SSI01
December 16th, 2015, 14:04
SSI isn't exactly a hive of activity, and is in fact a rather sleepy little place here in SE coastal Georgia. Within the last 24 hours, we've had a year's worth of activity:
1 - A nearby church is being torn down (+70 years of age and getting very expensive to maintain), and we actually have a one-man protest, complete with poster-board sign, occurring outside the church;
2 - Today a contractor was doing some prep work for repairs on a water main near here, and stuck one of the teeth on the shovel's bucket into the live water main in question. It was a sight to behold, water geysering as high as the telephone wires overhead. For once, Hollywood's special effects artists got their effects right, they seem to duplicate this pretty well in those car-hits-the-fire-hydrant shots; and, last, but by no means least,
3 - Yesterday, a couple of guys flying what looked like a cream/white over burgundy Piper Cherokee (or similar aircraft) in the news photo were supposedly in the pattern over McKinnon Airport here on the island when their engine quit. I don't know what the pilot did to try to keep the thing in the air, but he eventually ran out of airspeed, altitude and ideas off the end of runway 22 and settled down into a tree in a residential area off that end of the runway. His fall was broken by some tree branches and he then impacted the roof of a two-story home. We went by the place today and it's amazing, the facia on the edge of the roof is damaged, but there are no holes in the roof although the shingles are soaked through by the avgas from the bird's broken tanks. There are some broken branches laying on the roof as well. From the looks of things the aircraft seemed to settle on its belly rather than in a nose-down attitude. Their picture made the local paper this morning, one man standing on one side of the wreck (on the ground in a hangar) with a banged-up hand, and the other with his trouser leg cut off and a large and rather bloody bandage on his knee - both of them pointing up at the sky. I can think of two guys who should be asking about membership at church right about now. I wouldn't want to be handling their laundry.
1 - A nearby church is being torn down (+70 years of age and getting very expensive to maintain), and we actually have a one-man protest, complete with poster-board sign, occurring outside the church;
2 - Today a contractor was doing some prep work for repairs on a water main near here, and stuck one of the teeth on the shovel's bucket into the live water main in question. It was a sight to behold, water geysering as high as the telephone wires overhead. For once, Hollywood's special effects artists got their effects right, they seem to duplicate this pretty well in those car-hits-the-fire-hydrant shots; and, last, but by no means least,
3 - Yesterday, a couple of guys flying what looked like a cream/white over burgundy Piper Cherokee (or similar aircraft) in the news photo were supposedly in the pattern over McKinnon Airport here on the island when their engine quit. I don't know what the pilot did to try to keep the thing in the air, but he eventually ran out of airspeed, altitude and ideas off the end of runway 22 and settled down into a tree in a residential area off that end of the runway. His fall was broken by some tree branches and he then impacted the roof of a two-story home. We went by the place today and it's amazing, the facia on the edge of the roof is damaged, but there are no holes in the roof although the shingles are soaked through by the avgas from the bird's broken tanks. There are some broken branches laying on the roof as well. From the looks of things the aircraft seemed to settle on its belly rather than in a nose-down attitude. Their picture made the local paper this morning, one man standing on one side of the wreck (on the ground in a hangar) with a banged-up hand, and the other with his trouser leg cut off and a large and rather bloody bandage on his knee - both of them pointing up at the sky. I can think of two guys who should be asking about membership at church right about now. I wouldn't want to be handling their laundry.