Originally posted by Skuzzy
Good to hear you're okay.
Been through only one earthquake in my life. Was a while back...the one that collapsed the Oakland Bay bridge.
I was in Santa Cruz doing some work for HP via Adaptec. We were in a 2 story wood frame building (pre-earthquake type) when it hit.
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We hit the parking lot just as the rest of the second floor collapses.
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I sleep in my car that night as my hotel room decided to relocate about 300 feet from where it originally was standing and the staff was refusing to let anyone near the buildings.
Next morning,..ground was still shaking a bit. I get my ugly self up and start to drive. All I had on my mind was finding an airport and getting the heck out of that mess.
San Francisco was operating, and I catch a ride back to Texas.
Now,..HP was a bit pissed as I did not complete the task I was assigned, and, in fact, had lost all the code as the computer was,..very mashed.
Adaptec asked me when I was going to come back and finish. I told them in no uncertain terms I would never step foot in that state again.
That was the second scariest thing I have ever had to deal with in my life.
lol. The reaction of HP and Adaptec make me laugh. Here you are almost killed and they should be thanking god that you all got out and were safe, and they are worried about the work they lost. They should have rented some nice space in Vegas or somewhere and put you all up for 6 months and treated you like kings. You were almost killed for Christ sake.
That reminds me of a story that happened in Nigeria when I was working there for an un-named oil company.
This engineer (from Japan) was working out of our Warrie base which is in a pretty rough part of the country. He was driving along a road in his Pegeot (sp) 504 company car and he came to a stalled truck in the road. In Nigeria a new Pegeot is like having a big sign that says "I have money to steal". Anyway this engineer was smart and saw some guys hanging around the truck that was blocking the road so he stopped quite a bit back from it and did a U-turn.
As he drove away his back windshield was blown out by a shotgun blast. It was an ambush by bandits who were probably going to steal the car and strip him naked and leave him there (best case scenario or possibly kill him). Foreign workers were not usually killed but it had happened when I was there.
So the guy goes back to our camp sees the Doctor who digs some pellets out of the back of his head and puts little while tape crosses over the wounds.
The next day the guy is back at work in the base.
I could not believe it. I thought at least gunshot wounds in the line of duty would get you a few weeks off in Europe to get your nerves together but that was not the case.