The Battle for Infrastructure

Putin is using thermobaric weapons in Ukraine.  A thermobaric bomb, or a “vacuum bomb” is a two-stage weapon.  In the first stage, a cloud of aerosols made up of droplets of flammable material is disbursed.  In the second stage, the cloud is ignited.  Since the aerosols can move around and, in certain cases, into buildings, they can surround targets in a way that conventional weapons can not.  The ignition of the cloud sucks oxygen out of the surrounding atmosphere in a way that creates a long-lasting shock wave.  Bodies near the center of the explosion are vaporized.  People at the periphery tend to die from internal injuries caused by the rapid changes in pressure created by the vacuum and the resulting shock wave.  Because the pressure waves do not significantly damage brain tissue, it is possible that people who die from internal wounds are conscious for part of the time between their injury and their death.

Although use of thermobaric weapons is not prohibited by international law per se, their use against civilian targets, or their use against military targets in cases in which damage to civilian populations may be avoided through the use of better-targeted weapons, is a violation of the first 1977 protocol to the Geneva Conventions.  It appears that Putin is violating that prohibition.

Around three PM last Saturday, I got a call from the manager at my park in northern New York, Mike.  He told me that there was a gas leak.  I said, What?

-A gas leak.

-Where?

-Near the pump house.

There is an old pump house near the center of that park.  It housed the pressure pumps for the water system, back when the park had private water.  The park now has town water, but the pump house still serves as a switching node for the water lines.  The park also has a large septic tank that is housed in a pole barn-type structure near one of the entrances.  The gas leak was in the pump house, but I, mistakenly, thought it was in the septic house.  I said, Are you sure it is gas and not sewage?

-National Grid is there.  They have a meter running.

-What meter?

-The kind that measures gas leaks.  It is going whoo, whoo, whoo.

-Where are you?

-I am on my way to the park.

-Let me know what happens.

I went back to my weekend, annoyed that it had been interrupted.  At 4:37, I texted Mike, What is going on with the gas leak?  At 6:21 he texted back, Found it working on it now.  To confirm that the gas mains are the utility’s responsibility, rather than mine, I texted back, National Grid is working on it?  Mike texted back, I will call u when I know more.  He seemed too busy for me to bother, and I had some bourbon to drink, so I signed off for the night.

Around 7:30 the next morning, Mike called me.  He had been up most of the night.  He told me that the leak had been in an underground gas main that fed the pump house.  I said, You mean, near the Zabel filters?, and he said, No – the pump house, not the septic barn.  I said,

-You mean – the pump house that J.B. worked on?

J.B., the ex maintenance guy in my other park, had done some work on the pump house – before he and Mike came to hate each others’ guts.

-It was awful.  There was so much ground water, I had to keep pumping while they excavated.

-What was the problem?

-The electrical was in the same trench as the gas.

–What?

-Yeah.  And the electrical wasn’t in conduit, and it was wrapped around the gas main.  It shorted out at the T that feeds the pump house.  That’s what caused the leak.

-Jesus!

-It’s lucky we didn’t have a bomb.  I didn’t even feel comfortable opening the pump house door when I got there.

-That’s like smoking a cigarette while you pump gas.

-Heh, heh.

So, National Grid fixed the gas leak and Mike will replace the electrical wire that runs from the transformer to the pump house.  He will use the proper gauge wire, ground it correctly, and run it through conduit – and he will keep it separate from the damn gas main.  Mike continued,

-It was a Sam and Dan special.

Sam and Dan are the guys I bought the park from.  They bought the park from a guy named Larry McChesney.  Sam and Dan liked to complain about McChesney’s shoddy work, although their craftsmanship was not always perfect.  I said,

-It might have been McChesney.

-I hear his cancer has progressed.

-If you were Jewish, this would have happened on Yom Kippur.

-It never happens between nine and five, Monday to Friday.

-No, it doesn’t.  Go and enjoy your Sunday, if you can.

The year after I bought the park, Mike spent Christmas Eve fixing some pipes that burst in a catch basin near the office.  One of his Thanksgivings was spent underneath a couple of homes.  A Memorial Day and a Fourth of July were ruined by sewers clogged by cat litter, grease, baby wipes and tampons (admittedly, I do not remember which obstructions ruined which holidays).  If the more-likely outcome of the shoddy work on the electrical had transpired, we would have spent the last few days in our own private Yom Kippur ceremony, atoning for the sins of my predecessors.