Night from Heck

I start the night by not being able to get to work becuase the road is blocked by a single car accident. Somehow the driver of the Corvette in question managed to lose traction on a straight, level, and dry stretch of road and not only mangle his car but block the road as well. I think, no problem, I’ll just ask the trusty GPS for an alternate route.

Chevron 7 will not lock…

Yep, unless I go two hours out of my way, either North or South, I *have* to go the way that was blocked, no way around it. Luckily I only had to sit there for twenty or so minutes before the road was cleared.

When I get to work I learn that a pile of pallets has fallen on one of my receiving guys but he’s OK, we think. About two hours later I had to take him to the ER so we could make sure his hand wasn’t broken since he couldn’t move it anymore and it had swollen up rather a lot. Since he was able to move his fingers earlier, I figured the worst he had was a green stick fracture, but it turns out it’s just a really bad sprain. Did I mention that the local ER doesn’t take my company’s Worker’s Comp insurance? No I see I didn’t. Fifty miles down to the next closest hospital and fifty miles back. Luckily I get mileage for stuff like that.

After we get back and I get his paperwork all filed so he can go to follow-up visits and not have to pay for them and I go ahead and send him home since he was supposed to have left about forty-five minutes earlier. Thinking that was the excitement for the night I put my lunch in the microwave and got caught up on some paperwork. I’m the admin manager for overnights; I have a bit of a flair for it and since it takes the other managers two or three times as long (to do it wrong) as it takes me (to do it right) I just took it on for the sake of expediency. Sitting at my desk, eating my lasagna, a page comes over the intercom and walkie at the same time, "SIGNAL 25! SIGNAL 25! at the front of the store!"

Signal 25 = FIRE!

Somehow one of my floor guys had managed to get the one piece of equipment they use that’s propane powered to catch fire. The other manager and I, each in different areas of the store, both start running to the front and I managed to luck out and run right past a fire extinguisher and grabbed it in my mad dash for the front. As I’m sprinting up through the store I come up on a gaggle of people just meandering along, blocking my way. Why the hell are these people in the store at 0200 anyway? Morons. Anyway, I yelled "make a hole people!" and at least two of them knew what I wanted and jumped out of the way dragging companions with them so I didn’t have to slow down.

The other manager and I get there at about the same time with him slightly in front of me, maybe ten feet or so. By the time I’m running out the door, pulling the pin on my extinguisher, he’s already turned around and is running like mad back into the store, yelling for one of the casiers to call 911. I keep heading out, like an idiot running *toward* the flames. Even after I saw what was on fire, and that the propane tank was still attached and fueling the fire, I just squeezed away on my extinguisher trying to put it out. I did actually get it out twice, but I had a dry chemical extinguisher and it wouldn’t cool the tank off enough for the fire to stay out. Every time I let up, the heat of the tank re-ignited the spraying propane. As I started in on it a third time, I heard something bubbling, and then *I* turned around and ran like a mad man back into the building yelling, "it’s gonna blow!"

Luckily, at that point the pressure relief valve, which had been melted shut, melted just enough more for it to crack and let some of the pressure off so it never did explode. When the fire department got there they double teamed it with dry chemical extinguishers and a third person reached in (while the flames were out) and cut of the main valve. Then they hosed everything down to cool it off, so everything was fine at that point. Except we need to replace that equipment now. And the huge scorch mark on the sidewalk. They did say with the damage to the relief valve being what it was, had it burned much longer (five or so minutes) the tank could very well have ruptured, and that would have been so so so so so bad to be beyond the telling of it.

Static electricity and propane do not mix my friends, trust me on this. When we reviewed the security camera footage we figured out that’s what had happened. We actually saw the spark, and that’s probably the reason my floor guy didn’t get burned worse than he did (he’s fine, BTW, just a mild first degree burn to the hand and no arm hairs on that arm below the mid-point of his forearm): the automatic recoil from the pain and "SNAP" of the static had him moving away from the explosion before it actually happened.

Of course, being the sensible person I am, when I was reviewing the footage the first thing that came into my head was, wait for it……..

Is my ass really that big?

I know, I’m terrible.