Mud Maggots

They've been working on a new building just outside our office window. There are also several fairly large construction projects going on around campus these days. There have been plenty of cement pump trucks around, which for the last 5 years, make me think of one thing when I see them.

5 years ago, they were building us a new Data Center. Having to deal with students still needing to get to class and building between existing buildings, the construction guys didn't have a lot to work with. There was a fence put up right to the edge of the giant hole they dug, and when cement trucks came, they had to pump it fairly far, because the building is underground and was quite large. They would bring the really big pump trucks in.

One day, I was in Karl's office talking to him. Karl's office then had a window that looked out onto where the pump truck sat. I was talking to Karl, and the pump truck fell over on it's side and bounced across the sidewalk next to it. There was a student walking and was 6 feet shy of getting killed. Karl saw the look on my face before he heard the crashing noise.
I ran out to the thing, and grabbed the kid that nearly got hit. He was just standing there shocked. I asked him if anyone was under the thing, he didn't respond until I started shaking him a little. (No one was under the truck.) Then the pump truck operator jumped up out of the cab and started running. Other people were running our way. Diesel fuel was spilling everywhere. Within just a few minutes, everything was chaos.

We ended up having a HAZMAT team show up, to clean the diesel up, they started cutting up the pump, and all kinds of stuff. After things got crowded, we went up on the roof of the North side of the Talmage building to watch. (No crowd there...)
It turns out that the pump truck had only put it's 2 right stabilization booms out, the other side had none out because of the fence near the sidewalk where people were walking, the pump operator had been swinging his rig over to the right to clean out the pump. He got too far over and the weight pulled the thing down.

I'll never think of anything else when I see a cement pumper truck. It's the biggest thing I have ever seen tip over and bounce before or since.