CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Thousands of spectators lined a grassy bluff overlooking the old Inner Belt Bridge this morning to watch as the giant structure was sliced apart by explosive charges and sunk majestically into the Cuyahoga River valley.
The 440-millisecond blast was preceded by an hour in which people found their way from dark downtown streets to the viewing site and took up positions with cameras as the countdown neared.
Anthony Serio, 25, of North Olmsted, arrived on skateboard after parking his car on East Ninth Street. Tucked under his arm was a hobbyist's drone carrying a miniature camera.
Anthony Serio of North Olmsted got video of the implosion of the old Inner Belt Bridge using his Phantom Vision 2 drone. Serio and two partners formed a business called Cleveland Aerial Media in January.
Serio broke into a grin when an Ohio Department of Transportation official said it was OK to fly the Fantasy Vision 2 near the blast site.
"It can stay in the air 25 minutes," he said.
With daylight bathing the 55-year-old bridge, and a pinprick of lights twinkling on the westbound replacement bridge for Interstate 90 traffic, ODOT spokeswoman Jocelynn Clemings told onlookers what they'd hear with the approaching implosion.
"At the three-minute mark there will be three long blasts," she said, reading from a clipboard. "At the one-minute mark there will be two short blasts."
At 5:53, a text buzzed on Clemings' phone.
"We have an all clear," she said.
At townhouses on University Avenue, demolition partiers were toasting the event. Television helicopters hovered, keeping at least 3,000 feet to one side of the bridge and no lower than 3,000 feet. At 5:55 a.m. Serio's drone, red and green lights flashing, whizzed off like a sprite.
"Three-minute warning, three-minute warning," Clemings announced. "One-minute warning." A gull flapped in the pink morning air.
And then it was over: A thunderous low boom and plumes of smoke and dust rising from the knee-bent steel spans that had conveyed hundreds of millions of cars and trucks over the Cuyahoga River since 1959. Onlookers seemed to breathe out altogether and there was smattering of applause.
The demolition team notified ODOT that all 88 explosive charges detonated, making the zone clear for a safety inspection of the new Inner Belt Bridge.
The new I-90 span was open by 9 a.m. Canal Road and West Third Street, near the blast site, were protected with thick timber mats. They'll probably remain closed through the weekend.
Robert and Helen Bays of Cleveland headed home on their three-wheeled TerraTrikes.
"It was nice and clean," Robert Bays said. "It just fell down like a toy set."
Bruce Jennings of Shaker Heights wrestled with whether to look at the demolition through his camera or not. In the end he simply watched, though he held the camera to one side, snapping pictures and hoping to get a good one.
"I thought it was amazing," he said.
Jennings' son, Rick, of White Plains, Maryland, said the demolition "was totally worth getting up at 4 a.m. You don't get to see that kind of thing very often."
Making his own small mark in modern day history, he went on line at 6:15 a.m. and changed the Wikipedia article on Cleveland's old Inner Belt span to the past tense.