I saved a life on Tuesday. Well, I might have saved him from injury.
There is this theater in downtown Cincinnati that had a parapet wall that was falling off, and my office was called in to assess the damage and design a repair. The contractor had just got on site last week and fenced the area off. They were in the process of lifting up the first load of materials to the roof to begin the repair. I was looking up and saw a little poof of dust shoot out from one of the top joints in the stone. I thought to myself "did I just see that?" and it happened again, and I started yelling that the wall was coming down. One of the contractors was in the danger zone, and I think he moved out of the way because of my yelling. I'm glad I was looking up. I can't believe this wall that stood for 70+ years fell when I was on site and looking up at it. I couldn't get the camera out of my pocket fast enough to take pictures of anything in action, but I snapped a bunch as dust was settling, and afterwards. Only the top part of the wall fell, but I estimate the stones that fell were 1400 lbs, and they fell about 65'.

Needless to say Tuesday was a hectic day as I put in 14 hours stabilizing the wall with the contractors from further damage. Wednesday was hectic too with all the people from the city down there, contractors all over the place, and big bosses from my office.

you're batman!!!

Yay, Killer Tim

Nice...it's good to see the A&E's can actually do some good.

The best part was Nick Lachey was on the Marquee as coming in September, and his name got smashed all over the ground. If it ain't Jessica beatin' him down, it's 1400 lbs of limestone.

Good on ya for the "heads-up" -- thanks for the laugh with the above

Oh, here are some cool photos:

Photos

The first one is minutes before the fall. You can see the wall curving out. You could not see this from the sidewalk last week when we first arrived on site.

Tim - you rock. Nice work.

Sweet.

pic "P1000393" is a really cool picture.

It's a really good thing no one was under that.
Good work.

there should be a picture of you wearing a cape.

did you get on the news at all?

The news people came down and didn't talk to anyone. The paper printed one picture with a caption (no story) and the caption had inaccurate information. It said something like "The wall fell during the stablization efforts." or something like that. It named the contractor making them look like they were at fault for it falling. We hadn't even touched it yet.

Edit: I heard there was some tv coverage, but I was at the site still and didn't see it. Nobody of any importance or with any knowledge talked to the press, so anything from the press would have been speculation.

I think I like picture 401 best, probably because that piece of stone looks so ominous.

Timmy is a superhero. Neato!

nice save, tim!

Hey, Tim, do you wear tights too?

[img][650:396]http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d166/Mcsteve1/Supertimmy.jpg[/img]

I am the skinniest super hero ever.

This just happened in the Bay Area, I think. It crushed a woman in her car.

They should have a Timmyjoe42 on the Big Dig in Boston.

"Look out! The project is crumbling under bureaucracy!"

"Whew! Good job, Tim!"

Good job, Timmy!

Nice work big guy! Maybe this will send a message to Nick to actually stop trying to make music!

I just found out that the contractor that I yelled at to get out of the way hopped the baricade right into traffic. Luckily there were no cars coming. Goodbye frying pan; hello fire.