[TheForge] TheForge Digest, Vol 110, Issue 5

[Fred Zickrick]

The first time I read your note I was horrified. I then read it to my wife
and couldn't help laughing. Thoughts of Laurel & Hardy or the Keystone cops
flashed through my mind. Amazing no one was seriouly hurt!
My wife wants to meet you and see who can so calmly and delightfully
describe such a scene. Although, she does wonder if you had to blow a few
gaskets and drink a couple of bottles of wine before you could report to us!


On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 11:00 AM, <theforge-request at mailman.qth.net> wrote:

> Date: Fri, 08 Mar 2013 10:18:11 -0500
> From: Andrew Vida <osan at netlabs.net>
> To: Blacksmithing List Sponsored by ABANA <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
> Subject: [TheForge] Adventures in steel delivery.
> Message-ID: <513A0133.3010107 at netlabs.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>
> So I spend all this time excavating the crawl space beneath the house
> with nothing but a shovel and wheel barrow.  200 yards of impossible WV
> red shale clay.  The 2' crawl space is not 10' deep and almost ready for
> the new foundation wall.  I order about 1000' of rebar and a few other
> bits for the work ahead.
>
> West Virginia Steel truck arrives yesterday and as it backs down our
> steep driveway the brakes apparently have issues and the truck just
> keeps rolling.  That length of 12" channel just kisses the house as the
> truck comes to a tenuous stop.  I chocked the wheels and the driver
> calls a wrecker.  An hour later the truck is halfway up the driveway,
> chocked and safe.
>
> So what does the driver then do, you ask?  He proceeds to follow the
> wrecker up the driveway against instruction, stalls the engine on the
> GMC 7500 flatbed, which has no airbrakes, and proceeds rolling back to
> the house.
>
> I am standing directly behind about 50' back thinking that this just
> cannot be happening.  I dodged being hit by about 8 to 12 inches.  The
> truck plows into the parked 4Runner, destroying the front end as the
> driver attempts to avoid leveling the house, veers off to the right, all
> this backwards, flies into the as-yet dry pond I excavated about 6
> months ago, the back slamming into the opposite embankment and
> decelerating the vehicle from about 35 or 40 mph to zero in well under
> 1/10 of a second.  The front wheels flew at least 2' off the ground as
> the entire chassis bent in ways never intended, the remaining energy
> directing the cab rightward about 15 feet.
>
> I was certain the driver had been killed, but he survived, if with a
> goodly showing of his own blood as his head went through the back
> window.  That the steel was not driven through the cab and subsequently
> through the driver seems convincing evidence that someone was watching
> over him.
>
> A small fleet of wreckers showed up and in about 6 hours they actually
> managed to themselves get stuck in the mud, but eventually got
> themselves and the delivery vehicle out.
>
> So my driveway is damaged from the steel chocks scraping as the wreckers
> skidded under the stress of the cables, one of which broke
> unceremoniously - nobody killed by the whipping cable, but I was
> standing only about 40 feet away, thereafter increasing my interval of
> observation.
>
> Garden nuked, car nuked, potato bed nuked, tillable ground seriously
> nuked.  House slightly damaged.
>
> All in all, the day seemed pretty to have passed well.  Nobody killed.
>