We were supposed to get an exclusive tour of the work being done on the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge, but damage to it the night before caused a bit of a speed bump to our production.

On October 27th 2009, I headed back home from a busy day at the office, making last minute preparations for our first day of shooting on the bay bridge story. We were all set, armed with a film permit which I had spent nearly a week to secure and which we needed to film the progress cal trans was making on a new, seismically sound eastern span.

But then I turned on the evening news and heard that the Bay Bridge was closed. No, it wasn’t an earthquake that was the culprit but a repair made to an eyebar over Labor Day, which now had failed, sending thousands of pounds of steel crashing down into the westbound lanes east of Yerba Buena Island. I quickly dialed the California Department of Transportation (Cal Trans) press office. They confirmed what I feared – that our shoot was indefinitely postponed, pending the necessary fixes on the bridge.

But it was too late for us to cancel the crew. The shoot had to take place. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that you have to be nimble and resourceful when your story takes you in interesting, unanticipated directions – like today.

The next morning, Producer Jon Fromer and I, along with our production crew, got into our van and headed south of market street, searching for a way to get onto the bridge. We showed our media credentials to a San Francisco police officer stationed at a roadblock. He told us we could enter the bridge from an on-ramp off of 2nd Street. One lane was left open for motorists to get to Treasure Island.

Here’s a photo of our cameraman filming the bridge, looking northeast from Treasure Island at the construction on the new eastern span. You can see the cantilevered portion of the bridge. it was here that three vehicles driving at the time were struck by the falling debris. Remarkably, no one was injured.

To get a closer view of the construction work on the new eastern span, we decide to head south, driving onto Yerba Buena Island for a closer look. I took some shots of the work being done on the foundations of the self-anchored suspension span.

The span will be more than 2,000 feet, making the bay bridge the world’s largest self-anchored suspension bridge.

It was now 12:30. We decided to head to the Cal Trans public information office in Oakland, where we could check on the status of the repair work. But first we’d have to find a way to get across the bay.

Luckily for us, we found a sympathetic chp officer at the road block on Yerba Buena Island. He escorted us on a surreal trip across the bridge, eerily quiet of the rumble of passing cars.

A press conference was being convened at the Cal Trans public affairs office to explain their repair strategy and field questions from the reporters. Though no mention is made of when the bridge will re-open, Cal Trans has just agreed to allow media organizations onto the bridge to document some of the repair work taking place right now.

Finally, what we’ve been waiting all day for – a chance to get onto the bridge and see the damage up close. We take our place in the convoy of news vans and head west onto the upper deck of the bay bridge. Here is a slideshow of behind-the-scenes images I took during our visit to the bridge.

Watch The New Bay Bridge: Earthquake Makeover tv story online.

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Sketch drawing of the proposed San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (1913) from Overland Monthly, April 1913.

The Bay Bridge will be closed from September 3rd at 8:00 p.m. until the 8th at 5:00 a.m. During these 105 hours, Caltrans will perform an "essential and unprecedented construction feat."

It turns out there was a lot I didn't know about the Bay Bridge. Its official name, for example is not the Bay Bridge. It's "The James 'Sunny Jim' Rolph Bridge," after the California Governor who died in 1934, two years before the bridge opened (The Golden Gate Bridge opened 6 months later). Around 280,000 vehicles traverse the bridge every day—nearly $7 in bridge tolls per second; The Yerba Buena Tunnel that connects the eastern and western segments is the world's largest diameter bore tunnel; Much of the eastern span is supported by old growth Douglas Firs, driven into firm mud.

As construction grows increasingly noticeable, the new eastern section rising out of the bay, more people are wondering: How will it attach? What happens to the old bridge? What's with the retrofit of the western suspension? And what is this unprecedented feat of construction happening over Labor Day weekend?

The construction website, baybridge360, just received a Webby award in the Government category, and is worth a visit. Videos and slide shows are overlaid on a satellite image of the bay and provide answers to these and other engineering questions. There's a bit of Troy McClure style narration, epic synthesizer for the construction scenes, and techno pop for the fast-forward time lapse photography. At one point, the “Governator” dons a pair of terminator sunglasses for a ceremonial blowtorching.

The new site may be sleek, but some of the most interesting information is buried in the old stalwart: baybridgeinfo.org. The western span's retrofitting, completed in 2004, added some 17 million pounds of structural steel, and included new rollers between the roadway and the bridge supports. The new eastern segment (slated for rebuilding since a section collapsed in the 1989 Loma-Prieta earthquake) will include the world's longest Self-Anchored Suspension (SAS) bridge, connected to a pier-supported "Skyway" (elevated roadway over a mile of mudflats), sloping down to the "Oakland Touchdown."

The 2,047-foot asymmetric SAS will be supported by a single steel tower, embedded in rock, rising 525 feet above sea level. While most suspension bridges use a pair of cables, the new SAS employs a single cable, anchored on the east side, wrapped over and around the tower, and down to the west. The Skyway is supported by a set of steel pipes, driven 300 feet into deep bay mud by a massive hydraulic hammer.

Amidst the construction clamor, considerable attention is afforded to local wildlife. Dense columns of air bubbles helped dissipate shockwaves from the hammering to ease construction-related stress on local fish. For the birds, platforms under the new east span provide cormorant nesting habitat, and the crew is building a 500 square-foot island for the pleasure of the snowy egret and ruddy turnstone. And at the Oakland touchdown, a turbidity-controlling curtain was installed to protect eelgrass, which in turn serves as a filter, improving water quality.

So consider all this next time you lament the $4 bridge toll. The original 1936 toll, collected in both directions, works out to over $20 in 2009 dollars. The bridge is scheduled for completion in late 2013.

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