Embedded Files
"Silo Brackets Offices" as they call me in the books, was far from being a reality here at the beginning of my second week in Iraq. No contract with the Grain Board of Iraq was signed yet and confusing of what we agreed upon with the silo manager in Hilla created some frustration. I have to revisit Hilla silo manager and this time with one of our Iraqi lawyers. It was all about facilities, water supply to camp, the power to the camp and welding trafo; toilet facilities etc., and the spot we could be allowed to camp on inside the silo area.
On my short visit to Erbil-and Mosul Silos, I discovered more cracks in the gallery floors, caused by the fact, that the silos were cast in units and founded in groups. Those units also have different movements in the foundations, and a small part of the gallery floor between the units was in danger of fall apart. The discovery committed us to expand our offer to The Grain Board of Iraq, but the consequence was, that the Iraques should use precious time in the decision process and our first tender based on their invitation was already eight months old at the time.
Finally, they sign the contract 28. March. At the time, my temporary residence at job site Diwaniya was already a month old, and we're going to mid-June before "Silo Brackets Offices", and Andersen gets a foot in own office.
I should assister the leadership in Diwaniya site with an ordinary engineering job, as the marketing of foundations, levelling, camp preparation etc. and of course prepare my own camp in detailed. M&T Ltd has a contract on a gas filling station for boiler gas in Diwaniya together with another Danish company called "Kosan Gas."
A typical contractor camp when it is build up from nothing. The big white unit on legs is for the management team and all the supervisors. The Pakistani workforce is in skid-units with is not shown in this picture but the next.
For the first time, I got a closer look at a skid-unit or one step (skid) unit, a unit that pulled over the ground like a sledge. I was far from being impressed by what I saw. Are they really serious in the Head Quarter in Baghdad? Do they expect me to travel around in Iraq with them on top of a truck?And we were in need of six of these units; an armada of yellow vehicles and a mobile crane. It was six big units that should pass through the gate to the silo areas where there, as a standard, was limited space to manures.
1: An combination office and sleeping unit to me.
2: A unit for tools, toilet and shower for the Danish staff.
3: A prayer units with I had allowed beyond HQ knowledge.
4: Sleeping unit for 6 Pakistani workers.
5: A sleeping unit for a crane driver and my Danish Blacksmith included a shower.
6: A unit with bathing and toilet facilities for six Pakistani workers.
I have a copy of a management meeting in Baghdad the day after our client had signed the contract and in that copy, I can read, that they had counted only three units. Have they really had hope, that I would have followed their presumption of using the existing toilet -and bath facilities?
If you take a firecracker and put into a toilet in a very limit toilet room and close the door, you have an image of what I saw, when I was opening the door to the toilet facilities in the silo area in Hilla. If the cleaning staff was there the day after my visit, it is a pity for them.
To used existing facilities was entirely out of the discussion.
My leadership in Baghdad impressed me when I got up on a leg and discarded their entire planning for the erection of the beam a month earlier, and then, followed me without arguments. Now I slowly began to doubt their judgment.
It started to look like logistics problems were much more significant than the technical issues.
I knew that they had travelled the same route as I several months before I arrived, and must have noticed the same obstacles. Small urban villas with hanging wires and no space in the main street for trucks with a high skid-unit on top. And then not one, but an entire Amada on six height loaded vehicle in line.
I had no problem imagining myself in jail because we had laid a whole village down, or in prison, because one of the six Pakistanis truck drivers become involved in an accident with an Iraqi victim. Just finding through Baghdad could quickly evolve into a nightmare with the many underpasses under old -and new road bridges.It was clear.Our load was too high.
Not a single warning or advice.Was this the price Andersen had to pay for his high degree of self-confidence? But had he not seen it in time, it could have developed into a massive bill for the company. An accident with Iraqi victims who died could bring Andersen life into play.I was a little bit disappointed.
The first thing that happens after you sign your contract at home in Copenhagen is the staff manager requesting two passports! You ask why? And how? He looks at you and seems like a guy who regrets his invitation to join them in Iraq. He answers only questions number two. >>Try the police! Just tells them, that you lost that passport you just handed over to me.<< And on your way out of the door, >>so we can get you back home safely!<<
The utterly unofficial fact was, that if you become involved in a car accident with dead Iraqi child victims, your life was in immediate danger. They will hang you on the spot or shoot you. Still completely unofficial advise too you were, that you should forget everything about humanity and fleet the seen in a desperate attempt to save your life. Then you should try to reach back to the Baghdad office. Here would a whole army of secret connections, from the ambassador, the airline SAS, highly paid Iraqi lawyers, airliner staff in Baghdad airport and probably also some trusted and high paid Iraqis staff on the Iraqi airport, open up a secret escape route for you. And here comes passport number two into play. The passport you brought with you into the country were your manager forced to deliver to an Iraqi lawyer from the Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, who was more or less self-employed into our Baghdad office with the purpose to keep an eye on us.
Without a passport and written permission from the authorities in Iraq to leave the country, you could not get out.
With passport number two, the escape route was in function, but in a very limit of time. You must be out the same day you were involved. It was never a subject for conversation neither in private surroundings. By rumours between the supervisors, I heard that it was in action ones in my time in Iraq.
That fact reinforced my feeling of being a bit disappointed.
My camp plan was dictated by what I had seen. We must isolate ourselves from existing facilities as must as possible, to secure an efficient working environment. Its means, water installation in the skid-units and chemical toilets.
All the truck drivers on the payroll were employed to drive trucks out in the Iraqi environment with building equipment etc. It also included all the skid-units they had brought to Diwania for the Pakistanis workers to live. So they had tried to deal with these skid-units on the trucks before I arrived.
I get around the problem by isolated myself from the transport to Mosul.
I knew already that the only direction from which we could approach the Erbil Silo Gate was from the Mosul-Erbil road. If they arrived in Erbil from Baku-Kirkuk road, they would come in the wrong lane. It means; that they should find a spot in Erbil to turn all the truck around, and then, I was back in my nightmare.
When that day comes, they should meet me on the spot outside Mosul late night before dawn. At daybreak, I will lead them on a secured track I had to learn my self to new in details. Ash-Shawat st. to Al-Khansaa sq., and from here along the river Tigris to Al-Hurriya Bridge. From the bridge, it was straight ahead on the road to Erbil without obstacles.
So afraid to be accused of someone else's involvement in a tragic accident was I, that a single free meter of driving from the spot outside Mosul to we were safe inside the silo area in Erbil, was not allowed for them. As soon they have unloaded their truck were they their own the whole way back to Diwaniya.
That was my planning, and it was exactly what we did as late as in September, more than a half year later.
When something gets wrong, you never get information about it. Its come to you by the Pakistanis workers in Diwaniya, the trucks drivers who continuously serve different MT Ltd`s job sites in Iraq, and from several Indian clecks, who round the worker's payroll. From them and my Pakistani workers, I later learn, that a truck driver with a skid-unit had stuck under a bridge in Baghdad!
O.K., Andersen, your concern was not exaggerated.
Sandstorm:
The temperature was climbed up on the wrong side at 45 degrees, as I get a shoot of a harmless little whirlwind; the picture below and to the left.
A few seconds later you could not see the gas tanks, picture to the right.
And another couple of seconds later, you find you self-run for shelter as fast as your legs can carry you. You can not breathe. What you get into your lungs is burning the whole way down through your throat, and an overwhelming feeling of being strangled haunt you.
In your shelter, the air is also full of sand, but there is no wind. You grab the first piece of clothes you run in to, make it wet, and put in in your mouth and close your teeth around it, in a desperate attempt to filtrate the sand out and cool the air.
There you try to hide you and hope it will disappear again as fast as it occurred. You quickly considered the possibility of developing asbestosis but left the thought.You nevertheless had thoughts about visiting an Iraqi hospital.
If the heat and an Iraqi sandstorm cannot send these wicked Christian homes, then must Iraq try with a typhoon.
If not dust and a sandstorm covered the horizon, this view usually is clear in the sun. At first, I thought it was heated shimmer, then I notice, that it is moving against me and suddenly I recognised, that it was a wald of rain which is moving fast against the site. Hereafter a strange sound there become higher and higher. Without to understand what it was I stood staring at, I could smell and feel the danger.
I can not remember how I came from that point into my living space and into the smallest room in that living space where there were no windows, the toilet.
I remember it was here; I was with my hands on the toilet because it was the most massive thing in the whole living space, and I do not want it to be airborne and smash everything around, includes me.There was an indescribable noise and panic run through me, as I requested, that the whole living unit began to lift off the ground.And sudden silence, complete silence.I felt bump as my trolleys dropped back on its feet.
As I managed to kick my destroyed door out, I met with an incredible sight.
No dead, no wounded. Should we call it a miracle!
This time it was deadly serious. Someone was confused by spin round inside the huts together with the toaster and pans, solving air coolers and refrigerators, which could each have been able to kill the resident not to mention all the broken windows, but that was all.
And a destroyed Pakistani camp.Nor here was a single man killed or wounded. A miracle! No other words include it.
With all the dust on the ground, you can reach out to the horizon again in the late afternoon.
Intense driving.
At 5 of May, I am back in Baghdad to a staff meeting with our director and our branch manager. By request from the planning department in Copenhagen, I have to go back to Hilla/Erbil for control some measurement, as I am 9-10 of May. It gives me a period of intense driving.
To a staff meeting in Baghdad from Diwaniya and back again gives 362 km at 5 of May. Diwaniya-Hilla for measurements and back to Diwaniya the same day is 162 km. Control measurements in Erbil count Diwaniya -Erbil -Baghdad, 871 km. Baghdad-Diwaniya gives 181. Between the 5 of May and 10- 11 of May, I rolling approximately 1576 km to collect information to be delivered to another staff meeting in Baghdad at 16 of June.
Less than fourteen days before I go home on my first vacation.
At the staff meeting in Baghdad at 16 of June, I promise to have all the skid-units in placed on Hilla site two days later, and my director could inform me, that the first load of steel expected media July.
Let us get out of here!
We are ready! Finally, we reach the point where Silo Brackets Offices under reference number 4588 is not only an official given name in the books home in Copenhagen but also a reality in the land between the rivers; which in Greek will be Mesopotamian.
An unusual sight. The Pakistani co-driver is running, avoiding "being sailed out".The course is set against the very heart of Mesopotamian-- Hilla.
Google Sites
Report abuse