A Tragedy On The Site

Author's Note: Well, in a recent car ride I was in I saw a bunch of construction workers on a building, and realized the dangers of it. So I wrote a tragedy about an incident that could happen.

.............................................................I

It was a late Friday night, around eleven-thirty. The fog was thick enough to cut with a sharp knife, and the thundering rain was pouring down heavily. However, this drew no effect to Thadeus Walters, a former U.S. Marine and current construction worker. He was ordered by Tim Sanner, the architect of the building they were constructing, to deliver fifteen two-by-fours to the site. Of course, Mr. Sanner gave no care in the world as to what time it was, for he once had the entire crew stay at the site to finish the shingles until two o'clock in the morning.


By the time Thadeus was finished with his chore, he decided not to go home. Instead, he decided that he would stay the night inside the half-built building.

Why drive thirty-five miles to sleep in my own bed for less than five hours, then drive another thirty-five miles back to the site that I am in right now, when I could just fall asleep right here until Sanner wakes me up?

Thadeus didn't put much thought into this, because there wasn't a lot of thought to be put into this situation. Staying here over the night was clearly the answer without any doubt. He now had to get as much sleep as he could, so that he wouldn't be partially asleep on the job. That was the one thing that Sanner especially didn't tolerate during any time on the job. This even goes when it's at midnight. It seems to be as if Tim did nothing else in his life except architecture and bossing people around.

Falling asleep became a harder concept as the night went on. Floors creaking like a madman scraping a chalkboard. Boards swaying in the glowing moonlight. Everything in the vicinity of the construction site either moved or made some awkward noise. However, nothing could possibly distract Thadeus from his sleep if he didn't want to be fired tomorrow.

At last, Thadeus Walters finally fell asleep in the rickety building of the site. However, when he woke up, it wasn't because Sanner had splashed him with water, or kicked him in the gut. Right above the third beam shaft, an over-sized crow had been waiting there, cawing its lungs out. With an effortless throw, Thadeus attempted to hit the frightful crow, but ended up in a tremendous failure.

"Get away you lousy buzzard! The last thing I need is for you to be harassing me around, and trying to get me fired! It's only four in the morning!" Thadeus cried at the top of his lungs.

The crow stooped down to the beam shaft on the second floor. At this point, people in their cars on the highway could hear Thadeus's yell at full volume. Again, the crow stooped lower, this time to the first shaft. Thadeus grew angrier as he could ever be. People in the neighboring apartments began opening their windows to attempt to shut him up, but the groaning and yelling continued. But out of nowhere appeared a hand on Thadeus's shoulder, of course forcing him to jump.

"Thadeus!" Sanner yelled at the top of his lungs.

"Um...uh... hey Mr. Sanner! I was just... scaring the bird away from destroying the site."

"Yeah, and you destroyed the neighbors within a mile around us. Do you have anything to say? And by the way, what are you doing here three hours early? Is something wrong?"

After Thadeus finished his story about last night, Mr. Sanner figured that since Thadeus was so early, he'd put him to work to get ahead on the days. Thadeus already knew that this day was going to drain all of his energy out. But what could he do about it? Nothing except work harder, hoping that Mr. Sanner would notice his devotion to work, leading to days off of work.

....................................................II

After three weeks, the building actually started to look sturdy enough to hold its own weight. That Thursday, Thadeus had some feeling in him that it was time to take the two cranes away from holding the building up. Because of this, he told Sanner that the tower would be okay to stand on its own. At first, Sanner just stared at Thadeus as if there was a dead rat on his face. After Thadeus consulted with him and told him the benefits and reasons to do this action, Sanner gave in. It may not have been because he agreed with Thadeus, but because he thought Thadeus would be too hard to argue with about the concept.

After the cranes had left, more of the crew started to ask Thadeus many questions about construction work, starting from "Which has a better grip, a Phillips or a flat-head?" to things like "How would you overlap a two-by-four-by-30 foot rod with a three-by-three-by-35 foot rod at a right angle?" Thadeus eventually became the construction guru on the entire work site, and he was mighty fine with that.

Life on the construction site started to be something that Thadeus looked forward to every morning. In fact, he loved his work so much that he started arriving at work a whole hour early, if not before then. He even received a raise the previous week, and he was definitely deserving of one. Everything was great, until the day it was time to fill in the concrete. Of course, Thadeus was pretty sure that he was aware of everything that was going on at the site, and he became the new decision maker. Mr. Sanner wasn't too thrilled that Thadeus had partially taken over, but he knew that Thadeus was making better decisions than he would've ever thought of doing. Therefore, he didn't mind too much about Thadeus's new position.

When Thadeus ended his phone call to MIXnFILL, the local cement company, he got everyone on the site ready for the cement truck to enter without any obstacles. Thadeus was always so organized and made sure that no one did anything on the site that could mess anyone else's work, or else they would face unknown consequences.

At last, the cement truck had arrived at the construction site, and everyone made a clear path for it. When the driver came, he got out of the truck to discuss with Thadeus where to pour the cement first. To everyone's surprise, Thadeus declared that it should be poured on the fourth floor first, to get it out of the way. Everyone just stared at each other, puzzled about the decision made. However, they realized that Mr. Walters was recently deciding on the greatest things for the building, so they approved of his decision.

By the time the slide that the cement pours through reached the fourth floor, two hours had passed. None of the workers really cared, as long as the building would hold up. Eventually, one of the workers yelled:

"Hey! Watch out! the corner beam isn't holding up! You need to evacuate the building immediately! Quick, get down!"

By this time, everyone on the site was running around like chickens with their heads cut off, and more people began to yell and help the people on the fourth floor. Unfortunately, almost everyone knew that it was going to be too late for them to escape, and now they needed to attempt to saves their own lives.

“Thadeus! Where are you! You need to get off the building immediately! Where are you!” At this point Tim was screaming at the top of his lungs, just as scared as anyone else.

As the clock ticked, the building started to stop tilting, remaining motionless at a twenty degree tilt. Nevertheless, the building obviously wouldn’t hold forever, so someone had to call nine-one-one. Fortunately for everyone within a mile of the construction site, visible of the incident that had occurred, an elderly man had already called the fire department roughly five minutes ago, watching everything from a neighboring twenty-story apartment complex. However, the man was fairly new to the area, and accidentally called the Riverside Fire department, a city thirty miles away from Fairview, the city in which the construction site was located. Because of this, rescue would not come until at least five more minutes.

At this point, everyone around the site knew that the building was not going to be able to be rebuilt, so they decided not to save the stability of the building. What they wanted to try to do was to have the building slowly tilt down until the people on top could jump the rest of the ten to fifteen feet. Right now, the lowest altitude that Thadeus and the other construction workers on the fourth floor could be at was about forty feet. This would mean that the building would have to be at a sixty degree tilt about until everyone on the fourth floor could safely leap off the building. Unfortunately, this is not physically possible for a building to tilt that much without falling down at a rapid velocity. For now, they were just hoping for a miracle.

Slowly, people started to inch towards the building, thinking that the building was permanently immobilized at its position. Then all of sudden, the two beams on the inside of the tilt snapped simultaneously, and the building went flying to the ground, crushing almost thirty people who were below it. At this point, no one was expecting anyone on the top of the building to survive either, so an estimated forty-five people had been killed within the blink of an eye. Everyone was silent. No one moved a bit. Each person just stood paralyzed, thinking about the horrible incident that had just occurred right before their eyes. If only Thadeus had never taken charge. Then maybe forty-five innocent human beings wouldn't have died on a normal work day. If only their family could've said goodbye. All the lost memories stolen forever. All because of Thadeus! Boy, did everyone who saw this incident either on the news or live, would want to give Thadeus everything that he deserves. All the fumes flaming in the lost ones' relatives' hearts, the desire to retaliate against Thadeus's power. But they couldn't. He was already dead. And that would be the end of it. Nothing was able for them to do, not even any last words. Danger, oh danger, is now the thought of construction.