A view of the sinkhole in the National Corvette Museum. Photo courtesy of the National Corvette Museum.
Bowling Green - KY, By now, the international story of a massive sinkhole swallowing up eight Corvettes at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green is in the archives. All eight of the iconic sports vehicles have been pulled from the fallout below the museum's Skydome.
But Michael Murphy, CEO of Scott, Murphy & Daniel, and some of his staff are still on the job after their company recovered the cars. They're preparing for the next phase — filling in and remediating the sinkhole and putting back a structured floor system.
"The Corvette Museum is an interesting place anyway, but this has been even more so," Murphy said. "We are so lucky. If that hole had been 10 feet closer to the spire column or to the building's edge, the building could have imploded. It was also lucky that it happened before museum hours, or people would have been there."
Murphy recalls that shortly after he learned of the 5:30 a.m. Feb. 12 museum floor collapse, he emailed Executive Director Wendell Strode.
"I told him that if there was anything we could do to help to let us know," Murphy said. "We were a vendor of theirs. We had built an addition to the Corvette Museum about six years ago."
Murphy knows the terrain.
Mammoth Cave National Park is 45 miles from Bowling Green. "This is a karst area — with a lot of underground caves and sinkholes. We've been repairing sinkholes for 40 years but not in this setting. But we knew what to do."
The Skydome exhibit area of the museum is a separate structure connected to the main museum. The size of the sinkhole was estimated to be 40 feet across and 25 to 30 feet deep.
One of the first tasks was to drill micro piling down 200 feet to solid rock, secure the spire and perimeter foundation wall.
Murphy's crews consulted with geologists and structural engineers and worked through the project — a piece at a time — and got all of the cars out and secured the building — while also working under a global media microscope.
"It was a pretty intense 12 weeks," he said.
Two area men part of recovery, repairs
Scott, Murphy & Daniel bought Hartz Construction of Owensboro at the end of 2012. The local company, now Hartz Contracting, operates as a division of the Bowling Green-based building construction specialists.
Ben Hartz is the safety director on the museum job.
"In recovering those eight cars, safety was our No. 1 concern," Hartz said.
A cave specialist from Western Kentucky University went down into the hole, in the caves, and made sure it was secure and there wouldn't be another collapse, he said. The company also had rappelling equipment ready for a rescue in case someone fell farther into the hole. And the Bowling Green Fire Department allowed Scott, Murphy & Daniel employees to train at their facility. The fire department also was secondary to the company for safety.
"This was different from anything we had ever done," the WKU graduate said. "We also worked in partnership with Kentucky OSHA's (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) education division so it would be a teaching tool. And also, it's good to have a second set of eyes."
The company used two cranes — inside the hole — to get the Corvettes out. The team was lowered into the hole using a "man basket."
"We really had no problems," Hartz said. "The biggest safety issue was the concrete slabs overhead (the museum floor) that were cracking. We had to first saw these — cut them back and remove them — before starting. The whole project was very successful. It was slow going, but that's good."
Vaughn, who has worked for Scott, Murphy & Daniel for nearly four years, is the superintendent or foreman on the job. This project, he said, because of its high profile and scope, was the most interesting job he has worked on.
"Every car was different; none came out the same way," the Beaver Dam native said. "We had a plan and worked the plan, and it worked well."
According to the museum, the cars that fell in the collapse included two on loan from General Motors — 1993 ZR-1 Spyder and 2009 ZR1 "Blue Devil."
The other six vehicles owned were: 1962 Black Corvette; 1984 PPG Pace Car; 1992 White 1 Millionth Corvette; 1993 Ruby Red 40th Anniversary Corvette; 2001 Mallett Hammer Z06 Corvette; 2009 White 1.5 Millionth Corvette.
With the cars out of the hole and the building secure, the focus has been on a design to remediate the hole and put back a structured floor system, Murphy said last week.
The company plans to finish its work in time for the museum's 20th anniversary celebration on Aug. 27.