An un-normal day at the office:
It was about to turn into Fall of 2004 when a hurricane named Gaston was down graded to a tropical storm. The guy on the news says "and Gaston will pass through our area quickly and be in New England in by nightfall. Well, you know the deal. The weatherman gets it wrong an awful lot. Yet nobody knew ole Gaston would chug up the east coast and then stall over Richmond Va for an hour many will never forget. Up to 18" of rain fell in about an hour. I was watching it from my upstairs bedroom and living on a flat street I saw water piling up in the highest point of my street. With a 6" curb on both sides, they were under water. I'd never seen anything like it.
Next day things were a huge mess. Working as a consultant for the highway department I was on a paving assignment that ended about a month later. I was to be furloughed after that until Spring. Instead myself and 4 others were dispatched to watch over a number of reconstruction projects. The day after Gaston my buddy Ron and I were dispatched to one where so much water ran down an exit ramp it literally floated a foot thick layer of pavement of a right lane and dumped it onto the left lane of a highway for about a half mile. The two of us worked a 24 hour shift watching pavers repair that one. But one assignment was to watch a triple barrel culvert get replaced. Three side by side 84" pipes (that's 8 feet tall) had been dislodged and moved about 75 feet.
It was one of those roads in the middle of nowhere with perhaps 50 cars a day. But being closed meant folks living in the area had about a 50 mile detour. So the culverts needed to be put back asap. Looking at the pipes was sureal. It was like a giant had just tossed his toys and walked about leaving a pile of rubble. And in a cavern left there was a pinky sized phone wire showing. The contractor called the utility line locating services to have it identified with markings before they began rebuilding the culverts. Nobody thought much about it.
A week goes by and locating services all said "it aint ours". The line was laying across the area where work needed to take place. The boss wanted to know why no work had begun. It was a FEMA job so it was time and materials meaning we were paying the contractor was getting paid to wait for the line to be identified. Two weeks, nothing. The third week the contractor who had a big crew of less than legal workers was getting anxious to start working. My boss hollered at my project inspector on a celular phone "cut the dam thing and start working". So the contractor cut the line with wire cutters.
About 15 minutes later we saw white Econoline vans flying toward our direction from two directions. "Huh?" we thought. Like ten of them!! They slam on brakes all like you see on tv and suddenly a bunch of fellows wearing aviator shades and dark blue coaches jackets with yellow letters……and they all had rifles. "Who's in charge here?!?" shouts one of them as the cotractors workers were scattering into the woods, jumping into the water or standing with their hands in the air. The contractor foreman said "I am, is there a problem?" The guy says "yeah who ever cut the phone line is in big trouble". They talked for a bit and things settled down without any trouble.
Turns out just up the road was a US Navy satellite farm and cutting the phone line had disrupted communication all over planet earth. lol. Holy cow!! Some secret wire along an old country road getting shut down the communication of the entire United States Navy or something. Now for an hour everybody on our side stood around paralyzed while government agents slowly got back in the vans and headed away. Later that day we laughed and laughed about all those dudes jumping into the water, running into the woods etc. Eventually the triple culvert was reinstalled and I was off to other fast paced projects since Gaston had done quite a number to an area along the Chickhomany river near Richmond Va.
A coworker named Ron and I became friends at that period of our lives. Unfortunately colon cancer took Ron away a few years later.
RIP Ron.
It was about to turn into Fall of 2004 when a hurricane named Gaston was down graded to a tropical storm. The guy on the news says "and Gaston will pass through our area quickly and be in New England in by nightfall. Well, you know the deal. The weatherman gets it wrong an awful lot. Yet nobody knew ole Gaston would chug up the east coast and then stall over Richmond Va for an hour many will never forget. Up to 18" of rain fell in about an hour. I was watching it from my upstairs bedroom and living on a flat street I saw water piling up in the highest point of my street. With a 6" curb on both sides, they were under water. I'd never seen anything like it.
Next day things were a huge mess. Working as a consultant for the highway department I was on a paving assignment that ended about a month later. I was to be furloughed after that until Spring. Instead myself and 4 others were dispatched to watch over a number of reconstruction projects. The day after Gaston my buddy Ron and I were dispatched to one where so much water ran down an exit ramp it literally floated a foot thick layer of pavement of a right lane and dumped it onto the left lane of a highway for about a half mile. The two of us worked a 24 hour shift watching pavers repair that one. But one assignment was to watch a triple barrel culvert get replaced. Three side by side 84" pipes (that's 8 feet tall) had been dislodged and moved about 75 feet.
It was one of those roads in the middle of nowhere with perhaps 50 cars a day. But being closed meant folks living in the area had about a 50 mile detour. So the culverts needed to be put back asap. Looking at the pipes was sureal. It was like a giant had just tossed his toys and walked about leaving a pile of rubble. And in a cavern left there was a pinky sized phone wire showing. The contractor called the utility line locating services to have it identified with markings before they began rebuilding the culverts. Nobody thought much about it.
A week goes by and locating services all said "it aint ours". The line was laying across the area where work needed to take place. The boss wanted to know why no work had begun. It was a FEMA job so it was time and materials meaning we were paying the contractor was getting paid to wait for the line to be identified. Two weeks, nothing. The third week the contractor who had a big crew of less than legal workers was getting anxious to start working. My boss hollered at my project inspector on a celular phone "cut the dam thing and start working". So the contractor cut the line with wire cutters.
About 15 minutes later we saw white Econoline vans flying toward our direction from two directions. "Huh?" we thought. Like ten of them!! They slam on brakes all like you see on tv and suddenly a bunch of fellows wearing aviator shades and dark blue coaches jackets with yellow letters……and they all had rifles. "Who's in charge here?!?" shouts one of them as the cotractors workers were scattering into the woods, jumping into the water or standing with their hands in the air. The contractor foreman said "I am, is there a problem?" The guy says "yeah who ever cut the phone line is in big trouble". They talked for a bit and things settled down without any trouble.
Turns out just up the road was a US Navy satellite farm and cutting the phone line had disrupted communication all over planet earth. lol. Holy cow!! Some secret wire along an old country road getting shut down the communication of the entire United States Navy or something. Now for an hour everybody on our side stood around paralyzed while government agents slowly got back in the vans and headed away. Later that day we laughed and laughed about all those dudes jumping into the water, running into the woods etc. Eventually the triple culvert was reinstalled and I was off to other fast paced projects since Gaston had done quite a number to an area along the Chickhomany river near Richmond Va.
A coworker named Ron and I became friends at that period of our lives. Unfortunately colon cancer took Ron away a few years later.
RIP Ron.
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