So, I had some excitement the other day. First, my mentor Trevor and I were trying to find a cable buried under some guy's driveway, and Trevor (arrogant redneck - dangerous combination) climbs in a back hoe and starts digging up the driveway. The guy tells me there's a gas line 3 feet under where Trevor's digging, and I pass the pertinent information on to Trevor who ignores me (as usual) and keeps digging. You should here the whoosh that gas blowing out of a severed line at 80 lbs/square inch makes. Howling would be a better way to describe it. Now Trevor, needing to do something heroic to mask the stupidity of cutting this gas line, grabs a pair of pliers and vice grips and jumps in the hole, and after about 5 minutes of trying (and climbing out a few times to get some air, his face bright red) he manages to get the vice grips on the end of the pipe and squeeze off about 70 % of the opening. He then asks me to shovel out the pit and find the other end of the pipe. I took two shovelfuls, and hearing the scraping of the shovel on the gravel that could easily cause a spark I climbed out and told him it could wait until Atco gas had come and fixed the leak. Not good enough for Trevor, he grabbed the shovel and jumped in the hole and dug and dug, then got the cable locator and jumped and and searched for the cable. Finally the Atco guy showed up and he looked in the pit at the pipe with the vice grips hanging on the end of them and said, "Someone was really brave, and really stupid!" He then explained that a 50 000 Volt static electric charge builds up at the end of the pipe with the rush of the gas escaping and putting anything metal close to it was likely to cause a spark. I kept a safe distance away, but Trevor was lucky he didn't get his face burnt off.
So we were just finishing up that job at about 5pm and we got a call that there were major problems in Conklin, a town about 2 hours south of Fort McMurray down highway 881, which is a dirt road for half the trip there. Conklin is half oil sand worker camps and half Indian reservation. Phone service was out in Conklin, another Indian reservation called Janvier and (God forbid!) at the big oil company plants in the area. So by 11 pm there were 5 Telus managers down there trying to figure out the problem; we were working in the central office which is a 12' by 60' trailer with no windows filled with telephone switches and racks of computers. That's when we heard the shooting outside. Just a couple of shots and someone screaming. I wandered outside to get an idea of what was going on and I heard a couple more shots, not too far away, less then half a kilometer for sure, and a couple of war cries coming from even closer. I went back inside and told the guys there was gang warfare going on out there. I wasn't too worried because no one was shooting at us, just shooting.
Now Trevor, he of the broken gas line, goes out to get his power supply for his laptop from the truck. About 30 seconds later the door flies open and Trevor runs in, slams the door behind him and tells us to call the cops because someone just pointed a gun at him. His face was beet red and he was panting for the second time that day. It seems that Trevor was at the truck when he noticed a guy loading his rifle nearby. The guy looked up at Trevor and Trevor said "How's it going?" The guy responded with, "Nothing going on here but a dead body!" "You don't know about life here, about the problems we have with drugs an gangs". Trevor said, "I don't want to know". The guy then raised his rifle at his hip and pointed it at Trevor and said, "Buddy, you just made it your business!" That's when Trevor walked inside, all the time aware that his bright red overalls had a fluorescent "X" right on his back.
So we call the RCMP and after a half hour long conversation in which they take our statements and everyone's name and ages (for the obituary?) they say they're going to come down, ETA 2 hours. So there we are, 5 of us holed up in this trailer for 2 hours waiting for the cops to come rescue us. When they did come, after lots of chatting the escorted us out of town. It was a convoy with a police SUV in front, 3 TELUS trucks and 2 more cruisers in the back. We spent the night in a camp and went back to work the next day. The front door of the local school had 5 bullet holes in it, which explained the shooting.
After finding the cut cable and repairing it we stopped in Janvier. When I stepped out of my truck the first thing I heard was more gunfire, this time semi automatic fire from a high calibre weapon. Funny thing is I wasn't even fazed by it. I got back to the truck and found out they were sending us back to Conklin. We went back and finished the job and stopped at the local convenience store on the way out of town. The woman behind the counter saw our TELUS truck and asked us, "Were you part of the hostage taking?"
So we were just finishing up that job at about 5pm and we got a call that there were major problems in Conklin, a town about 2 hours south of Fort McMurray down highway 881, which is a dirt road for half the trip there. Conklin is half oil sand worker camps and half Indian reservation. Phone service was out in Conklin, another Indian reservation called Janvier and (God forbid!) at the big oil company plants in the area. So by 11 pm there were 5 Telus managers down there trying to figure out the problem; we were working in the central office which is a 12' by 60' trailer with no windows filled with telephone switches and racks of computers. That's when we heard the shooting outside. Just a couple of shots and someone screaming. I wandered outside to get an idea of what was going on and I heard a couple more shots, not too far away, less then half a kilometer for sure, and a couple of war cries coming from even closer. I went back inside and told the guys there was gang warfare going on out there. I wasn't too worried because no one was shooting at us, just shooting.
Now Trevor, he of the broken gas line, goes out to get his power supply for his laptop from the truck. About 30 seconds later the door flies open and Trevor runs in, slams the door behind him and tells us to call the cops because someone just pointed a gun at him. His face was beet red and he was panting for the second time that day. It seems that Trevor was at the truck when he noticed a guy loading his rifle nearby. The guy looked up at Trevor and Trevor said "How's it going?" The guy responded with, "Nothing going on here but a dead body!" "You don't know about life here, about the problems we have with drugs an gangs". Trevor said, "I don't want to know". The guy then raised his rifle at his hip and pointed it at Trevor and said, "Buddy, you just made it your business!" That's when Trevor walked inside, all the time aware that his bright red overalls had a fluorescent "X" right on his back.
So we call the RCMP and after a half hour long conversation in which they take our statements and everyone's name and ages (for the obituary?) they say they're going to come down, ETA 2 hours. So there we are, 5 of us holed up in this trailer for 2 hours waiting for the cops to come rescue us. When they did come, after lots of chatting the escorted us out of town. It was a convoy with a police SUV in front, 3 TELUS trucks and 2 more cruisers in the back. We spent the night in a camp and went back to work the next day. The front door of the local school had 5 bullet holes in it, which explained the shooting.
After finding the cut cable and repairing it we stopped in Janvier. When I stepped out of my truck the first thing I heard was more gunfire, this time semi automatic fire from a high calibre weapon. Funny thing is I wasn't even fazed by it. I got back to the truck and found out they were sending us back to Conklin. We went back and finished the job and stopped at the local convenience store on the way out of town. The woman behind the counter saw our TELUS truck and asked us, "Were you part of the hostage taking?"
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
Have you considered entering a less stressful line of work, like maybe hiding in a hole in the ground with no underground gas lines for days?
and thank you. you have always had intelligent, sweet and sincere things to say to me and i really appreciate it...