The dangest thing you ever saw...

uncle Alan

uncle Alan

Joined
Jul 11, 2004
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Since I'm much older than most of our forumites,I probably have seen a lot more strange happenings.
Was in Raleigh N.C. to open a new auto warehouse account in the late '60's. They were building a mid-rise motel close to where I was staying . The contractor's walking crane lifted a smaller crane to the roof,evidently to lift the A/C units & other heavy bulky items up.
There was an emergency somewhere & the walking crane was hauled away . Shortly after ,the job was finished but there was no way to remove the small rooftop crane . It was needed elsewhere too & by being on the roof might have delayed the final inspection .
Any how the urgency increased. The crane operator evidently talked to the engineers about the parapet strength because they shored it up & the operator proposed to anchor the unit & back it off the roof by releasing the cable as he backed it down.
Word got out & mob had to be held back. The crane was fired up & slowly climbed the parapet backwards. It was slipping & sliding sideways a bit but he was doing it. Crowd went wild & would scream as he bobbled & skidded ever so slowly groundward.
He ran out of cable 30 feet from the ground & hung there in midair ! After a minute he climbed back up . He lifted another cable spool, rethreaded the cable drum & backed all the way to the ground successfully !

Talk about the size of grapefruit !

Uncle [ still amazed ] Alan
 
Hehe- speaking of cranes.....

I've been in police work a long time, so I've seen my share of rather bizzare accidents, fires, and so forth.
I had a brief stint working hospital security between the time I left the county PD and got my present job.
The hospital in question (Barnes) was doing a lot of construction, and had placed a huge, 30-ton crane motor atop the building segment they were working on. Finished with the thing, they were attempting to lower this huge thing (it was about 40-feet long) onto a flatbed truck by means of cables and winches down the front of the building face.
I was standing in my little guard shack, watching this action, when I noticed a lot of hard-hatted workers running full tilt away from the scene. Not good, I reasoned.
Sure enough, the staples holding the winches to the roof let go, and dropped the crane motor about 50 feet onto the flatbed, squashing it flat. The cables whipped over the adjacent street, and several large shackles fell onto a Bi-State bus stop, injuring 4-5 people rather severely. Quite a sight!

As was the sight of hospital administrators, following the injured down the halls waving release forms....
 
The dangest thing I ever saw?

I saw a fork truck come round a curve just a bit to fast when I used to work for the Boeing Military Airplanes Company. The truck tipped over onto its side as those things are want to do. The cargo he was carrying fell off. The first item was a 55 gallon drum of three-minute epoxy resin which broke open spilling the sticky resin all over the place. The second item was a 55 gallon drum of three-minute epoxy hardener which also broke open spilling its contents all over the place. Exactly three minutes later, that fork truck was glued to the floor. And it sat there in the middle of the hall for several weeks until they brought jack hammers and got it up.
:D



I never saw them moving resin and hardener on the same truck at the same time again.
 
The damndest thing I ever saw. I was parked behind an account one day doing paper/computerwork on a sunny afternoon. I looked across the alley to see a spiderweb on the wood fenceline of the field there. And in the spiderweb was a small white butterfly, struggling to free itself. I watched it for awhile while I worked, till I couldn't stand it anymore and decided that the butterfly didn't have to die that day.

So, I got out of my vehicle and walked across the alley and took a pen and very carefully disentangled the butterfly from the web, freeing him. As he flew off a bumblebee ran into him (accidentally?) and they both went to the ground struggling. When the bee took off the butterfly lay still there on the ground, dead.

At this point I just stood there amazed at the awesome power of fate. My conclusion was that when it's your time to go, you're done! Nobody can save you.
 
I saw the aftermath of a HMMWV heavy drop. Triple canopy chutes failed to open. Upon landing, engine block punched through aluminum palette and buried itself a few feet into the ground. :D
 
Like mwerner I've had a lot of police experience. Strange things? A few that come instantly to mind are:

1. At 0530, a truck loaded with paper parasols crashed on a dual carriageway on my area. The sun was rising and a breeze was building up. There I was, sprinting around in the road as dozens of brightly-coloured umbrellas caught the wind, opened up and scurried over the tarmac.

2. My mate Andy and I were doing traffic control outside the local football stadium. Traffic came up a short, steepish rise, then had to wait at a roundabout. A low-loader with a huge Caterpillar tractor had to stop at the roundabout. They hadn't thought to die it down on the loadbed or apply the brakes...

As Andy and I watched, powerless and horrified, the unmanned Caterpillar rolled majestically off the truck and headed back down the hill. Blessedly, although it was a busy day, there was no other traffic on the road at the time, and the truck driver managed to pop out of his cab like a cork, sprint after the Caterpillar and apply the brake.

3. The moron who came to the enquiry counter at my station and handed me a shrink-wrapped breakfast fry-up. He believed that his landlord (who'd cooked the fry-up) was trying to kill him, and that the food had been fried in axle grease. He was demanding that I have the meal sent off to the forensic lab for analysis. Imagine my reply.

And many more, most of which I only remember when I'm drinking; and most of which belong in the Cove, or W&C.

maximus otter
 
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