At work

I'm sitting at work at the U and thought I would post a couple of photos I took last winter. To explain what's going on in these photos. There was a High Temp water leak in a pipe underneath a sidewalk over by the nursing building. Since the water is super pressurized and really hot it just pours out of the pipe in the fastest route to the surface and takes all the dirt with it. The first photo shows the sidewalk with all the dirt that was pushed out by the water. You can see the steam rising if you look close. This was a few hours after the leak and the water had been shut off for a while but it was still really hot. This was in the winter and it wasn't cold here. It was nice and toasty. So anyway to get to the leak for a repair they have to break up the sidewalk and dig out the pipe. To do that they have this little cat that you can see in the other two photo's. It was using a jackhammer in the front to break all the concrete. I was standing on the sidewalk about 30 feet away from this thing while it was working and I could feel the concrete bouncing up and down underneath me, I quickly moved knowing what was about to happen. And then of course the concrete breaks under the cat and it drops about 8 feet into a hole. They had to hook it up to a backhoe to pull it out of the hole. It was a great day.

Another interesting story from this day was that earlier in the day while the leak was still gushing out extremely hot water. Some very bright nursing student saw the steaming hot water and decided to walk through it to warm himself up. He did get much warmer and was treated in the nearby hospital for 3rd degree burns on his feet.