Hair-Raising Heights

Hair-Raising Heights
©2011 by Brian Ratty

Portland Oregon and Vancouver Washington are separated by the Columbia River . So these cities are connected by a large long draw bridge known as the Interstate Bridge . During the nineteen-forties both these communities had huge shipyards that built an assortment of ships for the war effort.

By the late sixties however, most of these shipyards had been abandoned or torn down. What remained were only rusty ways and the skeleton buildings of the past. But in Vancouver there was still one working yard. It was building gigantic floating platforms for off shore oil drilling in the Alaskan waters.

These platforms were built of steel pillars hundreds of feet long, and high, that could be flooded with sea water to sink the rig upright once over the oil drilling site. These massive tubes of water-tight steel were constructed on the shipyard ways, launched into the Columbia River and then towed by tugboats to Alaska . This was a big operation that employed hundreds of steel workers.

After graduating from Brooks Institute of Photography, I was fortunate to secure a job with the largest commercial photography studio in Portland Oregon , Photo-Arts. But, being the low man on the totem pole, I was the seventh photographer of seven; I got all the assignments the others didn’t want.

This hair-raising assignment is as vivid today as it was almost forty years ago. It was a typical March day, dark, gray and with rain in the air. When I got to the studio that morning, I learned that an oil platform being towed down the Columbia River had collided with the Interstate Bridge while passing under its massive vertical lift. There was a lot of water in river at this time of year and the construction company had miscalculated the height for the huge platform to pass safely under the open bridge. I was quickly dispatched to photograph the damage to the bridge from the ground level. But, because of snarled traffic from this accident, I had to return to the studio. After a few phone calls, I was sent to catch a helicopter to take aerial shots of the damage. The chopper waiting for me was a small two-seater, without doors, and with a young pilot flying.

Soon we were hovering alongside the still jammed up lift spans with me half resting on the chopper seat and half standing outside on the landing struts. Using a long lens and my Hasselblad camera, I shot a few rolls of B&W film of the extensive damage to the bridge. From where I was perched, I could look down and see thousands of cars, in both directions, stalled in one massive traffic jam. Then I became aware of the bridge crews scurrying around the steel frames trying to get the span to close across the fast flowing Columbia River .

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had a form of acrophobia, but my condition isn’t a fear of heights, it’s an irrational desire to jump! And on this day, I had to fight off these urges with all of my strength. It all seemed so unreal, the whirling of the blades, the pitching of the helicopter and the abstract views far below. Thankfully, I finally took my last shots and we turned for home.

As we approached the Portland skyline, the helicopter radio came alive and we were told to fly to Vancouver and pickup the foreman of the construction company. Then we were to chase down the tugboats towing the floating platform and get pictures of any damage to the oil rig. As we veered off for Vancouver , I asked the pilot about three people in a two person chopper.

“No problem,” he answered through the headset, “I’ve done it before. My concern is gas and losing the daylight. This bird isn’t cleared for night flying.”

That’s just great, I thought. No light and no gas, and the three of us marooned on some deserted sandbar on the Columbia River !

The foreman we picked up was a giant of a man. He had to weigh over two-hundred and fifty pounds. Putting him in the center of the chopper bench seat, the pilot and I flew with half our butts hanging outside the open doors. It was a cold, long, miserable ride down river with the little helicopter motor humming overtime.

By the time we caught up with the tugboats, they were just starting to cross the Columbia River Bar, which is one of the most treacherous nautical crossings in the world. With the chopper overweight, we found a large sandbar and dropped off the foreman. After I took my pictures, the helicopter would return and drop me off, so the foreman could go up and get a look.

When we finally caught up with the floating platform they were just crossing the bar in the fading light. The bar conditions were swirling winds, choppy seas and light rain. The top of the rig, which had hit the underside of the bridge, was a good two-hundred feet above the churning waves. As we approached the target, I stood outside on the landing struts with my butt in the open door so the pilot’s right hand could hold onto the back of my belt so I wouldn’t fall out. With the winds roaring and the chopper twisting in every direction, we made three passes across the top of the big rig. Holding onto my camera for dear life, I snapped off my pictures and fought off those damn urges. It was a bird’s eye view like no other and I prayed that my exposure was correct. The damage to the rig seemed minimal to me, but what hell did I know? I was just the photographer!

In a small rain squall, I was dropped off on the sandbar. As the helicopter flew away with the foreman, I stood alone on the wind swept beach with a rising tide. Yes, the island was getting smaller with every tick of the tide clock. With the light waning and the waters rising, I was picked up half-hour later. In another few minutes I would have had to swim for shore.

We had just enough fuel and light to make it back to Portland . Looking back at this assignment today, I realize that I was too young and dumb to count the many times we cheated death that day. As for my pictures, they turned out fine with a few of my prints making into the local newspapers. But dry firm land never looked so good as it did at the end of that assignment of hair-raising heights.