Ray Simmons and I grew up in quarries and Road construction since I was a toddler
You are not going to use anfo to blast singular rocks. You need something that fractures better, high velocity like dynamite, etc. The charges they used are for pushing the rock, and material so it can be removed.
Wish we would have checked the web site before going over the pass. It was closed for about 2 hours last Wed night. Stopped in Roslyn and had a beer at "The Brick". Great place to check out the oldest running tavern in the State.
The old roadway was built on top of rock. In order to start building the new roadway, we had to blast the rock to get down several more feet. The blast not only broke up the rock, but the concrete as well.
ANFO + hard-rock = flying rocks. ANFO lifts, doesn't have a lot of shattering power. Dynamite shatters hard rock, has modest lift. Shower of gravel. RDX/PETN shatters everything, but not much lift. Shower of dust. Then again, if all you have is ANFO...
We need more bridges in interstates in southern West Virginia we need a bridge that will go from straight up from bluefield all the way up to Huntington West Virginia we need an interstate that'll go from straight up from bluefield West Virginia strip to Huntington West Virginia
We need more bridges in interstates in Princeton West Virginia we need more bridges in interstates in in bluefield West Virginia we need more bridges and interstates in Beckley West Virginia we definitely need more interstates and bridges in Princeton West Virginia
My favorite part is when they blow up the big boulders "so they can truck them out". How it actually went: Earl: "Well Fred, we've got 20 pounds of anfo left over. Blow up random rocks?" Fred: "BLOW UP ALL THE ROCKS!"
Everytime they would blast, I would get a call from senile old Mrs Vickers. No Mrs. Vickers, those arn't Yankee canons comming down the road, we're still holding on to Richmond.
and then the Next thing ya know there is a under ground yellowjackets nest with 30,000 Mad Bees what are you going to do if that Happens Blow em up try runing away first Just Kidding folks there is No YellowJackets to speak of I was Just saying what ifs! thats all!
Terrible blasting. Way too much flyrock. The rocks from the 1:50 mark on all could have easily been handled by a 800 komatsu. No need to re-shoot them. I think they just wanted some good video. Also to have a road closed for an hr after the shot is a downright embarrassment. We have shots twice the size of those and only have the roads closed for under 10 minutes. 10 minutes is usually a longer closure than normal.
When you have tons of material to remove from the road due to blasting the cliff above the road, it can take a while to simply remove the material. And while a larger excavator might have been able to move the bigger rocks, they have to be loaded on normal size highway dump trucks for ten, so they need to be broken down. And they aren't going to spend thousands of dollars on additional blasting just for a video lol
Yeah there were quite a lot of material thrown over some distance; and the shot rock debris was huge. I wonder if the budget called for an existing road replacement as well.
in the enlargement of busy roads the priority goes to:safety at work, safety of things, speed. To speed up, organize excavations with the machines on site. The overloads are used to reduce the size of the material knocked down to use road machinery and not quarry machinery. Road builders are not pharmacists
