Some time ago Scott Yoneyama said:
You're right. I forgot about the decomissioned pipelines. Although,
you'd be surprised how stupid some of these morons with backhoes are! I
remember a major MCI cut along their west coast route a few years ago
that took out the entire northwest for 8 hours. The guy was 600 yards
away from where his permit allowed him to dig. He stopped when he cut
the fiber and shut his hoe down. When they got out there, they found
that he was digging right next to train tracks, was inches from cutting
a high voltage power line that surely would have killed him, and was
also fairly close to a gas line.
Is there any compensation to MCI in a situation like this? I would
think that multi million dollar fines would make people think a little
before they start digging.
--Eric
Eric Wieling wrote:
Some time ago Scott Yoneyama said:
> You're right. I forgot about the decomissioned pipelines.
Although,
> you'd be surprised how stupid some of these morons with backhoes
are! I
> remember a major MCI cut along their west coast route a few years
ago
> that took out the entire northwest for 8 hours. The guy was 600
yards
> away from where his permit allowed him to dig. He stopped when he
cut
> the fiber and shut his hoe down. When they got out there, they
found
> that he was digging right next to train tracks, was inches from
cutting
> a high voltage power line that surely would have killed him, and was
> also fairly close to a gas line.
Is there any compensation to MCI in a situation like this? I would
think that multi million dollar fines would make people think a little
before they start digging.
--Eric
The comment from the VP of Operations who came out to brief us on this
at the time was something to the effect of: "trust me, we'll be putting
this guy out of business and adding a backhoe to our portfolio."