Glad to have been of service!! (Gas Co.)

Well, as most of you know I worked at So. CA. Gas Co. for the last 8 years (give or take) and I really enjoyed my job. We worked in the streets and basically I dug holes and filled them... Every day. This wasn't a bad thing though. I learned a lot about soil, and compaction, and I found out that no matter where you go there's a whole other world underground. Needless to say that is true here in Costa Rica as well. 

The other day on my way back from the meat market, I walked up on a group of people frantically trying to stop traffic and block off a main bus route with caution tape. 

As I came closer I found that there was a good reason for the panic. In a 4 way intersection about 3 blocks from our house there was, and still is 3 days later, a huge hole in the street. By huge I mean 5-6 feet in diameter at the top, 15-18 feet deep, with a bottom diameter of 8-10 feet. 

If you can see the red thing in the bottom, that's a full sized grocery bag. It's a huge hole. Now due to my experience with digging holes I can tell you exactly what happened, (for all of my gas co friends, the rest of you may get bored with this so I'll put it in italics and you can skip it) They installed a storm drain at 20' and probably filled the hole in the rain, which means, in clay, the moisture was to high and failed to compact correctly. They should have used sand. Over time the water soaked in through the seam at the edge of the patch and washed the loose and wet soil further down the hill leaving a large hole beneath the pavement at the highest point. Over time the pavement began to sag due to 20-30 busses driving over it every day, and it eventually broke exposing the gigantic hole that had most likely been there for months or years just waiting to cause a lot of damage. (it rains a lot so the time could vary widely). 

So anyways, the police came and brought a stop sign and some dead trees and a lot of wood to block it off from traffic, and now it sits... Who knows when they'll get around to filling it. There are smaller holes on about every other street that have been there as long as we've been here, so who knows. Costa Rica is definitely a good place to be a mechanic. The roads are horrid and the cars get trashed from all of the pot holes.

Anyways, Thanks Gas Co. for all of the education. I like knowing why things are the way they are, and maybe someday I'll be able to help fix some of these problems. To all of you that hate the moisture meter and powder puff... Don't let this happen to your bell hole. LOL.

Thanks for reading.