Running From A Shadow

I want to start by saying that this entry has a very happy ending.

On June 1st we started the footings and steel re bar for the columns in the stairway leading up to the second floor of the Care Center building.

Melvin, Jose, Sandi, and Papiro had been working in the shop during May, when we had a lot of rain, making up all the re bar cages to be placed inside the cement columns. They were able to complete the 7 - 25' tall towers.

With the trenches all dug we started placing the re bar towers so we could start pouring the concrete footings to hold them in place. We had 3 of the re bar towers stood up and "lightly" braced...did I mention that they were "lightly" braced? Well, I thought about not sharing this part of the story because I didn't want to freak out my parents or anyone else that might get woozy thinking about industrial accidents. However I think it is important to share all of our experiences here, good and bad.

As I said, we had just finished setting the 3rd tower and I paused to re-fix the bracing on the first re bar tower. I turned to walk away and saw my Dominican team of guys running and vaguely remember hearing them yelling "CORRE!", which means...RUN! in Spanish. Pause for a moment and take note that from the time I turned and the time they yelled "run" was about 2 seconds. When I saw them running out of the corner of my eye, I could also see a "shadow" coming at me from behind. Just in case there is anyone wondering what I did, I will clarify...I ran. Yes, that is right, I ran, and as fast as I could, and in the only direction I could. I chose the clearest path between the piles of dirt, wooden bracing, and 4' deep trenches, and ran for my life not knowing what was going to happen. As I was running a few thoughts crossed my mind- how bad is this going to hurt? will I be able to walk? are we going to be going back to the States early? how bad are the tie wires and re bar going to cut me up? That whole process took about another 2 seconds.
It was at this point that the top of the 25' tall re bar hit me on my left back/ shoulder and then the top of my head. It threw me for about 10' out in front of the falling tower. Before I could even get to my hands and knees Melvin, Jose, Papiro, and Sandi were on top of me making sure I wasn't hurt too badly.
With my past experience with stitches (100+) I was expecting to need to have my head and back stitched up, but all I had was some nasty bruising and surface scratches.



I was very thankful that I wasn't hurt a lot worse and that it happened to me and not one of my Dominican guys or one of the team members here from Arkansas.

This is not something that I take lightly. With my 20+ years in construction I know how fast accidents can happen and when you least expect them. We are going to continue to keep working with a heightened level of safety and caution.


One encouraging thing was that our friend George, the leader of the Arkansas team, did say that he was surprised at how fast I could still run. I will have you know, that it is not easy to run wearing blue jeans, work boots, and 50 lbs of keys. I think I could have out run it if I had tossed the keys.