RGV AG said:

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Spring break 1986, my senior year in HS on SPI. We actually had spring break the following week, but some buddies of mine at NTSU that were older had it the week before so I decided to take some days off and went to stay with them. They had rented a condo at the Inverness up on the north end of the Island and after clubbing on the 2nd night there we ended up back at the condo, which was on the 8th or 9th floor. We were street side and not gulf side.

Kinda of an after party taking place, and this was at the height of the SPI spring break popularity when things were really pretty WFO, and some chicks and a few other folks had come over. There was all kinds of yelling and carousing and such out on the street so a bunch of us were sitting out on the balcony checking things out.

There was a large construction crane, probably 11 or 12 stories tall, the ones that have like a triangle frame with a crane at the top, caddy corner to the complex across the street from us. Well we start noticing a group of people, at the base of it yelling and such and we finally see why, there is a dude climbing up the ladder inside the crane and he is about maybe 6 or 7 stories up, just below us. All along the condo people start watching this and the people at the base are yelling for him to come down. But he keeps climbing.

About 20-30 minutes into this a SPI cop shows up and lights the dude up in a spotlight. Cop sits there for maybe 10 minutes and gets on the speaker and tells the guy he is trespassing and to immediately come down. But that is it for authority involvement. The thing about spring break back then is it was truly wild and outta hand. So after about 10 or so minutes the cop drives off with lights lit up as there were transformers popping and all kinds of stuff going on.

Well we all sit outside a while longer and kinda lose sight of the climbing guy and he is now about even or maybe slightly below us in height. Well all of a sudden the people at the base of the construction crane start screaming and sheer panic we look over the dude is falling inside the crane.

I mean it was wild, and we couldn't see that well, but just enough to discern shape and movement. And we hear "thunk, clang, bang, thunk" and see this guy banging and clanging his way down, he is banging off like cross members and the structure inside the crane . It was sickening. And the people at the bottom and many of those watching are screaming in panic and fright.

Well, the guy falls for what seemed liked minutes but was likely only 7-10 seconds, but it was bad. He falls to a level with a like a grate or some structure and is motionless and hung up. All his friends and people at the base of the crane rush up to him. At this point all of us watching are sobered up and sick, talk about a buzzkill. They reach him and dis-entangle him and carry him down. We can see that there is lots of blood all over him. They get him down and put him into a car and take off hell bent for leather.

We figured he was DOA and done for. It killed the party mood in a big way. We sat around for a while and finally passed out. I woke up about 8am the next morning, packed my stuff and headed home. I was really bummed.

The next day as I was getting ready for school I was watching the local newscast and they show a guy kinda wrapped up like a mummy, but not quite that bad on the newscast and are giving a report. Turns out the guy was on the swim team at TCU, didn't remember the incident and had regained consciousness and had like two broken arms and a broken leg, but was expected to recover fully. I was shocked, it blew me away. After watching and hearing him bang around inside that crane for what was likely a 6-7 story fall I was blown away.

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I guess it's kinda like if a drunk driver and a sober person get into a car accident, it's usually the sober person that gets killed, because your body tenses up to brace for impact?

That's a day I'll never forget as well. I was on the field as was my dad. Crazy swing of emotions that changed in an instant.

Worked in Israel in 2014. Went outside for a coffee and looked directly up at an iron dome missile taking out some rockets fired from Gaza Strip. It became all too common for a month. Very surreal experience. A few days later driving to the hotel I saw people getting down in a ditch and protecting themselves, as I just pressed on unaware of what was happening due to radio warnings being in Hebrew and I didn't understand. Luckily I was never in a direct hit area.

Jeez

I used to work for a small construction company with a good friend of mine. We were able to get a couple of dozers for the weekend for no charge from our rental company free of charge. They were crappy but they worked.

We were clearing Huisache on his family property, having fun trying to figure out how to run dozers. One of the evenings we hung out and had a couple cold ones after working all day. I left at 10-ish to head home. Its all two lane blacktop roads.

I went through a four way stop and I see a dually with a 20' gooseneck drop deck pulled over on the side of the road. I slowed down as he was partially blocking the lane but he took off fast.

That's when I noticed an SUV on its side in the ditch on the other side of the road. I hit the flashers and got out with my flashlight to investigate, preparing myself to find injured people.

The SUV was empty, all airbags deployed. No broken windows of any kind, completely intact. I couldn't see anyone anywhere.

I called the sheriff and they sent a couple cars out. They looked everywhere, jumped the barbed wire fence, checked all the trees, nothing. I asked if I could go after about 15 minutes and they took my contact information and off I went.

No clue what the heck happened.

Back in 2002, I was finishing up living in Honduras for a couple years. I wanted to get some more traveling in before heading home, so I flew down to Panama City to bus back up to Honduras, where I was then going to meet my brother and some friends who were going to fly down.

Anyway, I had found what sounded like a semi-decent motel in a guidebook. I guess it was a budget-type motel, not huge, I don't really remember. It certainly wasn't a chain or anything like that, one of those places where the clerk is behind a window in the lobby, and whatnot. My room was on the third floor, and the hotel probably had 8 floors. The room itself was fine, big for the price I paid, and it had hot water, cold A/C, decent TV, etc. My window looked onto the street.

At some point that evening, I was watching TV, probably getting ready for bed, and heard a loud commotion in the hallway. I opened the door, stepped into the hallway, and saw several firefighters running up the main stairs. No alarm was going off, of course. So I went back in my room, grabbed my wallet and my passport, and went downstairs as soon as there was a break in firefighters. There were a couple firetrucks on the street, and a crowd of people gathered outside the restaurant across the street. I went across the street to join them, saw some smoke and fire extinguisher foam, and about a minute later, a charred mattress comes flying out of a room a few floors above mine.

The firefighters hang around for a little bit, then finally drive off, leaving the mattress laying on the sidewalk. People started going back inside the hotel, so I followed them. I got to my floor, and in the little side hallway nearly right outside my room were two gruff-looking guys and a couple women who seemed to be up to no good, who I could only assume were pimps and hoes, based on their mannerisms. I realized they hadn't seen me, so I went back downstairs to the restaurant across the street, and sat inside for a while and ordered something to eat. After about an hour, I figured it was safe, and went back to the hotel. Sure enough, they were gone. Locked the door, slept a bit on edge that night.

I had planned to spend another night in Panama City, but found a nicer place to stay that second night.

GentrysMillTX10 said:

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I had just walked in the office one morning. This was a small office, actually a former house, in the northwestern Barnett shale. I sat my coffee down and turned to the hallway to greet the HR lady and the CEO.

BOOM. The building shook. Looked outside to see a wall of dust, like a west Texas sand storm. Me and the CEO walked out of the front door together as the dust cleared. There was a pile of mush on the ground in the middle of the parking lot. The pile of mush was formerly a man. His right arm and the cutting torch were ~ 60 feet from his body. Projectiles from the explosion totaled two vehicles.

In summary - the employee decided non-sparking wrenches weren't necessary and a cutting torch would be faster to change valves on oilfield equipment…

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Holy ****balls

I'm guessing he did not have a Hot Work permit.

Forgot about this one: was on my second week of work at the phone company in one of the local central office switching buildings with the third floor as an engineering office, learning what I could from some of the old engineers. About 1pm we hear a loud whooshing sound and hear a bunch of yelling out from the front of the building where there had been a crew doing some excavation work. We run up to the windows and see bits of dirt and grass being blasted 2-3 stories into the air by some invisible force, and then look down to see the excavation site below, where you could see a backhoe tractor sitting at the edge of a pit with a big torn open gas line at the bottom and gas just blasting out into vapor. By now we could smell the gas, but also alarmingly we could hear the tractor was still running.

Then, we see a worker at the corner of the building steeling himself and then hauling ass up to the tractor, turning off the engine, and hauling ass away, and we all decide we had better get to the far side of the building ourselves.

It never did explode before they had it shut off and the local pressure dissipated.

I have lots of wild oilfield tales. This is not the same company as the explosion story above.

Long story short, there's a dead oilfield worker floating face down in a frac water pit. He had been there a couple hours before they realized he wasn't answering the radio. Then no one could identify him since he was only known by crew members as a nickname.

So eventually they get an identification. The owner of this small oilfield service company calls the emergency contact and a male voice answers. (I'm in the room and the phone is on speaker.) The owner breaks the news to the man on the phone that his son's life has been lost in a tragic accident. The man replies "no you dumb###, I just talked to him. It's another one of your employees, my step son." The owner goes pale, apologized for the mix up, and hangs up the phone. I was excused from the room. Then lots of loud noises and sheet rock flying as the owner took out his feelings on his office.

This was 10-15 years ago. Thankfully the industry has matured since then.

I've been to the Trinity Site. I'm not sure I have the words to describe how strange it felt to be there.

Did you sneak out any Unobtanium or whatever they call it?

I was on a school sponsored tour of Europe back in the summer of '99, and we went to see a play in London. After the show, we were all standing outside taking and waiting on the teachers to tell us it was time to head back to the hotel when we heard some commotion across the street.

One guy threw something into a little shop, breaking the glass window, and then ol' shopkeep hopped over the counter and came out and beat the guy with a club or pipe. I'm talking reigning down blows of Thor on his ass. He was really lacing into him.

Once shopkeep felt ol' boy had enough, he went back inside and began sweeping up the glass as of he didn't just beat some guy within an inch of his life.

Our teachers promptly got us out of there and on our way back to the hotel.

Yes! That's where I heard it as well and have used it since.

Girlhowdy said:

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Driving the interstate I came upon an accident involving a big semi. I didn't see the other vehicle until I was right beside it, a motorcycle. The victim was covered with a tarp, except for his leg, which was about 10' away from the tarped body. I get anxious when I'm in traffic near motorcycles now.

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Loud pipes save lives

ABATTBQ11 said:

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Going down Hwy 50 there was a truck in front of us that blew a tire or something at 70 mph. Immediately flipped and started rolling across a plowed field for maybe 75 yards. Stopped and ran to them to see if they needed help, and the three guys inside were miraculously fine. Shaken up, but no broken bones or blood or anything at all.

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During Dead Week - May 1989, we were headed to the Guadalupe for the annual Aggie Band canoe trip between finals and Final Review.

We were driving South on the I-35 Frontage Rd on the west side of the highway and came upon 3 Mexicans in an OJ style Ford Bronco who had flipped over and their Bronco was blocking the road.

Probably 7-8 of us in two cars, plus the three stunned but otherwise uninjured Mexicans flipped their Bronco back right side up.

It was then that we realized they had been headed North on I-35 and had crossed the median and 3 lanes of oncoming Southbound traffic before they hit the two-way frontage road and flipped over.

And that all happened seconds before we got there.

EDIT: to add, I remembered that one of the other cars who stopped to help us flip the Bronco over was one of our B-Company seniors who has his picture in the Bush Library's Desert Storm exhibit. The Tank Commander who flew an A&M flag on his tank - Michael Kelley '89

It moved.

CanyonLakeAgbu said:

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Just looked up the archive article in the Battalion from October 19, 1994. He collapsed at a 100th Anniversary performance.

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Yep. I played Tenor Saxophone so I was up front and the incident happened behind me.

We knew pretty quick that someone went down but we didn't know any more details. I heard the guy was 59 but I wasn't sure if he was Class of '59 or 59 years old. It was at least the next week when I found out he survived.

The event was the Centennial Aggie Band reunion in 1994.

And yes, way back in the SWC days, the Reunion Band would march on the field every year or two.

More on your Grandfather please.

Doolittle Raid.

Shotgunning a bottle of beer is east if you have a straw. Its a whole lot faster than a can.

GasAg90 said:

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The guy who collapsed went to my church when I lived in Illinois. I think his name was Jack Morrison

I have a couple of surreal moments, including:
1) watching someone shotgun a beer in Matamoros spring break 88. He shotgunned a bottle of beer.
2) traveling in rural China and stop at at a monument that had a bunch of Chinese, except for a tiny bit of english which consisted of my grandfathers name. From WW2

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FIFY, IIRC

Negative, ghost rider his name was Jernacek. Name might be misspelled but it is close

GasAg90 said:

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Negative, ghost rider his name was Jernacek. Name might be misspelled but it is close

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Jernigan?

It is actually Jernigan

GasAg90 said:

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Negative, ghost rider his name was Jernacek. Name might be misspelled but it is close

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Jernigan it is.

https://theeagle.com/news/local/aggie-jack-jernigan-who-had-a-heart-attack-at-kyle-field-in-1994-dies-at/article_64cffb4d-dbb0-5257-8157-6801e758ff80.html