'Over 400 hectares [burned]': Arrogant supervisor pushes his railroad workers to bend the rules on safety protocols; starts a raging wildfire, then gets justly fired for negligence

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    Font - Posted by u/Heavy_Bicycle6524 2 hours ago Boss knows best S OC 2 So a number of years ago, my cousin (Let's call him B) was working on a crew decommissioning an abandoned rail line, in order to turn the easement into a horse trail.
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    Font - They were working on cutting the steel rails into easily manageable pieces. Due to persistent bad weather, they were a week or two behind schedule. In an effort to try to catch up, the new supervisor John was making the cut sections
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    Font - longer and longer. Making them harder and more dangerous to handle. This had already lead to some friction in the crew and a few including Bill had had heated words with him.
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    Font - One morning they arrived on site and John layed out his cut marks, including one right on a bend. Immediately the crew saw there were issues. Being the senior on the crew, Bill told him that if they
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    Font - cut it on that much of a curve that the steel would spring back causing untold damage. Sick of being questioned he said if he didn't cut it where he said, he'd be fired.
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    Font - So Bill did exactly that. He made sure that the rest of the crew was well and truly out of the way and got to cutting. Sure enough, just as he cut all the way through a 100m section of rail immediately went
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    Font - from curved nearly straight. It flew off with such velocity, that when it struck the generator trailer that would've weighed in excess of 1500kg, it picked it up and threw it down the embankment.
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    Font - Landing at the bottom the fuel tank ruptured and the thing went up in flames. Quickly setting the dry scrub alight. All in all it took a couple days for the fire to die down and over 400 hectares of scrub and farmland were lost. Fortunately there were no lives or homes lost, but there were some farm sheds lost.
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    Font - Landing at the bottom the fuel tank ruptured and the thing went up in flames. Quickly setting the dry scrub alight. All in all it took a couple days for the fire to die down and over 400 hectares of scrub and farmland were lost.
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    Font - Fortunately there were no lives or homes lost, but there were some farm sheds lost. The entire crew back Bill and it was John who ended up being fired over the incident.
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    Font - theoldman-1313. 8 hr. ago I worked in heavy industry for most of my career. I realized early on that there are Johns everywhere and you need to decide what you are going to do when you meet one. My decision was much the same as your cousin's - when a
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    Font - supervisor asked or told me to do something unadvisable, I would let him know why we should not do it. If he insisted, I would look at his request and determine to the best of my ability if it was unsafe or
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    Font - illegal. If I believed that it would hurt someone or put me in a courtroom, I would refuse and take whatever came my way. Better to be fired than arrested or attending a funeral.
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    Font - not_so_chi_couple. 7 hr. ago That's an OSHA violation COR Vote Reply Share Agifem 7 hr. ago But it was saving time!
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    Font - istasber 4 hr. ago The fire was also a big part of why he was fired. T Vote Reply Share nechezhd 4 hr. ago John's now been fired and roasted!
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    Font - legacymedia92.5 hr. ago Compressed gas, tension, and flammable vapor are the three things that are every bit as scary as movies/TV make them out to be.
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    Font - ABlankwindow. 5 hr. ago Some of the few cases where Hollywood doesn't have to sensationalize it to make it interesting like they do with car explosions
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    Font - stillnotelf 6 hr. ago This might be the most significant consequence I've seen on this sub. We've seen a bunch of "the company lost a lot of money" but never "a wildfire was started with property loss and livestock deaths".
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    Font - McChelsea 2 hr. ago I was pretty surprised that the only ramifications were that he got fired.
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    Font - Loa_Sandal 6 hr. ago Too bad he didn't ask John to stand in the springback area if he was so confident it wouldn't be a problem.
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    Font - TheDocJ 4 hr. ago But then John would not have had anywhere near enough time to reflect on what a complete and utter fool he was.
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    Ecoregion - "Boss knows best"

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