Moving An Entire Town Before It Collapses | Huge Moves | Spark

[Music] a towering lighthouse perched on the edge of a crumbling cliff we are one storm away from being in trouble can a rescue team move it safely and land before it topples over something's falling out there a town about to be swallowed up by a gigantic hole can it be saved before the ground gives way eventually the whole town is just going to collapse one team faces atlantic rollers another battles an arctic blizzard last night we had minus 20. two desperate races to avoid disaster two teams up against the fiercest odds [Applause] two epic endeavors that will test the nerves of the people who dare to do monster moves [Music] moving a building is a high risk operation movers must dodge power cables weak bridges and dosy drivers to deliver their cargo intact but sometimes the stakes are even higher occasionally a building faces imminent destruction and the only way of saving it is to move it [Music] sankety head lighthouse on the island of nantucket has protected local fishermen for over 150 years but now this working lighthouse is perilously close to falling off the cliff [Applause] for the island's residents it holds a special place in their hearts [Music] a lighthouse hug is something as you first get here you rush right up and you just hug her i've been doing it for 77 years it's the most important little place on this whole island [Music] you can see it's a touchstone for the island and people see it when they come into the harbor so it's really it's nikon for the whole island [Applause] for over a century nantucket massachusetts was the whaling capital of the world its harbors were filled with ships loading precious whale oil sankety lighthouse has always been an essential beacon on this notoriously stormy north atlantic coastline the island has suffered terrible erosion as a result of intense storms in october 1991 a violent hurricane hit america's east coast winds blasted over the ocean at around 100 kilometers per hour enormous waves tore into nantucket's coastline for five consecutive nights five meters of sankitti's cliff face collapsed in the year of the so-called perfect storm time was running out one more bad storm could leave this lighthouse dashed on the rocks below more than 10 buildings have already fallen off the cliff's edge [Music] the erosion at the bluff edge here at sanctity head has accelerated to an average of three feet of loss a year and what i've been telling everybody is that we are one storm away from being in trouble the islanders have raised almost four million dollars to save their beloved lighthouse [Music] geologists have calculated the lighthouse must be moved 123 meters in land they hope this will protect it for over a hundred years but the fragile geology of this island will always be vulnerable to atlantic storms this tall heavy structure presents a tough challenge for the movers there's no shortage of ingenious ideas they could put it on a catapult and launch it over and aim it right onto the spot i think they might like take off the top half and like and then load the bottom half and the top half into two or four dump trucks you get a thousand moles and you put and you put leashes on them and the moles dig under the ground and go over to the other spot where they're moving the lighthouse the islanders call in one of america's leading movers gerrymantico to devise a more practical alternative there's three ways to move this lighthouse the first way to move this building when you get a person up on top and take it down one brick at a time if a structure is too fragile to move dismantling may be the only answer this historic watchtower in dorset england was just seven meters away from a collapsing cliff edge it was too precarious to move intact so movers painstakingly numbered each of its sixteen thousand bricks and dismantled the tower stone by stone by the time it's finally rebuilt 25 metres in land it will have taken two years but jerry doesn't have that long in two years the crumbling cliff could claim sankety second way to move in this lighthouse is to cut it in half craning a building in sections is much faster this method was used in nova scotia canada when a wooden lighthouse appeared to vanish into the night most residents knew nothing of the coast guard's plan to slice the structure in half with chainsaws the movers quickly loaded the two sections into a truck and drove off leaving the neighbors wondering where it had gone eventually they found it in the grounds of the coast guard college 400 kilometers away after years of campaigning the lighthouse was finally returned but sanctity is too difficult to cut so jerry faces the daunting prospect of moving the entire tower in one go our preferred method is to pick this thing up in one piece set it on rollers take it down the hill and set it on a new foundation and we're done if expert house movers doesn't move it mother nature move it and i don't think you want that as the hurricane season is already underway jerry is anxious to start he's given the team two months to move this 500 ton lighthouse inland today is a momentous day we are going to close down the light today and what we'd like to do is raise our glasses to that beautiful lighthouse sankety headlight and wish her a safe voyage to her new location so um here here there we go deep inside the arctic circle work is about to begin on a truly ambitious move yet is a remote town in the far north of sweden in the late 19th century a chance discovery transformed the fortunes of the town far beneath the snow fields and forest prospectors drilled into the rock below and uncovered huge deposits of iron ore they established several small mines to dig out the island over the years so many miners flocked to the area that they needed to build a town further drilling revealed there was enough iron ore to keep the mines going for decades to come what they didn't anticipate is that some of the richest deposits lie directly underneath the town itself [Applause] in the beginning there were just a couple of shacks and today we have a quite big community with schools and shops and i think there are about 15 000 living here the iron ore under the town forms in seams buried a thousand meters beneath the earth they used explosives to extract the iron ore and then brought it to the surface on a giant conveyor belt as they removed each layer they were leaving behind the cavernous void the steeply rigged strata of the original deposits meant that the walls of this underground cavern were dangerously unstable in the late 1970s the walls of one of its voids became so unsteady it collapsed the collapse created a giant sinkhole on the outskirts of town this hole has been getting increasingly bigger and alarmingly more sinkholes are appearing all over the area they are hundreds of meters long 100 meters high ironically the mines that created the town's prosperity could now be responsible for its downfall residents like mrs peterson and her family who have lived here for 16 years are worried about their future the mine is such an important industry for the whole area so without the mind we would probably not be here for long anyway so from that point of view i can understand and accept that you need to do something further mining risks triggering a geological cataclysm the entire town could fall into the earth the only safe way to continue mining is to potentially move over 450 affected buildings to safer ground eight kilometers away this will be a town hall on an unprecedented scale it will cost around 150 000 dollars to move each house but that's a third of the cost of rebuilding these substantial homes this will be a dangerous operation responsibility for saving the town rests on the shoulders of 26 year old andreas mortensen no these are quite big two-story buildings uh they're a little bit over 14 meters long by 10 and a half meters wide they are quite heavy the total weight of the building is a little bit over 200 tons this is a big job uh first of all we're gonna move this street and then we're gonna move on further down the mountain towards the town and move more or less the whole town to move an entire town andreas options are limited he might be tempted by traditional animal power one of the way in which you can move these homes would be by rain there back in the 19th century animals were often used to haul houses horses would pull a building like a sleigh or they could be tied to a capstone to winch a house to its new location [Music] but it would take over a thousand reindeer to pull a 200 ton house perhaps andreas is better off with a 16-ton truck his first challenge is to lift the buildings off the ground but unlike most houses they don't have concrete foundations they are actually built into the solid bedrock when you have this much rock first of all it's hard to get through but also you need to make a nice narrow straight tunnel and when you have when you hit a big rock you need to dig around it to lift the homes off their foundations the team must position seven lifting beams into the bedrock under each house [Music] but before they can insert them they must dig holes into the tough rock to accommodate the beams this is a hazardous maneuver if they dislodged too much loose rock the homes could topple over basically you never know before you start tunneling what it looks like you always have to anticipate the worst and this is just about the worst when it's this hard tunneling through takes three weeks [Music] but once they are under the house they discover an unexpected problem the walls of the homes are not actually attached to the concrete floors there's a real risk that when the homes are lifted up the walls could pull away from the floor and dislodge the roof wrenching the homes apart so there's no really attachment in between here so we need to lift both under the floor and under the wall andreas is worried about the building's structural integrity he's going to use a bed of high pressure air jacks to raise it as gently as possible these are the air jacks we're using to lift the building it's just a powerful balloon basically we're going to go up to about one meter in every house move the first lift is always the most crucial andreas has to lift the building high enough for a low loading truck to back under it the lift must be done evenly to avoid damaging the house i'm checking laser dots to make sure i'm level despite all the technology the only way andreas really knows if the lift is working is by the sounds the building makes just listening for noises like walls cracking that was a good sound the air jacks inflate and the house rises one meter from its foundations with all its walls intact we're now gonna just keep on going up up after five weeks of arduous work the peterson family home is the first to be ready to roll out of town [Music] on the island of nantucket of massachusetts jerry's working out the best way of moving this 500 ton lighthouse from the cliff edge close inspection reveals it's in a fragile state this is typical of moisture getting behind the the paint the stucco then it freezes and then the face of the brick pops off and then you get more moisture in and then it freezes and more pops off extreme weather has damaged the structural integrity of the lighthouse walls strong winds blast rain into the porous brickwork this freezes during the winter and when the ice expands cracks form in the machinery to stop these cracks widening during the move they must build a support collar around the lighthouse walls wooden struts protect the brickwork against high-tension cables that will grip the structure in a rigid embrace [Music] all right we're going to test the tension on this so we'll set our cigar up here if the cigar falls off it's not tight enough so you can see that each one of them is taunt inside the lighthouse jerry faces another major problem we've got a spiral staircase here all these steps are cast steel now it's only supported at the base and there's a hole in this granite rock that the pipe goes into it [Music] the spiral staircase is made of 62 steel steps they thread like beads along a steel column anchored firmly in the lighthouse foundations when they lift the lighthouse off its footings this column will no longer be supported and the steps could unwind [Music] to prevent this happening the team must suspend the staircase from the upper deck of the lighthouse a web of steel cables bind the bottom steps to the top they're attached to a steel frame under the upper floor so the entire staircase is clamped rigid while the lighthouse is in motion just about snug now the cables are definitely ten times stronger than what you need with the building secured jerry is now ready to lift it off the ground a tall building with such a narrow base poses an obvious problem jerry works with project manager joe jacobic to design a lifting rig the existing foundation was essentially the size of this circle and what we're doing is we're increasing the size of the foundation we'll bring building this support frame underneath it and we're taking this this very concentrated load and spreading out of a much larger frame both this way and this way to install the support beams for joe's lifting room they must first cut a series of deep holes into the lighthouse base the positioning of these holes is critical if jerry cuts too many or they are too wide the bottom of the building will lose strength [Music] [Music] the walls are over a meter thick and so tough that only diamond tip chainsaws will cut through them it takes two weeks to cut ten holes through the solid brick walls success now they're ready to insert the steel beams that will support the entire weight of the lighthouse these distribute the load evenly onto a bed of hydraulic jacks which will lift the structure like jacking up a car to change a wheel when they raise up the jacks they're gambling the building will break away from its base along a clean crack line but if the bottom is left with jagged edges they could snag on the bumpy terrain ahead when they thread through the beams the structure is at its most vulnerable any mistakes and the lighthouse could topple over all done it's another day in paradise we'll pick up on the lever for lifting raising and when my gauges quit raising when they hold steady that means the building's coming up with such a tall thin structure it's vital the lighthouse remains perfectly level throughout the lift jerry knows the slightest lean will tip the building off balance mike you're ready to get up okay coming up guys concentrating on all these gauges one jack messes up pressure will rise on the gauge the team watch anxiously for the crack to form between the building and its base it's up right now the bottom jerry let me know i needed seven inches [Music] but they've hit a problem the crack does not form at all an extra meter of stonework remains attached to the bottom this extra brickwork that's come up with the building could drag along the ground if they attempt to move it [Music] well we're going to knock that part off because i've got some beams coming through here and we're going to knock all this out dig this out a little while jerry calls in his bulldozer to knock the base off but mike sees that each time they ram it with the 15-ton bulldozer the whole building shudders ominously their only option is to remove the base by hand it's like get your electric jack hammers out boys [Music] as they hammer away at the base they know there's 500 tons of masonry precariously suspended above their heads in the mining town of mambayet sweden it's now august after five weeks preparation they're finally ready to hit the road with the peterson's house this is a critical day if he can successfully move this first house andreas knows he has a good chance of saving the entire town back to trailer in underneath the building and now they're checking all their meters to see if they can balance the load the house is so large the only trailer big enough to carry it had to travel from finland it weighs 66 tons has a hundred and eight wheels and costs ten thousand dollars a day to hire so they can't afford to hang around but they've run into trouble the house is so wide that the finished drivers are refusing to lift it the trailer is only three meters wide and the buildings are a little bit over 10 meters wide so it's a pretty narrow trailer underneath a wide building right now they're saying that they can't handle the load of the trailer so it looks like we're not gonna be rolling today try it not very good now maybe tomorrow maybe next year we will come up with a solution it's just how the homes are 10 meters wide but the width of the trailer is only three meters wide this is a major problem for the movers on a route lined with treacherous turns if they round a corner too fast or the trailer tilts more than five degrees there's a real risk that the homes could slide off to prevent this andreas decides to chain the hose to the body of the trailer underneath the team install anti-tilting bars these limit the tilt of the trailer to 3.5 degrees but the team must be vigilant the country roads are uneven and full of holes if they accidentally hit one the bars can jam stranding the trailer in the middle of the road once they've tied the house to the trailer and welded the anti-tilt bars in place the move is finally ready to begin but the route ahead will not be easy we're halfway up on a mountain so it's downhill for the first part we have to make sure that we're going nice and slow and smooth around corners and no sudden movements it's 12 pm and they're ready to roll the first obstacle is a big one the town itself it's going to be a tight squeeze mombiet streets are very narrow they're not designed to drive houses down and there's little room to spare i don't know it's a little bit wider than the house i hope it's an anxious moment for mrs peterson as her house edges past it's unreal strange very strange it's hard to believe that they actually dug it up and are moving it a spectator in one office leans out for a closer look but soon thinks better of it the heart-stopping squeeze through the town takes four hours [Music] but five kilometers into the eight kilometer route they must negotiate their next major hurdle a narrow bridge now we have the next problem here and it's this fence so it's 130 high and the trailer can lift 140 but this house is so heavy so maybe it's going to be close the movers know the house is much wider than the bridge but they thought it could overhang each side they overlooked one thing the bridge has fixed railings that are 130 centimeters high unfortunately the house rides only 110 centimeters off the ground [Music] the only way to cross the bridge safely is to raise the house by 30 centimeters or more this will have the unwanted side effect of lifting the anti-tilting bars to a dangerous level if the house rocks crossing the narrow bridge there's a real risk it could tilt and slide off the trailer the whole move could be derailed by just 20 centimeters of railing [Music] [Applause] [Music] with only a few centimeters to spare they make it the house travels three further kilometers through forest before reaching its final destination it's the first house to be saved and the owner mrs peterson is there to witness the final approach feels so unreal really strange same house but in a different place it's almost hard to believe i hadn't seen it in my own eyes i wouldn't believe it to move just one house has taken five weeks as the summer draws to a close and the arctic winter approaches the team know they have to speed things up that's the end point for this house the first house move has been a success but there are many streets still to go [Music] it's 7 30 a.m on nantucket the big move day for the lighthouse a wide dirt path 120 meters long points the way to the new location but can this terrain support such a heavy load this train is uh a little bit snaky on this parts of it are real good it's a clay mix with sand supports very well other parts are very sandy and loose most moves rely on independently steerable wheels but driving such a tall and heavy structure across sand could be risky the tires could sink into the unstable terrain and throw the tower off balance so they plan to mount the lighthouse on rails and roll it to its new foundations [Music] two hydraulic pistons positioned at the rear of the lighthouse would steadily push the building one and a half meters at a time when it reaches the end of the line the team leapfrogged the rails to continue the journey it's almost like watching an inchworm crawl you know as these rams stroke out about 66 inches we stop we release the jack in a box suck it back up lock the jack in a box and go again the island has come to launch this precious landmark on its voyage inland this is a once-in-a-lifetime event they'll only move this lighthouse once hopefully it's a beautiful day the sun is out very little wind so we hope everything goes well bon voyage sankety it's been a long time coming let's hope it's not a long time going ready ready [Applause] [Music] the lighthouse inches forward on 16 sets of steel rollers is it moving that thing's moving all right yeah there you go well two pistons at the rear provide the pushing power but progress is extremely slow it takes two hours to move one and a half meters the islanders are getting so impatient they grease the rails with whale oil in the hope of speeding things up here we go we're going to spread it a little bit [Music] i hope it doesn't work so well that the lighthouse ends up in the middle of the golf course the whale oil seems to do the trick and the lighthouse moves away from the cliff edge [Music] every 12 meters the team leapfrogs the rails to keep the lighthouse on track each beam weighs almost three tons and would take dozens of people to lift even with a bulldozer it's a time consuming process [Music] they hit the ground running but with so much pressure resting on the 16 sets of rollers it's only a matter of time before something gives watch your rollers [Music] somebody say hey one of the rollers is broken throwing the lighthouse dangerously off balance mikey okay see well that's what i broke right here and see these little washers here see how it's got these little washers on it it's just rolling see it goes side to side and it just wears and wears on that washer jerry must move quickly he needs to make the lighthouse upright again if it leans too far out the imbalance load on the walls could damage the structure we're lowering the right hand side the ocean side lock it off mike plum bob's lead reading right and the level's reading correct she's back on her own again now we'll go back pushing again the lighthouse leaves the cliff edge and moves further inland until they brace themselves for the next challenge a downhill run [Music] in sweden andreas and his team are now moving one house every two weeks away from the ever-present danger of the giant sinkholes but in early november just as he is about to complete the first street of homes the weather turns they must press on despite the extreme conditions if they're to save the town before it's devoured by the collapsing mines it's kind of cold and icy roads and a lot of snow it's 8 a.m before it's light enough to start the move and as this is in the arctic circle it will be getting dark again at 2 pm they're working at temperatures of minus 15 degrees centigrade battling against deep snow and ice winter conditions we have snow chains on the trucks we have sand on the streets along their 8 kilometer route are some steep hills andreas is concerned that on the steepest slopes the heavy houses could slide out of control the downhill sections you need extra brake power for to break the load the extra truck behind acts as an additional brake it takes 30 minutes to carefully make their way down this hundred meter incline but their problems aren't over next they have to make their way up a steep icy hill andreas fears that they aren't going to make it too slippery in this hill so we've done some extra sanding and now we're waiting for the extra truck to come around and pull and then we're going to attach the tractor in front of that also before they can attempt this climb andreas must employ all the horsepower at his disposal he adds the brake truck and two snow tractors to provide the extra muscle he hopes will pull the house safely up the hill almost 2 000 horsepower pulling the building out up that hill the extra power pays off but andreas knows he's running out of time in deep winter temperatures can plummet to minus 40 degrees centigrade and when that happens it's impossible to work [Music] on nantucket after three days the lighthouse is halfway through its journey and has reached a steep slope on the soft sand the grate is starting to drop off rapidly we're going to come down a little over 10 foot in height so things get a little more complicated we're going to slow down the new foundations are four meters lower than the old footings and this presents a major problem for the movers if the rails follow the line of the hill then when the lighthouse sets off it will tilt forward putting huge stresses on the outer walls to avoid this they decide to build a series of steps to keep the lighthouse level along the route [Music] at each step they will transfer the weight of the structure off the jacks onto temporary wooden towers [Music] they then release the jacks and remove the support blocks to lower the lighthouse down to ground level [Applause] [Music] coming down it takes three hours to lower the lighthouse down the first step once the rails are resting back on the wooden towers they can transfer the lighthouse's weight to the jacks and begin inching it forward again every 15 meters they repeat the lowering routine just 30 meters to go jerry will need to fine-tune his finale this last part we're really really going to have to get these roll beams just right even though we'll have a plumb bob in the center if your roll beams aren't correct it won't be on the mark and we only have a couple inches to play with the lighthouse is now only nine meters away from its new foundation if the tracks are even slightly off course they will miss the target and reversing is not an option let's keep your guard up right till it's down to where it's going to be for 100 years after nine days of pushing the final destination is tantalizingly close we're getting closer and closer keep on going it's all running straight everybody's going slight [Music] glam [Music] it is beautiful this is a culmination of probably 20 years of worrying about mother nature's assault on the bluff here it is truly an exciting event for us jerry checks a plum bob to make sure the lighthouse is precisely aligned over its new resting place three inches moving our 500 ton structure with such precision is an incredible feat i bet he keeps pushing it won't let up quick enough [Music] that's it folks yep hey good one good job joe jacobic thank you after two months of hard work the lighthouse touches down sankety head light can guard the shores of nantucket once again but the town move in sweden is far from over [Music] in sweden andreas continues to struggle through the arctic winter house by house he hauls the mining town of mombayet to safety [Music] conditions are increasingly harsh and there are only six precious hours of daylight to work with so every house move becomes a battle against the elements we got about 50 centimeters of snow and minus 15 celsius [Music] no sooner do they clear the snow they need to clear it again it's a relentless operation but andreas has no choice but to carry on if he is to save the town from collapse the precision required to reverse the houses onto their foundations is made even more difficult by the icy conditions for andreas the end of the long haul is in sight today we're moving the last [Music] building despite all the odds the town takes shape at its new location on firmer ground eight kilometers away the new town will retain its old name but the homes are renumbered and given a new address the houses slowly make their way through the winter wonderland to escape being swallowed by the mine [Music] is [Music] foreign [Music] is [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] once the old homes are secured on their new foundations and refurbished the families of mambayet can reclaim their streets you

Channel: Spark

Views: 148,097

Keywords: Massachusetts, Nantucket history, Spark, coastal landscapes, coastal planning, collapsing, community involvement, community safety, disaster preparation, disaster preparedness, engineering solutions, heavy lifting, historical preservation, historical relics, lighthouse, preservation of heritage, risk management, tech, urban resilience, weather challenges, winter weather precautions

Id: Yytqjhafv0Y

Length: 46min 57sec (2817 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 06 2021