All in a Day's Work

The Corp has moved me to Camp Cameron to help with debris removal. Duties include safety inspections to make sure that contractors picking up debris along roads and ditches follow basic safety requirements: keep away from powerlines and maintain proper traffic control signs and flaggers. And to stand in the tower and visually judge the size and approve payment for each load entering the debris dump site. The work is dusty and dangerous: the trucks come in twos and threes; drivers are courteous but they are paid by the load; the trucks are large (semis, sometimes tandems) and you are small and you move amoung them freely. You learn quickly to catch the eye of each driver before venturing into harm's way. You also, after 10 hours on the job, find yourself doing stupid things; walking behind trucks that may be asked to back up to give the person in the tower above another look or nonchanaltly walking alongside a moving 22 ton truck; things that you wouldn't do when it was morning and you were fresh; and that was 10 hours ago and you still have 2 hours 'til 6:30.