THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 21, 1996 TAG: 9609210263
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHARLENE CASON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 81 lines
Navy Seabees broke a world record Friday, just for practice.
The seagoing engineers completed the world's longest temporary pier at the Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base - a floating causeway that juts 1,200 feet into the Chesapeake Bay, can handle heavy tractor-trailer traffic and will be gone within a week.
Built in around-the-clock shifts by Little Creek's Amphibious Construction Battalion 2, the $50 million steel elevated causeway - ELCAS(M) in navalese - is the first of its kind, and is being touted as the future of amphibious construction.
It enables the Navy to tie up container ships off shorelines where port facilities are damaged or nonexistent, to unload their cargo onto military tractor-trailers, and to get food and equipment ashore in a hurry.
That's an urgent need in combat areas, where troops are sometimes put ashore with limited supplies.
The causeway, which replaces old pontoon-based technology used since World War II, may also be used as a bridge in places where permanent crossings are destroyed.
But the real value in constructing the expeditionary pier from the beach at Little Creek is ``in the training,'' said Commodore Jerry Schill, commander of Naval Beach Group 2.
``And there's as much training value in taking it down as in putting it up.''
The pier is a system of modular slabs that lock together to form a 24-foot-wide roadway, which is pushed out from the beach 40 feet at a time. Crews hammer pilings, which suspend the roadway about 15 feet above the waves, as the pier marches from shore.
At its end - which could be as much as 2,000 feet out - is the ``pierhead,'' on which pneumatic turntables enable empty tractor-trailers to drive the pier's length, be loaded with containers full of supplies, turn around in place and head back to land.
Cargo handlers drive British-style, hugging the roadway's left edge with only a deep breath between two passing trucks. There's no guard rail.
The newly engineered causeway is not designed to deliver tanks or other ``rolling stock,'' nor fuel; different types of causeways and bridges are constructed for different types of deliveries.
But the ELCAS(M) is the military's best bet for its purpose: getting a roadway out to 20-foot-deep water and the ships that support expeditionary forces.
``It's not designed to be pretty. It's designed to go up fast and be functional,'' said Lt. Charlene Mowery, one of two officers in charge of the 12-hour shifts that spent the past week building the Little Creek pier.
Advantages abound in the new system. Among them: the modular units and pilings they sit on are easier to transport than the bulkier roadways of old.
And, more importantly, it's safer.
The ELCAS(M) is designed to stand firm in up to 86 mph winds and 9-foot seas. And putting up the old-type ELCAS is tricky and dangerous. It's constructed from the water in, toward the beach, and workers must contend with an uncertain surf zone.
``This new system is so much safer than the old one,'' Mowery said. ``On this one, we never really touch the water; we're over top of it.''
``So we're never at the mercy of the sea state,'' said Cmdr. Michael Conaway, commanding officer of the construction battalion. ``The advantages are in safety, productivity and transportation.''
For all that, the pier will stay up for less than a week before it's dismantled and stored in the Seabees' compound, awaiting an exercise or mission.
That will require another feat of engineering: Once disassembled, all the puzzle pieces have to fit back into the containers from which they came.
``It's a $50 million investment that has to be retrieved and reused,'' Conaway said. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by MOTOYA NAKAMURA photos/The
Virginian-Pilot
Practicing for a real war situation, Seabees constructed a
1,200-foot floating pier at Little Creek Naval Amphibious base. The
causeway can handle heavy tractor-trailer traffic, but it's intended
to stay up for only a week.
The pier's modular construction lets the Navy unload container ships
in a hurry, even if port facilities are nonexistent.
KEYWORDS: FLOATING PIER U.S. NAVY FLOATING CAUSEWAY by CNB