Destruction Part II

Sometimes I wonder if I should write a book about my life. It's like a freaking circus at times and I can't help but be both entertained and horrified by it at the same time. Less than a year after our great house catastrophe we got a clog in our plumbing. No biggie right? We called our trusty plumber up so he can come fix it. Not real sure why our brand new plumbing would have a clog but hey, who knows.

So this is our driveway. I suppose the plus side is that we won't have to hire a bobcat to come and break up the old driveway when we finally get around laying a new one. The downside is $3200 worth of a giant trench and new water and sewer main piping. I would not have thought that roots could actually grow into a galvanized pipe but apparently roots really can infiltrate anything. Ok, so the water main was still working fine but if I am gonna dig up my entire driveway, it's best to make it worth it and replace everything that might need replacing at some point in the nearer future.
Ok so here's the fun part. We are putting our kids to bed at 8pm or so and hear what sounds like a loud hissing sound comming from outside where work is still commencing with the bobcat. We peek out the window and I think that he must have nicked the water main connected to our meter. But as we go back to putting the kids down Jeremy our plumber comes inside and tells us to get out of the house because he just hit the main natural gas line. We tow all our kids out to our neighbor's house while Jeremy and his other help try to block off our section of street covering about 50 yards on either side of our house to keep cars and their combustion engines out of range of gas spewing  out of the line. I would have gotten a picture of the fiasco but I was a little concerned about being that close to that much gas. I'm sure you can understand. But I can tell you that it looked like how water misters look like that they have all over the place in Southern CA. It disipated quickly some 5 feet from the actual leak and the only place you could really smell it was in front of our house. Nevertheless an entire crew of firemen came out to quarantine the area with caution tape and advise our neighbors to abandon their residences for a time. We ended up going to another neighbor's house even farther down the street.
It must have taken Piedmont Natural Gas 45 minutes or more to actually get to the site and another 45 minutes for them to figure out how to turn it off. Seriously? They take 45 minutes to turn it off? That had to have been a lot of gas spewing out and I heard our plumber ask the gas guy how much this was going to cost him, because obviously someone has to pay for that gas. It sure as heck wasn't going to be us. The gas guy had no answer. So it was at least an hour and a half of free flowing gas out of this hole in the pipe.

That's the peice of gas piping they replaced and the damage that was inflicted by said bobcat.
It is difficult when one has seen as many misfortunes as I have to not wonder if we are somehow doomed and that doom spreads over to other innocents with whom we become involved with. I don't actually think that but it certainly feels that way sometimes. Poor Jeremy, I hate that he will probably not make any money off this job when it's all said and done.