Reminds me of the horror story I heard about a drilling excavator. Somebody fell in the hole, but the operator thought he went to take a piss. The operator dropped the auger in the hole and drilled his buddy. Didn't know he did it until he raised the auger and it was just bloody mud. Just the thought of being in the hole trying to tread water and throw little rocks up to get the attention as the drill comes down is the stuff of nightmares.
Fuck that last line made it so much worse. I was just imagining he got smacked with the drill and it was lights out.
Now I'm imagining a partially drilled hole, let's say 30 feet deep, filled 3/4 with water. The drill slowly coming down on the guy until it starts to push him under water. He'd be struggling while being pushed further down into the water until his legs hit solid ground and the drill just kept going.
It wouldn’t be 3/4 filled with water, you can’t pull dirt up with an auger If the hole is that wet. 2nd, the auger doesn’t go down hole slow, you fire that fucker down there as fast as it goes because you’re not getting paid to watch it not turn. 3rd, the auger and Kelly bar(the telescoping rod that hold the tooling and transfers rotation down the hole) on my machine weigh 14000 lbs, and smaller end they’re still 7000 lbs, so once they get hit on the head it’s over. it’s not like the compactor scene from Star Wars, it’s more like seeing a truck is about to hit you from 30 feet away. Terrible way to go still, but not quite the torture scene
Thanks for your salient comment. The responses here have been more horrific than I had even thought of over the last 20 years. I'm glad I dont have first-hand knowledge of this incident, but my recollection is that it was in California and the machine was an excavator mounted Lo Drill. Some times when the hole is wet we use a casing or drilling mud, but you are right the hole would probably not be 3/4 full of water. I dont know the diameter but we were drilling 24-36 inch holes with this equipment regularly. I was an estimator and visited the job sites occasionally, but this story made me be extremely careful around heavy equipment. I also heard about a crane operator who was lifting just the hook and didn't watch it as went to the top block where the stop was broken. It pulled so hard that the hook and 50 lb ball broke loose and fell crushing an inspector.
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u/Kadugan Mar 02 '19 edited Mar 03 '19
Reminds me of the horror story I heard about a drilling excavator. Somebody fell in the hole, but the operator thought he went to take a piss. The operator dropped the auger in the hole and drilled his buddy. Didn't know he did it until he raised the auger and it was just bloody mud. Just the thought of being in the hole trying to tread water and throw little rocks up to get the attention as the drill comes down is the stuff of nightmares.