Vulcan Dismantling

After surviving over 65 years of rain and rust and simply, the strong pull of gravity, The Vulcan in Birmingham, Alabama was dismantled for major repairs and renovation in Oct and Nov of 1999. This short video highlights some of the dismantling procedures needed to bring the various extremely heavy sections of the iron Vulcan safely to the ground at Vulcan Park in Birmingham, AL.

Filmmaker Tom Lenard happened upon a newspaper article in the Birmingham News in September of 1999 detailing the soon to commence dismantling of the Vulcan. In the newspaper article, Tom noticed a man's name he knew who was to be leading and in charge of the process of the comprehensive and dangerous dismantling. He was Scott Howell of Robinson Iron Works out of Alexander City, Alabama. Tom remembered Howell from some twenty years previous when Tom had Howell's Robinson Iron works do some iron work at Auburn University. Tom called Scott to renew a friendship and to find out if anyone had any plans to document the dismantling process.

Mr. Howell indicated that the only plans at that time was to have a couple of the distantling team carry a video camera to try shoot some footage while working and when they could. Mr. Lenard suggested it'd be best to professionally video tape the process and to use wireless microphones on the construction crew team in order to really capture the look, feel, and sounds of the process.

An agreement was reached regarding the costs and so, Tom Lenard and a PA assistant would travel to Birmingham and capture the process about two days a week over an eight week expected dismantling duration. Approx 25 hours of material was captured along the way. Tom, Scott Howell and a production assistant then ended up being the first to go up in a 200 foot crane bucket to first and formost, capture the way the Vulcan sections looked even before the first torch and wrench were put to work. It was very important step to capture the rusted joints and cracks for Insurance purposes should anything go wrong as the dismantling began. At the time, Tom Lenard was working as a Producer, Director/DP at Auburn University. Tom Lenard retired from Auburn University in August of 2007 but, continues to pursue film work and HD video projects independently.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Vulcan
• Park
• Birmingham
• Dismantling
• Robinson
• Iron
• works
• Alabama
• Scott
• Howell
• History

[spunktron]

Awesome. Great vid.