Eco-Terrorism

[Rusty McNeil]

Me and my co-worker just dumped a bunch of transformer oil on a job site 2 days ago, spent all night cleaning it up after previously working three consecutive 84-97 hour work weeks filling 500,000 volt transformers, these hold 15,000 gallons of oil per phase. We had a vaccum pressure gauge fail which caused/allowed us to overpressure a transformer and blow the pressure relief device.

Worst ******* day of my working career. If I could have I would have just packed my **** and went home. Have spent the last two days in meetings and filling out incident reports......Company president and customer CEO on site and NOT happy.

Everyone is making a big effin deall out of it and treating it as an environmental excursion even tho it hit the contgainment pit and never left the site or hit the earth. Freaking stupid, the system did exactly what it was designed to do in an occurrence like this.

You're only as good as your last ****** that's for sure.........

 

[alorio1]

We had a an old transformer at the plant where I worked that had to be replaced, and the biggest concern was how to dispose of it because it contained the oil you are talking about. I was a project engineer and my title changed from day to day....Hero one day, ******** the next day.

 

[Fire-medic]

Be glad it's not polychlorinated byphenyls, then you would have a BIG problem as far as the EPA is concerned.

In FL by I-95 and West Hallandale Beach Blvd. in Broward Co. there is an EPA Superfund 200 site for an old oil reclamation site. It is in proximity to potable wellfields and needless to say, has been shut-down and mitigated but the monitoring wells will always be there.

http://iaspub.epa.gov/apex/cimc/f?p=255:41:526705646265999::NO:41_WELSEARCH:33009|Address|||1|true|true|true|true|true

I wrote more and tried to add some other links but the message kept getting kicked-out.

 

[tugla]

that sucks, atleast as you said the catch pit was there and did its job. Isnt that oil in pretty toxic, pcb actually?

 

[COP RUNNER]

We had a an old transformer at the plant where I worked that had to be replaced, and the biggest concern was how to dispose of it because it contained the oil you are talking about. I was a project engineer and my title changed from day to day....Hero one day, ******** the next day. [/QUOTE]
i **** , YOU JUST DESCRIBED MARRIAGE TO A TEE !

 

[COP RUNNER]

Me and my co-worker just dumped a bunch of transformer oil on a job site 2 days ago, spent all night cleaning it up after previously working three consecutive 84-97 hour work weeks filling 500,000 volt transformers, these hold 15,000 gallons of oil per phase. We had a vacuum pressure gauge fail which caused/allowed us to overpressure a transformer and blow the pressure relief device.

Worst ******* day of my working career. If I could have I would have just packed my **** and went home. Have spent the last two days in meetings and filling out incident reports......Company president and customer CEO on site and NOT happy.

Everyone is making a big effin deall out of it and treating it as an environmental excursion even tho it hit the containment pit and never left the site or hit the earth. Freaking stupid, the system did exactly what it was designed to do in an occurrence like this.

You're only as good as your last ****** that's for sure.........

i MAN , THAT REALLY BLOWS RUSTY !

 

[Rand-5107]

Years ago we soaked our rusty bolts in five gallon buckets of transformer oil. It worked real well, but then the pcb's became a problem and we couldn't get it anymore.

 

[[email protected]]

I can relate and have been in the situation before. Ain't it funny how bad news travels fast?

I have destroyed a bay or two of switch gear, burned myself up a little, and was temporarily blinded from a nice arc flash I created with my own stupidity combined with someone elses faulty insulation.

The physical pain was nothing compared to the embarassment and regret.

It turned into a major deal involving multiple investigations with the insurance company, the equipment manufacturer, 3rd party electrical, property owner, safety, etc.

I'm not making excuses, it was preventable, but the fact that I was doing CM for all civil and electrical work, bidding all jobs, meeting clients, order materials, scheduling, reporting, plus working evenings as head tech on the largest, most complex contract we were ever awarded did not help. I was waking up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat, remembering things I need to do the next morning. Lot of hrs, lots of responsibility, lots of stress, no one to help me.

So, I ****** up. Pretty big. I told the president of the company flat out that it should not have happened, it was my fault, and I was expecting to walk out the door. That would have been a lot easier that sitting in meetings and answering all the investigators questions.

I dealt with it. I consider it a learning experience and a character building exercise. We did not lose the client, we still work with them daily. And we have done work on the property where the accident occured a couple times since. It seems that everyone has forgotten about it, except me. It still bothers me that it happened. You are your own toughest critic. Don't let it get you down.

 

[Fire-medic]

Mike, man, thank God you didn't lose your life on that one! You did what we are supposed to do, accept responsibility for our actions and deal with it. "it's not my fault" often means, "yes, it is!"

 

[06VMAXIMUS]

Hang in there Rusty, it will smooth itself out!

 

[MtnMax/Magniac]

The EPA was started as a well-meaning organization, but like any organization controlled by the government, it has gotten over-bloated and out of hand. Don't get me wrong, it has a purpose, and as long as it sticks to that purpose, it's a good thing.

There are lots of things we used to do as a matter of course that are no-no's today. I remember as a kid that we lived about a quarter-mile down a dirt road off the main road. We used to spray the road with diesel fuel to keep the weeds and dust down. Do that today and you go to jail for polluting the Earth. But didn't the oil come from the Earth to begin with?

 

[MagnaVMax]

that sucks, atleast as you said the catch pit was there and did its job. Isnt that oil in pretty toxic, pcb actually?

Yes it is! I worked with Solomon Corporation in Solomon, KS. And i am by no means an expert, but anything going wrong with transformers of these size is a HUGE deal!

Yeah your safety measures worked and that's what they are for. But there is always going to be someone up high getting ****... And **** only rolls down hill, so the bottom guys always catch the brunt. Even if it's not a big deal.

 

[Rusty McNeil]

Thanks EVERYONE for the kind words!

Actualy now a days the PCB's are gone on new installations, have been since the late 70's or early 80's I think, not sure exaclty when. The stuff they use now is still a petroleum based product generally referred to as Mineral oil, but it's still oil...as far as toxicity goes it's no worse than any other oil, but being oil it makes a nice sheen on water and freaks everyone out.

Things are much better now, it's smoothing out, we are dealing with the problem and the customer is happy now once they were finally convinced it's not a reportable excursion since it never left containment. We had a lot of vacuum trucks out and the construction guys spent the last two days pressure washing everything to get the pad and pit nice and new looking again. Cleaning up my mess and gave me a lot of **** for it:biglaugh:
Our office placed full faith in us that we were doing the right thing, and said so even before I took the vac/prss gauge package to a 3rd party firm for testing and turned in the paperwork showing that the thing was definetly indicating vacuum when it was really at about 14 psi, the Pressure relief lets go at 10psi. Proving it was not human error. I was that it wasn't neccessary and they were taking my word for it, but it made me feel better to prove it.

Here's the good part, I talked to our V.P. this morning on the phone going over some stuff with him to make sure he understood the technical details of the event, which he should since he came up through field service,....he was all happy and very supportive.......towards the end he said

'Here's the good news! Next time your in town we have a new Chevy pickup for you and are getting you out of that miserable van, it a fully loaded extended cab, you can rig it out however you want"

I said "thanks" and asked him

"how much oil I needed to spill to get a 3/4 ton 4 wheel drive crew cab.":biglaugh:

He still hadn't quit laughing before we got off the phone:rofl_200:

I wouldn't have thought I could feel so good after such a ****** day before...I feel lovedunk: and I still love my freaking job.........

Attached is a picture of me on top of the conservator while "burping" the bladder after final fill..this is one phase of a 500kv/230kv transformer, they use 3 of these and tie them together to make a 3 phase since you can't very well ship a 3 phase tranformer of this MVA, it would simply be to damn big...this one unit weighs 345,000lbs once full of oil. 232,000lbs dry. These are Korean and also very well made......I think there are only Two mfgs building big power Xfmrs in the States now, VT or Virginia Transformer which aren't that good and Waukesha in North Carolina which are quite good. ABB makes all their stuff in Mexico now

 

[Fire-medic]

I am glad to hear the front office has faith in their employees. Still, it's got to be a comfort to hear that your documentation showed it was equipment failure. Next thing to come out of this as I read it is a procedure for periodic testing of the function of the pressure-relief valves, or outright time-scheduled replacement if such a spec is not in-place already.

What kind of p/u is it? I assume it has to be a 4WD. I bought a new 2WD under Cash for Clunkers, got rid of a 2WD 8' bed Sierra for a Canyon, and don't miss the reduced carrying capacity, and "yes it is a crew cab!" It's much more fun to drive than my old Sierra was and the difference in gas mileage is 50% >. I have about 30k on it, and so far, so good. I swapped-in some Hummer H3 leather seats, all power & heated, not a big deal in FL but in the snow belt, yes. The H3 uses the Colorado/Canyon chassis/running gear.

 

[Rusty McNeil]

I can relate and have been in the situation before. Ain't it funny how bad news travels fast?

I have destroyed a bay or two of switch gear, burned myself up a little, and was temporarily blinded from a nice arc flash I created with my own stupidity combined with someone elses faulty insulation.

The physical pain was nothing compared to the embarassment and regret.

It turned into a major deal involving multiple investigations with the insurance company, the equipment manufacturer, 3rd party electrical, property owner, safety, etc.

I'm not making excuses, it was preventable, but the fact that I was doing CM for all civil and electrical work, bidding all jobs, meeting clients, order materials, scheduling, reporting, plus working evenings as head tech on the largest, most complex contract we were ever awarded did not help. I was waking up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat, remembering things I need to do the next morning. Lot of hrs, lots of responsibility, lots of stress, no one to help me.

So, I ****** up. Pretty big. I told the president of the company flat out that it should not have happened, it was my fault, and I was expecting to walk out the door. That would have been a lot easier that sitting in meetings and answering all the investigators questions.

I dealt with it. I consider it a learning experience and a character building exercise. We did not lose the client, we still work with them daily. And we have done work on the property where the accident occured a couple times since. It seems that everyone has forgotten about it, except me. It still bothers me that it happened. You are your own toughest critic. Don't let it get you down.

Nice story, I totally relate.,

I have HUGE respect for a good Construction Manager, they are worth thier wieght in gold as far as making a big job run smooth. I wouldn't take that job for any amount of money, talk about pressure, budget, materials, budget, work force, budget, scheduling, shipping, they have to know everyones job and then some.....I worry about enough while trying to sleep as it is.....I'm responsible for the Field Service budget but not the whole project at least.

"I have destroyed a bay or two of switch gear, burned myself up a little, and was temporarily blinded from a nice arc flash I created with my own stupidity combined with someone elses faulty insulation."

That is exactly what Field Service is there to stop, I originally thought our job was to do checkout and comissioning, "make it like the prints" so to speak...didn't take me long to learn that our job was really to hunt down and find everyone elses mistakes from engineering down...If we don't catch it no one will because when were done it goes to the customer...No matter how good I feel about a job I still nut up a little right before we energize.....

 

[Fire-medic]

" I still nut up a little right before we energize...."
My wife issues the settings for your 'power-up'. Thirty-six years an E.E. for the same employer. I would rather work back-to-back cardiac arrests on multiple shifts than deal with her stresses. I am very proud to see the deference the other employees give her whenever I accompany her to some function. From the top on-down, they all know her.

Speaking of terrorism, there is an "enemy combatant"-classified Al Queda member raised in south FL who allegedly tried to assemble 'dirty bombs' and to use them to decimate a National Guard Armory and an adjacent neighnborhood power utility switching station in Hollywood FL. He was just turned-down in some legal maneuver his defense was trying to reduce his sentence, or get him re-classified. As far as I am concerned, I hope he enjoys his indeterminate-length stay in prison. He was trained by Al Queda in the Mideast and came back to FL w/a wad of cash he was unlikely to have earned on his own, since he had little in the way of job training or experience, except for what the terrorist organization provided him.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/19/national/main20108308.shtml

Here is the article where he is going to face yet more years of incarceration. Read past the headline, it is misleading.

 

[Rusty McNeil]

" I still nut up a little right before we energize...."
My wife issues the settings for your 'power-up'. Thirty-six years an E.E. for the same employer. I would rather work back-to-back cardiac arrests on multiple shifts than deal with her stresses. I am very proud to see the deference the other employees give her whenever I accompany her to some function. From the top on-down, they all know her.
.

That's awesome, she SHOULD recieve deference.

Our relays settings group gets HUGE respect, it IS all on thier shoulders when it comes down to whether the protection scheme is going to work. I can test Schweizers relays ok, , and verify whether the settings match the CT and PT ratios, and check the logic during function testing to see if it makes sense, but for the most part we place incredible trust in the settings group, we HAVE to since we don't really comprehend the complete settings package.

Kudos to you for having a wife that intellegent, must be pretty interesting on a daily basis!unk:

 

[Fire-medic]

Yeah, she's the one woman who can keep me in-line. She wants nothing to do w/motorcycles though.

The stress she goes through daily is more than I would want. It makes me sweat thinking about it.

Our daughter is an E.E. too, and we are very proud of her.