[LUconn]

This is pretty neat. I may head down to the city stadium myself.

Public can sign steel beams for Freedom Tower on Saturday


Ron Brown
rbrown@newsadvance.com
December 7, 2006


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The public can sign massive steel columns that will be used in New York City’s Freedom Tower on Saturday at Lynchburg’s City Stadium.

The public signing is scheduled to take place between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.

Banker Steel of Lynchburg has done the fabrication work on the columns, which weigh about 1,500 pounds per foot.

Over the past month, Banker work crews have added strength to the wide-flange beams by welding heavy steel plates to their sides. The columns will be part of the subgrade structure of the 1,776-foot-tall building, which is scheduled for completion in 2011.

The Freedom Tower is being built on the site of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, which were destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists flew commercial airliners into the buildings.

An estimated 2,752 people died.

In July of this year, 27 extra- large steel columns were manufactured in Luxembourg and delivered to Lynchburg, where some were reinforced by heavy steel plates welded to their sides.

The beams, when completed, will weigh about 30 tons apiece.

By the time the manufacturing process is completed, the columns would have traveled about 4,700 miles.

The public-signing session grew out of a desire by Banker Steel President Don Banker to allow the public to put messages of support on the steel.

“There’s a lot of public interest in this,” Banker said Wednesday. “Everyone wants to participate. We’ve had people as far away as Washington, D.C., who have said they want to come and sign the columns. We have one school who has planned a field trip to have its kids come and sign the beams.”

New York Gov. George Pataki is scheduled to be in Lynchburg on Friday to tour the Banker plant and get a look at the columns.

Local police and firefighters and two Virginia state troopers who were at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, will accompany Pataki on the tour.

A commercial airliner also struck the Pentagon in the coordinated attack by terrorists.

[mrmacphisto]

Crap... if I'd known earlier, I may have gotten up early to do this. Or if I didn't have to work extra hours today.