A month or so prior to the writing of this article, I was sitting in a hotel room in Pittsburgh, Pa., when I received a text message from my wife. The text contained a screenshot of the Facebook page of a driller that I know, simply stating: “Thank God I’m alive today. God was watching over me and my coworkers.” I phoned the driller who had posted it to find out what happened.
The story was simple. Two geotechnical drill crews were working on the same site in an urban area doing soil borings along a roadway. There was a driller with 10 years of experience on one rig and a newly promoted driller (the one who posted to Facebook) on the second rig, both accompanied by relatively inexperienced helpers. The more experienced driller set up and began to try to “set the pace” — drilling a boring, then moving, drilling and moving. The less experienced driller took a little more time per boring, but was attempting to keep up with the other crew. After about six hours, it happened. The more experienced driller moved to a new hole, leveled his rig and began to raise the mast, causing contact with overhead powerlines!