After Shock

Derrick ‘Junior’ Lindsey sat at his desk in the West end of the California Highway and Transportation Materials Laboratory, munching on the apple that was left over from his carry-lunch.  Watching the sweep-second hand make its rounds on the office wall clock.  It was almost four-thirty.  Time to quit.  No use starting another core sample at this hour.  Besides, he'd already done two today.  That's all Dan really expected.  He'd finish the third one tomorrow.  Dan wouldn't finish the bridge inspection until noon and then it was a good three-hour drive back to Sacramento.  No, he wouldn't make it back tomorrow.  He’d be too busy arguing with the paint contractor on the Dos Palos Bridge.

All the contractors were the same. Bid low, win the contract then try to find a way to make a buck.  It was a losing game that the CHT played.  Take the low bid and then hope that the State bridge inspectors could enforce the specifications.  But they never could.  The contractors knew how to wear the inspectors down, especially on the big jobs like the Dos Palos truss bridge.  It was impossible to watch a crew of forty blasters and painters; all hanging precariously from box beams a hundred and fifty feet above the river.

Junior stared at the clock.  How come he could see all this and the contract people downtown couldn’t?  He leaned back in his desk chair and propped his feet up on the edge of his oversize, State-issue waste can.  Another five minutes and he was out the door.

Dan Stockton strode down the center of the closed traffic lane on the Dos Palos Bridge.  The roadway undulated rhythmically under his feet as the big, double-trailer rigs rumbled across the forty-year-old span.

The Dos Palos crossed the San Juaquin River between Los Banos and Chowchilla on State Route 33.  It was one of the old box-beam designs that were both beautifully strong and a nightmare to maintain. Every two or three years, a contract would be let for the blasting and painting of those areas where rust was coming through the old paint. But this year was different.  The State was paying almost two million to have the old paint completely removed.  The contractor would then apply an inorganic zinc primer and two, water-based, acrylic topcoats.

Stockton stopped directly under the contractor's makeshift, environmental enclosure, ninety feet above the deck, and looked straight up.  Were they ready for his last inspection of the day?  He breathed the diesel fumes coming off the big 750 compressor.  It labored to keep enough high-pressure air delivered to the grit pots.  From the pots, the compressed air pushed abrasive grit through four-inch hoses, straight up the side of the bridge.  At the top, four hooded men wrestled with high-pressure blast guns, cleaning the old alkyd paint off the beams until the steel underneath turned “near-white”.  He watched as thin clouds of blasting dust grit and paint chips were forced from the seams of the enclosure.  A light wind carried most of it to the southeast and out over the San Joaquin, where it eventually settled and sank to the bottom.

It was an environmental atrocity, yet a big improvement over methods used just ten years ago.  No enclosures, no tarps, nothing.  Just tons of debris, mixed with old lead-based, alkyd paint, flying in the wind.  Poisoning the beautiful river and pristine landscape that surrounded the bridge.

“They're going to be ready for us in about ten minutes,” the resident CHT inspector yelled to be heard above the repressive din of the compressor.  “We'll take that one over there,” the inspector motioned to a Spyder that hung on cables from the top of the span, the bucket resting against the massive, upright steel members.

“Good,” yelled Stockton.  He looked back up overhead.  A blaster emerged from the top of the enclosure, climbed up onto the top of the truss, stood, and walked easily over to the spot where a second Spyder hung in waiting to make the trip down.  No harness.  No tie-off to catch him if he lost his footing.  It was a ninety-foot drop to the bridge deck and one hundred and fifty feet to the river.

“God dang it,” he swore to himself, immediately scanning, searching for the paint foreman.  He spotted him by the compressor and ran the twenty steps.  “Do you know your man is walking that steel without a tie-off?”  He screamed the words to be heard above the compressor's incessant roar.

The foreman stood, turned slowly and looked at him without expression.

“I said your man isn't tied-off,” he screamed louder, motioning overhead with a straight arm.

The foreman still didn't respond.

“You're going to get my ass and yours thrown off this bridge,” he stopped in mid-rant, reading the disdain in the foreman's face.  He didn't care.  The contractors knew that these were hollow threats.  The State was never going to give an inspector the authority to throw a contractor off the job for a minor infraction.  And, the foreman knew it.

“I'll talk to the crew at the end of the