I have had the same group of employees now for five plus years. They have grown and found the courage to make decisions on their own and provide the service and quality I expect. They strive to make the final product something that they and I can be proud of. They have continued to work during this pandemic with the blessing of the owners rep. Our current work is in a large warehouse where we only see two to three additional people per shift. With only three or four employees this is under the maximum of ten people gathering. They continue to exceed my expectations and are pushing me to help them do more. This is what I had envisioned when I delegated more of these responsibilities to them. Great work Martin, Jordan, Josh, and Juan.
On another note, I want to share my experience of the earth quake that occurred on 18 March 2020. I was sitting in the control room of the steam plant of my other job. We had just started the day at seven with an opening prayer and one of the supervisors was going to share some thoughts from a person stranded in Germany during the pandemic. When all of the sudden it sounded and felt like a freight train was getting closer and closer to the plant. Our chairs started moving and bouncing and then the plant went dark. It is an eerie feeling to be in the plant when it is all quite. Usually the sound of the boiler feed pumps wining, the blower motors on the boilers and the steam rushing away from the plant make a noise that is the norm. Even in the control room you can hear the sounds and while operating the plant, you use the sound to tell if anything is a miss.
When the plant went dark it took about thirty seconds for the emergency generator to power on. My other supervisor went to the basement to reset the natural gas earth quake valve. Once he did that we waited for a while to see if we would have another big aftershock. We felt lots of aftershocks in the waiting time, but after about forty-five minutes we fired the plant back online. The operator only took the system pressure up to fifty PSI so we could walk the whole system to see if there was any damage. By eleven my watch went off telling me I had reached my ten thousand steps for the day. After we had walked the whole system the operator continued to pressure up the system to the usual one hundred and twenty PSI. Then, we rented vehicles from motor pool and started out to the other buildings under our stewardship to get them back up and running.
I picked up my tools from the plant and headed out to a clothing manufacturing building. We have four boilers there, two high pressure (120 PSI) and two low pressure (10 PSI). They were still quite warm so I tried to fire them up. The low pressure gas valves would not reset so I realized I needed to reset the earth quake valves near the gas meter. I took my set of Allen keys with me and found it difficult to reset the valves. Someone had painted the valves and the uneven pressure in the line made it difficult. I had to partially open the valves until the pressure equalized and then the valves would reset. Once I had the gas back in the lines the low pressure valves reset and I fired the boilers back up. I walked the system to make sure there were no issues. As I walked I saw near a thousand ceiling tiles on the floor as the earth quake had jarred them all loose. This was surprising to me as this building had gone through a seismic upgrade just a few years ago. The only injury I heard about in that building was a man who stabbed himself with a needle during the quake, while repairing a knitting machine.
After I felt confident that building was good, I went to a thrift store sorting center to get that boiler running. This was an old building of at least seventy years and had lots of single pain windows around it. I walked in the building about fifty yards and could hear the fire panel making its annoying sound. Then, I started feeling the ground move beneath my feet so I run as fast as a 270 pound man can, for the door. I reached the truck that was still shaking and backed it away from the building. While running I could hear structural steel crashing behind me. It freaked me out. Part of the reason I was so scared was the rumors circulating about that there would be an aftershock of 7.0 or higher that day. Supposedly predicted by FEMA. I have since learned that they cannot predict earthquakes or aftershocks at all. However, in that moment I was scared. This aftershock registered as a 4.6 where the initial earthquake had registered as a 5.7. I called my supervisor and he told me to not worry about it but that before I left I should contact the building manager. The building manager felt confident the building was structurally sound and needed to boiler running ASAP as the building had many broken windows.
Walking gingerly and apprehensively I made it into the boiler room and tried to open the garage door that led out to the gas meter. The door, however, was disconnected from the motor and I had to raise it by hand. I went to the earthquake valve and reset it, following the same procedure as the last time, letting the pressure balance before resetting fully. This boiler too, was still hot so I fired it back up. I waited about twenty minutes for the pressure to build in the system before I walked the building looking for damaged piping. In my walk I saw the steel that had fallen to the floor.
This is about five feet long and three inches tall c-channel. I never showed the picture to the building manager but it proved I wasn’t hearing things.
I finished walking this building and went back the the manufacturing building to reset the earthquake valves again as the big aftershock had tripped them off again.
I then, went to another building to get the boilers running there. Their valve was tripped off and I reset it. Nothing too eventful there while I got those boilers running. Once I returned home I got a phone call that I had forgotten to do some things at the first and last buildings. Unbeknownst to me the two buildings cafeterias had standing pilots on there cook tops. The smell of gas was quite profound. Luckily there was enough ventilation that the plumbers re-lit the pilots and everything was good.
When I finally made it home I had walked about sixteen thousand steps, but that was not why I was so exhausted. From seven-o-nine when the first quake happened to five PM when I made it home my nerves were on edge. I had eaten some cheese and grape tomatoes for lunch, but was so tired when I got home that I felt like crawling into bed a dying. I was grateful I made it home and my whole family was there and safe. What a day!!!
JJ Claymore Inc. 