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Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2006 - 8:34 p.m.

One more photo from the ice storm...plus- the word for today is mud (plenty of it)....

This one is correct in a couple of ways :

The road becomes a dead end, once you turn a short, sharp corner.

And the power still out when I shot this, so even if you had an outlet, you wouldn't get any power from it.

One last thing- yes, the street light on this pole was still working. Yes, the pole was cracked in two, and the hot end was laying on the ground.

And no, I didn't get out of my truck to take this photo. I might have been tired that day (just one removed from the ice storm), but I wasn't stoopid enough to go walking around hot power lines.....


Mud.

It wasn't enough that we had over an inch of rain during the ice storm. And then, a light snow several days later.

No, we had to have more rain. It started overnight on Sunday, and it showered, on and off, until this morning.

When I thought it was done, another round came through at quitting time tonight.

With torrential, spring-like downpours. 58� high temperature, and thunder and lightning.

Crazy weather!

Add to all this precipitation the fact that each and every truck that is presently hauling downed tree limbs and such is driving on the frontage road outside of our storage, into a farmer's field behind our storage, and a block outside of the city limits (because we have a burn ban in town, and they wanted a location to torch this stuff somewhat close to town), and you have the recipe for a sea of mud.

The drivers were telling me today that someone was stuck in the field almost every time to stopped to unload. If you slowed down too much (or worse, stopped), you probably needed a push from a loader or bulldozer to get going again.

It is amazing how many other governmental bodies have offered their trucks, loaders, and manpower to clean up this huge mess. I counted at least 10 different towns, both large and small, whose truck(s) passed by while I watched out the window for just a few minutes today.

No, I am not getting the chance to go out and join in this job. They tell me that I am needed more than usual to man the phones and radio. Yes, they are both going off almost constantly.

But its times like these where I feel like I'm not part of the workforce. That's why I always start working on the boss about heading out on the road, whenever winter weather is approaching. My old boss (MOM) always wanted to keep me in the yard to make brine or man the communications.

I hated it- fighting the snow/freezing rain/etc. is one of the few times I feel like I am really helping out the citizens of Mohall.

And now, almost 2 weeks after the ice storm and more than a week since the massive, coordinated clean-up of the downed trees started, and I haven't left the yard once to haul a load myself.

BTW-We have one employee who has been on "limited duty" (IE- don't want to be there, but can't get a state doctor to sign off on his permanent disability just yet). If he had shown up to work the past few days, I might have escaped into the war zone.

But he has been pulling the " Ow, my back hurts again , so I'll need to take a sick day again until I can get the workman's comp folks to change it to another free day off" since right after the storm hit.

Most of my coworkers think he came to the NDDOT as a "retirement" job. He is in his late 50's, and is already drawing a pension from a previous employer. He has worked less than 1/2 of the total amount of days he could have since he was hired 4 years ago. Actually, maybe as little as 1/3rd. And a good chuck of that on "limited duty", since his first "injury" happened in the first few months after he was hired.

The state made him come back this time , even though his doctor said he couldn't stand up or sit in one place for more than 30 minutes at a time. Can't lift over 10 pounds, too. that leaves him with very little he can do.

But he could answer the radio and phone, freeing me up to work in the cleanup.

I don't expect that to happen , though.

I wonder how long he will be off this time...

Antique - Futuristic


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