Work Stuff

I am responsible for updating the spill prevention and counter control (SPCC) plans for 26 power stations scattered throughout Ohio and one in West Virginia. This involves me going to each of those stations, looking to see what equipment has changed, documenting said changes and updating the site map. I decided that I would work on these all week and see how many I could wrap up. I got my self a rental car (our version of a fleet vehicle) and took off first thing Monday morning.

When we get to the station, we have to call in to the dispatching office and log in before we go inside. There are many reasons for this, mainly safety related. If the control room decides to do some switching remotely and it could be dangerous for someone to be standing around while they do so, they'll know I'm there. Also, some stations are armed with remotely controlled alarms and the dispatcher will turn those off before we go in.I called in and logged in to one of my stations, unlocked the gate, went in, turned around to lock the gate back and promptly lost my hearing when a splitting alarm went off. I called the dispatcher, very annoyed that they forgot the alarm and was informed that there was no alarm there. I assured him that there was indeed an alarm and he said he would call security to look into it. Twenty minutes later I give up and decide to just do what I came there to do and hope that I didn't get arrested by the police. Now for some reason I had ONE earplug, which I used and shoved my finger into the other ear while I tried to work. Then the alarm just stopped. The dispatcher called me back to tell me that this was an alarm that couldn't be controlled remotely, gave me two codes and told me to try one to reset the alarm. I told him it was already off, which confused him, but he told me that it would go off again if I didn't use the code when I left. Ok, I did what I needed to do, plugged in the code and ran away.

I go to the next station, call in and inform them that I see the same security system here, which they didn't know about either. They tell me to try the same codes and see what happens. Okay, but the security box was very, very far away from the gate and nobody knew how much time I had. So, I lined the car up perfectly, unlock the gate push it open, run back to the car and gunned it just in time for the gate to swing back and slam into the rental car leaving a very nice dent. But I did just make it to the security box in time and averted triggering the thing.

My mean old boss made me fill out an incident report for the dent, which annoyed me. But not as much as the actual report did. They don't really care about little dents, just accidents that are serious. Therefore, the report is very lengthy. One amusing thing came out of the station inspection, see picture below.

I can't imagine one of our station guys drawing a face on an oil filled circuit breaker, but that would mean that some kid snuck into the station and did this. Perhaps that annoying alarm is a good idea after all.