Almost two million people visit the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii every year, to pay homage to the spot where 1,177 Navy soldiers lost their lives in the surprise Japanese attack of Dec. 7, 1941. However damage to the dock system needed to be repaired so that people could continue visiting the site safely.
Access to the Memorial had been suspended in May 2018 when park staff noticed minor damage to its attached floating concrete dock. Further inspection of the dock revealed a failure of its anchoring system, which allowed large lateral movement at the spot where passengers disembark from Navy boats. While the Memorial itself is fixed in place, the floating dock and gangway shift with the tides, waves and wake from passing boats, making the position of the floating dock relative to the memorial critical to having passengers safely come ashore.
To repair this, GHD designed a new mooring system that was installed using a series of 12 “helical” piles screwed into the seafloor, with synthetic rope and high-tech elastic bands attached to the 105-foot dock, in order to mitigate the thickness of soft mud and sediments in the bay.
The reopening of the Memorial occurred on September 1st just in time for the Labor Day holiday following a 15-month closure. Pearl Harbor National Memorial Acting Superintendent Steve Mietz said: “It is a great honor to share the stories of the men of the USS Arizona, and all of those who served, suffered and sacrificed on Oahu on Dec. 7, 1941. That is the cornerstone of our mission here, and restoration of public access to this iconic place is critical as we continue to tell their stories and honor their memory.”