Up prior to dawn, it was our usual race to
grab difficult hats, safety vests, and for our entire family members to jump in
to the business. We all slumped into our seats, barely awake, while my husband
punched the accelerator, merging into the busy pre-dawn line of construction
automobiles headed toward a new day in dusty Bakersfield, California.
Turning west off Rosedale Highway, we
veered off the primary road and stopped before a padlocked gate. While dialing
the lock numbers we quickly scanned the petroleum fields to get a unique breed
of foxes, a nearby endangered species that inhabited the few acres of abandoned
dirt hills. If we saw 1 of these animals we were obliged to cease working,
contact the nearby biologist, and supposedly halt all operations till the
safety from the animals was assured.( Graphitized
Petroleum Coke)
No visible foxes were in sight, so we left
the gate wide open for dozens of dump trucks to enter behind us and drove into
a restricted hazardous waste materials cleanup website.
Our boss had challenged us, "Can you
load out 30,000 tons within the next 3 weeks?" Randy, my newlywed husband
of 4-months, replied, "Not an issue." You see, "No" and
"Impossible" had been two words that just didn't exist in his
vocabulary! Very quickly the job turned into 15-hour days of adrenaline-charged
activities as we pulled together as a family members to as soon as again complete
an 'impossible' job assignment.
Two of our sons, Larry and Jeff, were
quickly joined by their step-brother, Robbie, and together with our 3 sons we
loaded the first 30,000 yards of inky black Petroleum
Coke. Petroleum coke is usually the consistency of sand or ash...
but we had been to quickly discover what none of the scientists and engineers
could have predicted... that below the soft layer of coke was a almost petrified
strata of very heavy, solid pet-coke. Using the correct machinery we could have
drilled and broken up that immovable strata, but all we had had been loaders.
This should happen to be a red flag for what was about to happen.
Randy was an expert operator of heavy
machinery, but the rest of us had been so green we required to become taught
everything from lubrication to building ramps. I was a middle-aged mother who
had previously spent more than a dozen years house schooling children and
volunteering at church.( Petroleum
Coke Supplier, Foundry Coke
Suppliers)
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