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DUBLINERS WERE TREATED to an unexpected renactment of a the Lottery’s ‘rainbow’ TV ad this afternoon.
Except this time, there was no big budget advertising money in play.
The Samuel Beckett Bridge was opened this morning to allow a ship upriver as part of a 1913 Lockout commemoration event.
But as it was swung back into place a problem was noticed. The bridge isn’t opened to shipping all that often, and this morning the cable stays that support it expanded slightly during the period the ship was passing.
When the ‘swing section’ was manoeuvred back into place shortly before 1pm, the mechanisms weren’t reconnecting properly; a decision was made to hose the cables down, cooling them so they could reconnect as normal.
A tugboat equipped with high pressure, high capacity hoses was brought in by engineers on site. The hosing down took place, and the bridge was reopened to traffic shortly afterwards.
The rainbow effect was just a fortunate side-effect, it turns out.
TheJournal.ie reader Benjamin Lawlor says it was a spectacular sight:
“The incredible thing about this was that at the angle that we were standing, we got front row seats to a re-enactment of the National Lottery ad with a beautiful rainbow seen in the spray of the boats, smack bang in the centre of the Liffey.”
A spokesperson for Dublin City Council said today’s incident “wouldn’t be untypical”:
The cable stays on the Samuel Beckett Bridge are due to be retensioned in the coming months. This is part of the routine maintenance of any cable stay bridge.The matter you refer wouldn’t be untypical and can probably be expected before the routine retensioning.
The spokesperson said the bridge would have closed normally over a longer time period, but that the hoses were brought in to speed up the process.
[All images: Benjamin Lawlor]
The National Lottery ‘Rainbow’ ad (Youtube: teddybrek)
This kind of story is like putting a satellite image over the Sahara desert and saying its going to be warm and dry.
rain on the way?! you don’t say :D
@ Denise.. “if only it was …’A little’!!!!
Think I’m having a little déjà vu here…
The weather in Ireland is OK. A little rain does no harm.
I don’t know why we have met office. My horoscope is more accurate.
I was just in the Czech Republic at a festival for 7 days and it “rained” once in Prague. I say rained, but it was literally a couple of drops. Looked around the street and all these Czech people were looking up wondering what the hell was happening. Some dose coming home.
The Czech Republic can keep the winters they have every year, those 2 harsh winters Ireland got a couple of years back is the norm for them every winter and sometimes even worse. No thanks.
Here on Orkney, we have had 32mm of rain this month, 16mm between 12 midnight and 8am this morning.
Data collected by our on site weather station.
We missed the deluge at home 2 weeks ago, but we’re expecting more on Saturday.
Shocker
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