Imperial has plans this long weekend to painstakingly transport a 180-foot tower to its Sarnia refinery.
The fuel processing vessel will replace one that collapsed at Imperial in April of this year.
The new locally built tower is being delivered to the plant from Alliance Fabricating starting at 6:30 p.m. Sunday.
It will move at a snail's pace, arriving some 14 hours later at around 8:30 a.m. Thanksgiving Monday.
Sarnia police Cst. Nelson Amaral said it's a large, coordinated effort, that will require rolling road closures along the way.
He said the vessel will be moving extremely slowly and will need to take multiple 20 point turns.
Map of Imperial tower route (Courtesy of Sarnia Police Service)
"When we say it's big, we mean it's very big," said Amaral. "It's over 170 feet long, and 17 feet wide. There's going to be multiple crews working on this. There's five police officers alone that are handling the escort. We're talking crews from the wide load itself, hydro workers. This thing is only going to reach a top speed of four kilometres per hour."
The route starts at the local fabricating shop on Chester Street, goes eastbound on Confederation Street, south on Blackwell Side Road, west on Churchill Line to Plank Road, back onto Churchill Line to Scott Road, and then west on Imperial Avenue to the plant on Vidal Street South.
Imperial said the tower will be prepared and lifted into place on October 16.
The company has said a design change during maintenance in 2011 was a contributing factor in the collapse of the old tower on April 2.
They said the change "unknowingly increased the risk of pyrophorics" and their investigative team "was able to verify with absolute certainty that the cause was not related to the age, inspection or maintenance of the tower."
-With files from Dave Dentinger