Long time coming.

Alright, here we go. This post is going to be long, detailed, and completely true. Of course, if the post ends up being short, then you'll know that having lied once I could likely do it again. Anyways.. here goes.

Monday was a crazy, crazy day. First off, I stayed up way too late the night before not sleeping. And only got maybe 3-4 hours of sleep. Had I known what was going to happen monday I'd have gotten a lot more sleep. But never-the-less, Monday started off as a normal day. Arrived on site, joked around with Stu and the Anti-chicken.. then Sub-zero and I made our way out into the facility to put out pumps. We had noticed some drift on one of our monitors so we also grabbed a couple of bottles of cal-gas to fix the problem when we got out there. It was probably around 07:40 or so when we headed out. We placed our pumps out, and then commenced work on calibrating the annoying monitor that was drifitng all over the place.

As we were standing there, no more than 100 feet away, a track-hoe was busy working on removing rubble and the like from the work area. We didn't think anything about this at the time since they are always doing work. I think the monitor wasn't calibrating correctly, so myself and the Z-man sort of were standing there making jokes and just trying to see if we could get it to zero at all. At this point I was turned slightly away from the pad (where the track-hoe) was and Zach had his back to it. Out of the corner of my eye there was a flash, pretty bright mide you, and an incredibly loud concussion. There was a slight blast of heat that rushed over us and I felt pretty freaked out. We just looked at each other, at the small ball of flame, then each other again. Quite intense. You know that feeling you get after you slam on your brakes so you don't hit an animal on the road, that sudden rush of adrenaline in your blood? Well.. I could have sworn there wasn't any blood left in me.. and only adrenaline.

At this time most of the area was evacuating, driving well above the posted 10 mph speed limit but I don't think anyone really cared. We got in our vehicle and started driving out the plant. As we got a better visual on the facility we noticed that the reaction caused a plume to rise off the bad. Driving quite well, Zach aimed us downwind of the plume and tore some shit up to get us there before the plume moved out site. Well, the plume was really moving, but we luckily just happened to be at the right place at the right time to get to the edge of the property before the plume exited the site. Also as we were heading downwind the operations radio informed us there was an incident. It was really nice to say that we were already downwind and preparing to monitor. Thought that that was pretty impressive and probably looked really good for us. We didn't detect any readings at this time, and we asked to come back and monitor between the facility and the administrative buildings. We did that, called in the night crew, and sent them out to do some community monitoring. We walked around for about 90 minutes doing some perimeter monitoring and got absolutely no readings. The rest of the day consisted of wipe samples, community monitoring, and not eating lunch until around 3. So, it was quite an exciting day.

There was a video of the actual reaction. I got to watch it the other day. Let's just say that I'm trying to somehow get my hands on a copy of it. I have a blank tape and everything. Maybe I'll be able to get it. The video is quite badass, and the concussion moved the huge track-hoe around eight feet. 8 feet! These things are huge.. and it was pussed around like it was some kid's toy. In the video, I can point out exactly where I am during the whole thing.. pretty dang close.. still makes me wonder.

Anyways, there were no injuries... amazingly! The track-hoe had a 1 inch piece of Lexan protecting the driver's compartment. At least, I believe it was 1 inch. Anyways, yeah, saved the guys life. He was fine other than for some ringing in his ears. After he got out of the vehicle he was high-fiving everyone, quite the apporiate response to just nearly dying. The track-hoe was wasted, some might even say it had it's shit ruined... the computer was fried and the thing had to be dragged off the pad by the new track-hoe. Anyways, no one was hurt and we got no readings readings during the entire "mini-incident". Quite awesome I must say.

Anyways, that is my little story. Did turn out to be long.. sorry for the length. But hey, I could have been complaining about the presidency and the such. Just kidding Sean. Alright everyone, I'm outta here. Going to get some work done and go check on some monitors.

Later