Update, 9 a.m. Saturday: It happened. Caltrans imploded a massive underwater pier from the old eastern span of the Bay Bridge at 7:17 a.m.
It was a pretty big show -- see the video above -- with water geysering up from the 20,000 pounds of high explosives and drivers stopped at the Bay Bridge toll plaza out of their cars climbing on cars to see what they could.
Original post: We'll cut to the chase: It's going to be very hard, if not impossible, to get a direct eyeball view of the widely publicized Bay Bridge pier implosion scheduled just off the shore of Yerba Buena Island on Saturday morning.
Boats will be kept 1,500 feet from the implosion site, and the California Highway Patrol will shut down traffic on the bridge from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. Saturday -- H-hour for the blast. The bike path will be closed and there will be temporary BART delays.
So Caltrans is urging the curious and those with nothing better to do on Saturday morning to tune in to a live webcast of the event here: Pier 3 Implosion.
The implosion, designed to remove a massive pier foundation that rises above the bay floor near Yerba Buena Island, is scheduled to take place during a low slack tide, which will occur about 7:15 a.m.
Caltrans has said that the implosion -- actually hundreds of separate blasts using 20,000 pounds of explosives over a period of 6 seconds -- will create a visible debris plume in the waters near the pier. The agency has also acknowledged that fish and other wildlife will be harmed by the blast, although it's taken a series of precautions to minimize the damage.
If the event needs to be delayed, there's a second window for the implosion, around 1 p.m.
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