Wednesday, August 16, 2006

A brush with Death!

Ok, so I'm exaggerating a bit in the title but yes, today I had what we call at my work "A Near Miss." So for my job, three days a week I'm out at a quarry that is being filled in. So this involves me watching 18-wheel trucks backing up to the edge of the quarry (which is 450 feet deep) and dumping their load of dirt onto the ground. I inspect the load quickly to determine that there is no garbage in the pile or that the dirt is contaminated with gasoline/oil. Eventually a bulldozer comes along and pushes these piles of dirt over the edge and into the pit. So lately the guy that has been operating the bulldozer has been getting really stressed with this job and it has been making him very difficult to work with this last week or two. Today he finally snapped. Yesterday he had a very bad day, he couldn't keep up with all the trucks coming in and got behind. Because of that I heard he got a major lecture this morning about keeping up. So this morning the guy was pissed that he was getting told how to do his job. He was tearing around the site, almost running into trucks, it was getting bad. So I went to a section were he wasn't so I could do my job in relative peace and quite. Sure enough, I wasn't in that spot for a half an hour before he starts hxzzzzzzzzzzz (lol sorry that was Ash trying to help me) heading my way. Ok, so I am standing behind a bunch of backed in18 wheelers with a 450 foot drop about 10 ft behind me. The bulldozer drives past the parked trucks and turns so the dozer is facing me about 20 feet away from me, then without giving me time to move somewhere else safely he just opens up and starts hauling toward me. To help with the size of this dozer, the blade on the front of it that pushes the material, is 10 feet high. If he hit me, he would never know. So I had to very quickly move inbetween the parked trucks to get out of the way of the crazy bulldozer.
So after being nearly flattened I go and tell the guy that in charge of this whole operation who then tells the safety people at the front of the plant. I was brought up to the safety trailer where I had to write out a statement explaining what happened, then I had to tell it to a few different people. They brought the bulldozer driver in later and fired him. He was being extremely reckless with a huge piece of equipment and they just couldn't have that.
Ugh and that was at about 9:30 this morning...if that doesn't ruin a day I don't know what would. So the whole rest of the day I was all stressed out and I just counted the hours, and when you're working a 10 hour day it goes real slow. But in the end, I'm in one piece still and that makes me happy.

3 comments:

Rayna said...

Wait...you're telling me that YOU STILL STAYED ON THE JOB AFTER NEARLY BEING KILLED?!? Man! You are one tough cookie! I would've gone home shaking! I'm glad to hear you didn't get hurt, and that the reckless jerk got sacked.

Stef said...

Yup I stayed there. I seriously thought about taking Thrusday off, but I didn't want to look like a sissy to all the guys there. So I toughed it out.

Anonymous said...

Well...I prob woulda stayed, maybe even had a good feeling that I had been aware enough to dodge it and got a danger off the site...but I am a little off so :P

Glad you are ok miss stefie!

Kate