Excavator tossed by water from ruptured pipe - GIF

[Frank S]

811 can I help you? Yeah, you stupid idiot, you flagged the wrong place I struck a water line. I dug where your man told me is was safe to dig and I'm not paying for this.

Conversations like that do happen all the time, because the people at the 811 tasks depart don't do their job all the time.

[nova_robotics]

811 can I help you? Yeah, you stupid idiot, you flagged the wrong place I struck a water line. I dug where your man told me is was safe to dig and I'm not paying for this.

Conversations like that do happen all the time, because the people at the 811 tasks depart don't do their job all the time.

I had this happen on a job site, but the bonehead hit a main electrical line. Massive bang, and it didn't trip the upstream breaker, so we just had this thing arcing away on the bucket, with the entire chassis of the backhoe being electrified. We called the utility, they hit the disconnect on their end, then came down and did a splice. As soon as the power company left, the superintendent is back directing the operator on the backhoe.

Everybody was like "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?"

Supernintendo's response was that he asked the power company, and there are no more buried lines.

"WHAT ABOUT GAS!!!???"

His response, and I **** you not, was to look over one shoulder, then look over the other shoulder. "There's no gas around here."

That was an interesting job.