Returning to work after a week-long vacation is always tough, but my transition from Outer Banks fishing bum back to the life of a landscaper was going fairly well; until yesterday morning.
When my landscape crew finished a drainage job much faster than expected, I had the bright idea of sending them by my house to trim the bushes. I took the two-man crew there, showed them what to do and retired to my office about six miles away. Just as I was getting settled in, the phone rang.
It was the foreman, who told me in broken English that he had cut a pipe; I couldn't quite understand him, but the words "propane gas" rang loud and clear. I jumped back in my car and called my wife at the house.
"Jorge says he cut a gas line!"
"Oh, I think he's trying to tell me that right now," she replied.
When I pulled up, I could smell gas from across the street and could hear it rushing out of the broken copper pipe. My wife had already called the gas company, and they had someone on the way. Still, as a precaution, I evacuated my family to Camp Cowboy and sent the landscape crew packing off to their next job. Meanwhile, I stood on the other side of the street; waiting for my house to explode.
After five minutes that seemed like five hours, I decided the gas company was not making my emergency a high enough priority, so I called the fire department. Their truck and the Washington Gas van pulled up simultaneously a few minutes later.
It turned out that Jorge had not seen the gas meter, which was hidden by thick juniper bushes that some short-term-thinking landscaper planted before I lived in the house. Using gas-powered shear pruners to trim the shrubs away from the house, Jorge cut the copper pipe that runs from my basement to the gas meter.
With the gas shut off, and the firemen on their way back to the station, the gas man informed me that his company could not fix the busted pipe; I would have to call a plumber. I saw an ad for My Plumber on the back cover of the yellow pages and dialed. The plumbing company actually had someone there within 45 minutes. About two hours and $290 later, everything was back up and running.
I've been in the landscape business for longer than I care to admit. During that time, I've had guys cut phone cables, fiber optic lines, cable tv lines and many many invisible dog fence wires. Until yesterday, however, I'd never even heard of a gas line--or any other metal pipe--being severed by pruning tools. Interestingly enough, the Washington Gas man said he'd never heard of it happening either before this year, but that he has been on several calls in 2009 similar to mine.
With disaster narrowly averted at my home, I'll take this opportunity to pass a few lessons on to you:
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Don't ever plant shrubs so close to utility equipment that the apparatus will be obscured;
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Don't ever prune shrubs without first checking behind them;
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Gas-powered shear pruners will cut copper pipe; and
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Going back to work after a vacation is never easy, even if it seems to be at first.
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