Date: 2024-12-21 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00026771
BALTIMORE BRIDGE COLLAPSE
StreamTime Live ... May 12th 2024
StreamTime Live: Bridge Collapse Clean-up | Baltimore, Maryland USA | StreamTime LIVE
StreamTime Live ... May 12th 2024
StreamTime Live: Bridge Collapse Clean-up | Baltimore, Maryland USA | StreamTime LIVE
Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sv7SA2Ybgg
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
Some 60+ years ago I worked for the summer with the Foundation Company of Canada in Montreal. I was towards the end of an engineering degree at Cambridge University and looking to get some preactical experience and some spending money!
I failed to get an assignment doing 'survey work' in Labrador. I was deemed to have inadequate 'whitewater' canoeing experience, ao was assignmed to a wheelbarrow helping to move dirt from the hole that aws to hold the foundations for Place Ville Marie in downtown Montreal.
Fortunately for me, another opportunity presented itself. My attempt to do 'whitewater' work, gave me the opportunity to become a 'safety boatman' for a construction site in the middle of the St. Lawrence river near where the St Lawrence Seaway joined the St. Lawrence River close to the Port of Montreal.
The Foundation Company had an assignment to remove a cargo ship that had sunk in the middle of the river and was blocking navigation. My job was simply to provide whatever help I could in the event of some mishap ... working from 4.00 pm overnight to 8.00 am seven days a week ... Canadian Union wages with overtime on Saturdays and Sundays!
Mostly ... I had absolutly nothing to do ... so I read a lot of books that I got from the Montreal Public Library. Because I had 'completed' my Cambridge engineering studies and was going to start to study 'economics', my reading was focused on the economucs section of the library. These were mainly economics with a very Canadian viewpoint, a little less American and not so much English and European!
But I am reminded of all of this because the work that is now going on in Baltimore has many elements that were the norm in this work I was involved with the Foundation Company in Montreal decades ago.
Nobody got seriously hurt or killed while I was doing this work in Montreal ... but I learned something of the danger simply by observing and seeing 'near misses'.
The situation in Baltimore is bigger ... but the core elements are much the same.
Peter Burgess
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