Allow me to nudge the discussion of Murphy's Law a little bit.
December 2007 saw a "century flood" here in Rochester. We were, of course, busy with the sandbag filler, and a low-boy trailer to haul the filled bags to an earthen dam that faced breach. The dam was not the best design and we had been at work, draining it, while three other contractors and we put together a plan to re-work the dam.
Then the early warming of the December Thaw sent torrents of water into the reservoir, re-filling what we had safely drained. Then we saw the crack expand as the water poured through, tearing out the hole.
We started throwing in bags, and stopped the erosion before it broke the dam. Then another fissure opened below the dam. A few dye packets revealed where, and we put a bucket loader on the dam, filling that with grout bags. That stopped the leak, then the penstock clogged with grout bags, denying us a way to drain off the dam before it burst outright.
Another engineer located a good spot to erect a coffer dam and we filled that with sandbags. By then, we had to go to the quarry for more sand, but we were out of ASTM #3 sand, and had to substitute pitrun for sand -- which wrecked the bag filler after about seven continuous hours of 3" rock clobbering its way through the 4" bag filling apertures. The lowboy was busy hauling equipment elsewhere so we loaded the bags into the dump truck.
By then, the truck was down a little further than expected, and on weigh-out, the scale read 170,000 lb when the truck is only licensed for 105,000. I am just proud that I knew the WSP officer and he made a point not to write us up for the overweight truck -- that time.
When Kevin arrived at the coffer site, the rocks on either side started giving way, so when he dumped, the truck slid into the water. Fortunately it wasn't particularly deep there, so we were able to put a snatch block on the Case 450, and winch out the truck that way, but the truck was ruined.
What should have been a 26 hour emergency backfill eventually took us nine days and cost us money.
About the only thing I have to say good about that flood was that nobody was hurt. But it still proves that anything that can go wrong, WILL!
