PJ - I saw the crane accident on the news & immediately thought of you...my dad's company operates huge cranes & he was saying, it's pretty damn hard to "lose" a crane unless there is some defect with the crane itself. So, when you hear "major disaster" stuff on the radio,,,,does it affect you differently now than it did pre-9/11? I would assume that it does. I know even for me, for a long time, every time CNN would flash teh "breaking news" banner across the screen, I would be worried it was another terrorist attack in some way.
You know 9-11, was a life changing event for many including myself. Sadly the life changing event is sometimes not for the better. I noticed post 9-11, i am terrifed of elevators and high rise buildings. I started to become scared of heights and get very uncomfortable in large crowds, even at disney. Happily other things post 9-11 are for the better personally for myself, pre 9-11 i would have told anyone i was headed for a divorce. We were just not getting along very well.Most of my friends and guys at the fire house, said it was just a matter of time before myself or dw filied for a divorce. I swear post sept 11, well we have not argued once or had one fight. After seeing all that horror, the dumb things just don't matter anymore and are not worth fighting over.You know now and days the FDNY's biggest worrie is bio-logical or chemical warfare, or a dirty bomb.
I had one good friend who is a FDNY fire marshall in charge of the FDNY anti-terrorism intelligent unit. They are combined with the NYPD's same unit. He said something one day that blew me away. He said it is not if they attack us with chemical or bio-logical or a dirty bomb, it's just of matter of when they attack us with this stuff.
You know i have to answer yes, to your question. Pre 911, whenever anything went down i used to think accident, well now you know what i think whenever anything goes down that is big. I guess it's a good way to live, i start looking for secondary devices. Years ago they had a "mock" attack/ training exercise at yankee stadium. It was all fake but just to see how the FDNY,NYPD,EMS and all the other agencys respond and handle it.
Me and my guys found the secondary device ment to kill us, while everyone else walked pass the odd looking suit case, i reported it and asked that until we knew what was in the suit case, that that area remain a frozen zone and no one be allowed near it. The chief, had us rope off that area and 20 minutes later a fake bomb went off in the suit case and killed noone cause no one was near it and the area roped off. My chief was so proud and it made him look like his "guys" meaning us really knew what they were doing.
So about that whole crane accident. You don't work 10 years in the FDNY without having a few friends in high places. Last night for st- pattys day a whole bunch of us in the FDNY, NYPD and EMS got together at a local pub, i know i'm not even irish, but thats no excuse to have a few ones with some old friends. The owner of the crane company is screwed!!!! If he stays out of jail it will be a mircale!! For what my friends are telling me, this guy had 9 violations in the last week alone at the construction site. The nyc's building dept, ordered a cease all work at that construction site due to unsafe conditions, 24 hours before the thing collapsed.
Form what i'm told the crane should have not been in operation at all and closed. The person operating the crane at the time of the incident, was not trained or licensed at the time to operate such a heavy machine and had only been with the company 2 days and had no crane training or had never operated a crane before that day. The crane just did'nt oddly collapse, unsafe working, unsafe postioning and unsafe malfuctioning parts on the crane as well as the crane was not secured for its own weight to the ground caused the collapsed. These were all things the company was given summons for just 12 hours before. They were told other things can be done at the site, but the crane stays off. They did not listen.
I'm not 100% sure about the rumor above, only that it came from the mouth of a friend i trust very well and believe and is the kind of person that would know this infomation, since he is very "high" up in the NYPD's investagative unit. I for one believe it.
Now for my own problems, well we are moving. Today about 5 different contractors were supposed to come to the new place and give me an estimate. 1 guy showed up and he said he only does painting and walls. I asked him, why he had come after i told him over the phone what i needed and he said he thought he could handle the job, but once there knew it was too big for him. He appeared to be one of those young kids, that has a normal job monday thru friday, and just paints on the weekends for x-tra money. I need a contractor. I have a few more comming tommorrow, if they show up.
In the mean time me and dw are refinishing the wood cabinets in the new place in the kitchen. I am amazed to how nice they are comming out and how fast, since we only started them this morning. I would say they are close to 60% done. One of the guys at the fire house does this professional on the side, he gave me a few pointers on how to do it quick, but really nice. The trick is to sand them first with an elertical sander, then to apply stripper to them.