Crane drops antenna tower section - GIF

[mccwho]

Momentum can be a powerful force. All that bouncing a swinging just added so much load to the end of that boom. Looked like they should have went for smaller sections during disassembly. They would have had to break it down into smaller sections anyway to transport it. Now they have to cut it up even more <smirk>.

Hard to tell from our vantage point. But it looks like the guy on the tower might have needed to change his paints after the falling section missed the base of the tower.

I'll bet that crane operator was also maximumly stressed. Judging by the way the rest of the boom was whipping around, that operator was going for quite a ride in that cab.

[Frank S]

That is not how high riggers think. He was not smushed by falling iron.
The next day, after changing his shorts for clean ones, he would be telling everybody how much fun it was. A kind of humble brag while looking for another tower to climb.
High riggers and iron workers are in a class of their own. They are the daredevils of construction. Walking iron is always on that thin edge between absolute terror and absolute confidence. There is nothing else I know of quite like it. A lot of these guys are parachute jumpers, bikers, base jumpers. You know, all the thrill seeking adrenaline junky stuff.

Early paid retirement? How is that going to pay for my play time? One of the features of this kind of work is it pays big money because not very many people can actually do it. Most people freeze at heights. The downside (?) is most of the jobs are fairly short term, which gives you time to go play. As a scaffold rigger I could pull almost 20 grand before taxes for a 28 day run on a refinery shutdown. The money I got back just on income taxes by taking time off paid for my holidays.

Back in the 1980's as a contract welder with my own rig. During that time in the area where I was the going rate ran from $25.00 to $40.00 per hour for general contract welding and repairs. I was one of the ones who carried a huge liability ins. policy with an even larger umbrella, Mostly because I did a lot of repairs on oil drilling rigs which meant I had to have an over the hole insurance. When a shut-down at a refinery or even a chemical plant came up I usually would get a call if the job was located within a couple hundred miles from where I lived. I both liked and hated getting those calls. Liked because they nearly always meant from 14 to 28 days of 12 to 16 hour work periods @ often times triple the hourly rate, I would normally get doing day work. Hated because I had a significant customer base who kept me busy nearly all the time and I would have to tell them I would not be available for a few weeks. One shut-down is indelibly marked in my memories, A man by the name of Don Killebrew from a cement plant called me one evening just after I had gotten home from a long week's repair on a drill rig. I had worked all night the previous night to be able to finish up and make it home for my youngest's birthday, after having made the 200 mile drive I was wiped out. All I wanted was a shower a piece of cake and some sleep.
The conversation went like this Frank I need you and 6 others to be at the plant by 8 am tomorrow for a 2-week EPA refit until the refit is completed the entire plant is ordered shut down. I'll take 10 guys if you can find them, but they have to have the proper insurances.
If I can find that many guys tonight, I'll have them there I said but I doubt if many will have the insurance riders that I have.
FINE, you will have to carry them on your insurance like you did for a couple guys last year. BYE. he hung up without another word.
I spent the rest of the evening calling every welder I knew. You'd be amazed at how many guys will turn down a couple weeks worth of work when you tell them they have to have insurance and they are going to have to commit to being on the job 12 to 18 hours a day every day no exceptions, and the number of those who will balk at the prospect of having to work from a gondola man basket of one hung from a crane a couple 100 feet in the air I found 8, 2 of which had to work single hand as helpers on my payroll, at much less pay without their rigs because on not having any insurance. The shut down only lasted 12 days though, but 12 of the most gruelingly miserable dusty cold days I have ever worked.

[cmarlow]

You know there are people who just do the shutdown circuit too. They go from one to the next just like a bunch of rodeo cowboys. It takes a lot both physically and mentally, and the mental part might be the more important part. The longer the run is the more cranky everybody tends to get and only the strong can survive without going completely nuts.

[Frank S]

You know there are people who just do the shutdown circuit too. They go from one to the next just like a bunch of rodeo cowboys. It takes a lot both physically and mentally, and the mental part might be the more important part. The longer the run is the more cranky everybody tends to get and only the strong can survive without going completely nuts.

About like some of us rig welders all pretty much hung together on the pipeline circuit of traveling in packs like a bunch of hungry wolves rolling into a rig building yard. IF you hired 1 you hired all of us. piss on 1 without good reason and we all spooled up, and headed to another yard, have a good reason and we cut him from the sec ourselves.
There were a few times where I spent quite a number of months in the field without ever going home, what difference could it make anyway as long as I was home for things they thought important like birthdays.

[cmarlow]

About like some of us rig welders all pretty much hung together on the pipeline circuit of traveling in packs like a bunch of hungry wolves rolling into a rig building yard. IF you hired 1 you hired all of us. piss on 1 without good reason and we all spooled up, and headed to another yard, have a good reason and we cut him from the sec ourselves.
There were a few times where I spent quite a number of months in the field without ever going home, what difference could it make anyway as long as I was home for things they thought important like birthdays.

I also noticed that most of the others on the shutdowns with me were divorced, separated, transient, etc. Mining narrow vein hardrock was a lot like that too, but not as extreme. Most of the miners had reasonably stable home lives, but there were still quite a few globetrotters chasing the bonus money. (I only spent a couple years in the mine. but it was still one of those camp jobs that took the miners away from their homes for 2 weeks at a time.) I was, and I guess at heart I still am, one of the transient types.

Yes, it can play all kinds of hell with the home life, don't let it mess up yours. It seems almost as if to have a real home life going on you actually need to spend time at home.

[Frank S]

I also noticed that most of the others on the shutdowns with me were divorced, separated, transient, etc. Mining narrow vein hardrock was a lot like that too, but not as extreme. Most of the miners had reasonably stable home lives, but there were still quite a few globetrotters chasing the bonus money. (I only spent a couple years in the mine. but it was still one of those camp jobs that took the miners away from their homes for 2 weeks at a time.) I was, and I guess at heart I still am, one of the transient types.

Yes, it can play all kinds of hell with the home life, don't let it mess up yours. It seems almost as if to have a real home life going on you actually need to spend time at home.

Yep it took me 20 years to get rid of the first wife though, she really liked me being gone all the time, because it meant I wasn't around to stop her from spending the money I made.