Zambia World Wide

There are a couple of other incidents involving Jeff which are worth a mention. I will say that working with Jeff, life was unpredictable but never dull. We were building a 66kv transmission line near Chingola and Jeff by this time was capable of supervising the work (so I thought) without me being there. This meant I could spend time catching up with the work the other departments were involved in. All was going well, I drove out every two or three days to sort any problems there might be with the construction of the line. At this point I will need to explain briefly the manner in which we constructed power lines. Each section of line had two strain towers, (one at each end) in between we built suspension towers. Strain Towers take the strain which is about 10,000 ft/lb, Suspension Towers hold the conductors the right height above the ground (the vertical weight of the conductors) and are therefore of much lighter construction. Jeff had pulled the conductor through the suspension towers until the drum was empty. Instead of pulling a new drum of conductor to meet the end of the first, he clamped the conductor to a suspension tower and pulled the conductor back towards the drum so that he could connect the second to the first without having to move the equipment (bad idea). While joining the conductors he noticed the line going slack, “to late” three of the towers were on their way down. Within a minute or two they broke at the waist and the top sections fell to the ground. Like I said with Jeff life was never dull. We did manage to rebuild the line, once we stripped the damaged steel apart, straightened some of the steel, other pieces were remade and then we re-assembled the towers.

Jeff’s final mistake after which we would never see him again. We were building a transmission line in the Chingola area, all the towers were up and stringing was ready to start. Problem was we had to cross a number of public roads. The procedure we used was quite simple, we would put signs up and have a landrover equipped with a radio at the crossing. It was simple and had never failed “until now that is”. We would contact the patrolman at the crossing to say we were ready to pull, he would then stop the traffic and inform us when it was safe to pull. One Sunday morning Jeff went out to pull the final section, it was a quiet morning so he decided not to position anyone on the road or waste time putting up the signs. He could see the road from where he was standing, but he had no contact at the road crossing. Apparently all was going to plan, they had strung four of the six conductors, and then it happened. While the fifth conductor was being raised a landrover came down the road, the driver didn’t see the conductor which was about 5 foot off the ground. It ran into the conductor and the conductor sliced the roof off the landrover, narrowly missing the heads of those inside. Having broken every rule in the book could things get worse? Yes! The occupants of the landrover were the District Governor and his driver. I received a call from the control room telling me what had happened, so I drove to the site, sent the men home and Jeff also, I then contacted the control room to say I was returning to the main Switching Station, and would explain what had happened. By the time I got there, the GM was also there, it appears that the District Governor had contacted him. We put the control engineer in the picture as to what had happened, and then the GM and I went to his office to discuss the options open to us. We already knew that the District Governor wanted Jeff charged with attempted manslaughter and that he also wanted him removed from the Country as a Prohibited Immigrant. We didn’t have much time so having discussed the situation, we decided that the GM through his contacts would get the air tickets “Jeff and his wife had no tax clearance so could not get tickets themselves”. The GM could get round that problem, I would explain to Jeff and his wife the situation they were in and also help them pack some luggage. I then explained that the company would send the rest of their gear to UK for them. The tickets would be collected Monday morning after which I would drive them to the airport in Lusaka and wait with them until they boarded the plane. It was the only way Jeff could avoid the charges. Everything went like clockwork and within 48 hours of the incident Jeff and his wife were back in UK. The company did get some backlash, but nothing that couldn’t be handled. “Good Bye Jeff” gone but not forgotten. Where ever you are, we wish you well. It would appear from what I have written, we went from one disaster to another. This of course isn’t true, we carried out numerous jobs every year without incident. I have written of the humorous side, incidents that will always be remembered.