Consideration can be hard to come by

Hey weekend papers, I've got some other people you might like to hear from

Saturday was probably the last day of summer and we made the most of it by riding up to Albany to watch people try to cut a bloody great crane in half and lift its broken boom off the house it had fallen into.

This was not rubbernecking; a family member lives in the house immediately next to the one that had the crane fall on it.

This was the point at which anyone who has been saying I just don't feel like having that crane over our roof, and your family has been assuring you that cranes don't fall over they really don’t, gets to say I TOLD YOU.

I’m making light of it a little, but in the middle of last week when it happened, it was not all that funny at all.

It was just good fortune that the woman who lives in the house into which it fell  was downstairs at the time.  We don’t know the why yet but we know the how: the boom on the crane crumpled down and the crane itself tipped onto its side and part of the boom came crashing onto a steel beam of the three storey building being erected and the far end of the boom came down into the house beyond the boundary fence.

Into the upstairs bathroom it came, smashing glass in every direction and severing all the pipes and flooding the house with water. But let's put that to one side. Remember as this is happening there’s a woman downstairs? If she had happened to be in her bathroom at that moment, she would have been crushed.

So on Saturday, the appointed day of salvage by crane experts, we went up to offer moral support. And also to be rubberneckers.  Because friends: this was the most fascinating spectacle of machinery I have beheld over the slow accumulation of hours since they carried away that house down the road from us.

To lift a bloody great crane boom off a house you will need; two even bigger bloody great cranes and a scissor lift and blokes in safety gear with an acetylene torch.

At the inflexion point of the crumpled bloom it looks squashed and contorted  like a Crunchie bar wrapper. But of course steel, even crumpled, is still tough as all hell to cut through and you will need that acetylene torch, and plenty of time.

You will also need: much care. There’s hydraulics stuff inside the boom that’s flammable, so you would be using it with care wouldn't you; up they go with the scissor lift, two dudes with a gas torch.

Life’s submerged part of iceberg is the preparation.

We watch on as the hours pass and the two dudes with the gas torch cut a large slice and then another large chunk out the  boom, which is being held by one of the huge cranes ready for the moment when it’s freed from the other end of the crane. Don’t want it falling twice.

The broken crane itself is being held in place by the other huge crane, all at sea, at 45 degrees, awaiting rescue.

And then finally, as they cut almost through, the dudes retreat.

The crane goes to work pulling the boom up, letting it down, up, down, and flexing it hoping to make it snap clean. This will be good we say.

Flex flex flex. Nothing.

There is much talking and then the dudes go back up and resume cutting and sparks fly and they’re doing it pretty carefully now because you don't want to be too close to that thing when the tension is released eh?

And then finally success.

Now the crane makes it look like the easiest thing in the world as it lifts away the broken boom higher up into the air, then swings around and deposits it on the school playing ground.

They chain up the remaining broken end of the crane and with the first crane pull it up while the other steadies the crane itself and plays the chain back out until it’s set back on all fours. Poetry.

It was marvellous to watch on, it was salutary to listen to two neighbours recount the frustration  of being ignored and unheard since bulldozers just turned  up one morning and that was the first they had heard of any building project with cranes. 

The Oteha Valley school is full of prefabs because the roll is running ahead of buildings. So they're building a three storey block in the back of the playing field up to the boundary fence.

There's a local construction company building it, a big project manager company overseeing it and the Ministry of Education is the client.

All the neighbours would have liked was but one single letter saying hey by the way we're going to be pile driving and digging and grading and making the earth shudder so we can build here next to your fence and here's how you can contact us if things come flying into your section or you want to know  when the noise will stop and what have you - just some kind of small act of consideration.

But message came there none and it became necessary to send formal letters and over the course of the project things grew, as you might imagine a bit cool, terse. Noise tests required by the resource consent weren’t done. You get the picture: little people don’t matter, so little people don't get contacted.

Until a crane falls into a roof. And fortunately no one dies. Since last week communication has been altogether more forthcoming. 

Consideration was all they wanted.

Consideration is all they are asking for.

Some consideration is what seems to be hard to come by these days.

Not from dicks doing burnouts in their  cars and attacking a milk tanker - a milk tanker! Not from jerks mounting protests against our vaccine programme and mauling our parliament, and saying you're not thinking about us you bastards, and you know what, how much are you bastards thinking about us? Eh?

Hello weekend papers who had all that sympathetic stuff talking to protestors with hurt feelings. When you’re done giving them a back rub I've got some other people you might like to hear from who are having trouble getting anyone to listen to them.