Midwest Chick's Place

I spent a cold December night in a ditch under a tarp in freezing drizzle because someone found “cool tree roots.”A large car dealership in East Hartford was expanding and renovating. The guy running the job for the company supposedly knew where all buried utilities were, so no need to notify C.B.Y.D. The very first bucket of dirt from the area between buildings pulled up and destroyed a 400 pair direct burial communications cable. I got the emergency call at 3 PM to go put eyes on the mess, and a mess it was. I began making phone calls and rounding up equipment. Hydraulic splice tool and parts, 400 pair cable, tarps, floodlights, generator, etc. FYI… when a cable is damaged this way, the bad section has to be cut out so it takes TWO repair splices to complete. Because it was direct burial, each splice had to be put in a special enclosure and filled with a 2-part water displacing gel. It has to be filled to overflowing and allowed to set. What a big stinking mess. We only had one hydraulic splice tool, so each splice had to be done one at a time. There were two of us, and because of the cold we took turns warming up in the truck while the other was in the hole. We finished up at dawn's early light.

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Glypto, BTDT, not once but TWICE on a 72 pair buried fiber feed. The SAME company cut it the next day after the repair, less than 50 feet from the first repair, even though the path was MARKED!!! Grrr… And the little girl one is dead on!

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I spent a cold December night in a ditch under a tarp in freezing drizzle because someone found “cool tree roots.”A large car dealership in East Hartford was expanding and renovating. The guy running the job for the company supposedly knew where all buried utilities were, so no need to notify C.B.Y.D. The very first bucket of dirt from the area between buildings pulled up and destroyed a 400 pair direct burial communications cable. I got the emergency call at 3 PM to go put eyes on the mess, and a mess it was. I began making phone calls and rounding up equipment. Hydraulic splice tool and parts, 400 pair cable, tarps, floodlights, generator, etc. FYI… when a cable is damaged this way, the bad section has to be cut out so it takes TWO repair splices to complete. Because it was direct burial, each splice had to be put in a special enclosure and filled with a 2-part water displacing gel. It has to be filled to overflowing and allowed to set. What a big stinking mess. We only had one hydraulic splice tool, so each splice had to be done one at a time. There were two of us, and because of the cold we took turns warming up in the truck while the other was in the hole. We finished up at dawn's early light.

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Glypto, BTDT, not once but TWICE on a 72 pair buried fiber feed. The SAME company cut it the next day after the repair, less than 50 feet from the first repair, even though the path was MARKED!!! Grrr… And the little girl one is dead on!

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