Wind Forces Delay of Redwood Sky Walk Local Soft Opening
Redwood Skywalk [Crop of a photo from the Sequoia Zoo Facebook page]
The Sequoia Park Zoo will delay the soft opening of the Redwood Sky Walk, originally planned for tomorrow Friday, May 14, 2021.
“While the Redwood Sky Walk has been specially engineered to withstand many adverse weather events, the structure is attached to living trees. Because of the many natural and man- made variables at play, the zoo has put aggressive protocols in place to thoroughly check the structure when extreme weather conditions present opportunities for unusual strain,” Zoo
Director Gretchen Zeigler said. “It’s truly unfortunate that local wind conditions over the past few days have forced us to implement our closing procedures and delay our long-awaited soft- opening plans. But, the safety of our guests will always be our top priority. These precautionary measures are in place for moments such as this.”
City officials have advised that the planned zoo admission price increases will not go into effect tomorrow as previously announced, and instead will await the Redwood Sky Walk opening.
An announcement regarding the new soft opening timeline is anticipated for next week. There are no plans to delay the grand opening weekend activities scheduled for June 4-6, 2021 at this time.
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Lol
I anxiously await the first fat tourist plunging to their death. The trees deserve better. Nature is NOT an amusement park.
I’ve always viewed the outdoors as a vast amusement park. You should try it
Good idea. Today wasn’t too bad, but yeah, it’s been really windy lately. I don’t want to go into the forest, much less be suspended up high in it when the wind is rockin.
Don’t come knockin’ if it’s rockin’.
It was always a bad idea. Too many things could go wrong at anytime. Anyone who has been in the Redwoods in a windstorm, which can be sudden, knows just how much those tree whip around. Remember that microburst 10 years ago or so? Huge trees were coming down like dominoes all around.
Those trees have specific wind checks in them so they can sway in the wind without internal damage compromising the tree.
With all the trees that were cut down those wind checks won’t really help much anymore because they won’t encounter the same wind forces that they have experienced over the last 500 years.
I’m sure soon they will be demolishing the old bathrooms and back area of the park to put in a parking lot.
A large 40 lb. branch came down on the skywalk the other day, would have killed someone if the walk was open…we’ll see how long this thing lasts..
500 years, lol.
I’d think a 500 hundred year old thing in that park would be a rock. Our country was so pillaged. From the people, critters, forest and forest management has all gone to hell.
500 year old rock? don’t think so…
Regardless of where the funding came from, how and why would a zoo spend a ton of cash on redevelopment that can’t withstand wind in a county notorious for windy weather? Someone please find a link for any kind of environmental study report performed before this project was integrated.
The winds over the last several days have not been terrible, certainly not compared to previous months where old roof shingles would fly across the yard.
This is completely inexcusable and reckless in terms of potential liability. The definition of reckless is substantial and unjustifiable risk.
I guess the only future winner here will be Mainzer LLP?
Schools have to be designed to withstand extremely high winds. The roofing materials have to be guaranteed to withstand a much higher wind than residential construction. The same should have been thought through with a project like this one. It would appear it was not. I would say that greed and the desire to draw in tourism far outweighed proper engineering. Kind of common with the current culture of corruption seen in the BOS and Eureka City Council. Thanks once again for your failure in leadership!
The sky walk bridge will end up like the glass bottom one in Hunan China. A gust of wind bent the 1,400 foot long foot bridge hanging by cables, and blew out a number of glass panels you walk on. Engineering at its finest. A complete was of money on both!
Well there is at least a new perspective with a glass floored bridge over a canyon. What is the advantage of suspending a walkway up in trees when there are roads where there are 200ft drop offs through trees and hikes with overlooks everywhere already?