Quote Originally Posted by auld argonian View Post
You remind me of a recent incident here in Chicago.

One car of a coal train derailed dumping the entire carload of coal and stopping the train. This happened near my mom and dads' apartment building so we had a "balcony" seat to watch the event. What happened was that they had...and I am not exagerating...twenty-five guys in hard hats and yellow safety vests standing around with cups of coffee in their hands looking at the overturned car and shaking their heads for several hours. Once in a while, one of them would shift his coffee cup over to his left hand and point at something with his right...this would start a whole new round of head shaking.

Finally, the heavy equipment showed up and an entirely new crew went to work righting the car and sweeping up the coal...the original twenty-five guys got a fresh cup of coffee and continued standing around shaking and pointing.

I guess that the key man in this operation was the fella who went for the coffee.

Best

AA
My father and I were on the scene of a horrible train derailment soon after it happened. Two carloads of cattle derailed, scattering cattle everywhere. Some were dead, some injured, and some roaming the area. The fire department responded, but could not do much, as the cattle were not on fire. So they just stood around watching cattle bleed to death. After that incident, my father would call one particular department, the Uh-Oh Squad. Since then, Every time I go by an accident where people are standing around, I call them the OH-No team. Every incident needs an Oh-No team. I tend to dump on members of the team because they just get in the way and say Uh-Oh.

By the way, the State Police sent a team to dispatch the cattle that were injured and could not be reloaded onto trucks. What a mess. Probably about 75 head were put out of their misery. I told one cop, ( old family friend) Maybe he should shoot some of the Uh-Oh squad .