Complacency Kills.

"Complacency Kills"-a quote from almost every NCO and officer I had in Afghanistan. Shoulda listened to em but I like to learn things the hard way I guess.

So recently I found out that the frame on my older Tacoma was too rusted to even think of fixing. So I decided to start torching it up yesterday. not the first truck I've ever cut up, no problem I thought. Well I got so used to torching and breaking things and being next to sorta big but really insignificant fires at work I didn't think anything of the gas tank still attached under the bed of the truck. Usually thats one of the first things to come off, but not this time. I completely forgot about it until I was making the last segment of the last cut I needed to make on that truck. My reminder, a fuel line that got hit with a big chunk of molten frame as my torch was right next to the line. 10 seconds later I'm chucking everything flammable as far away from this thing as I can, dragging my torches across the road I realized the fires raging near the fuel tank and the trucks sitting 10 feet or so from the house. so I quick grab the chain, hook it up and try dragging the junk burning truck as far from the house as I can. Only the front half came with me though as the frame was cut so far that it just snapped. so now i've got a burning truck cab sitting on its roof blocking the path to be able to hook up to the rear half. Luckily at this point the neighbor gives me his extinguisher which smothered the flames enough to stop the house from catching Until the fire dept. showed up. and lucky for me they were already rolling to a call in another township when they saw the flames and decided to change course.

What a way to spend new years eve. Luckily as bad as that could have gotten the only damage we were able to see was some melted siding, and a very heavy ice sheet that formed once the water stopped flowing. I also got some burns and smoke inhalation when I bare handed that tow chain around the burning truck. But over all I feel it was a very powerful lesson about what happens when you get complacent around dangerous stuff. Take it from me. If my fuel tank woulda been angled another 3 inches or so more towards the house when it started shooting pressurized jets of flaming gasoline I woulda just burned down my grandmothers house. And it all coulda been avoided had I just spent 10 minutes taking the fuel tank off in the first place.

Oh my god! Sorry this happened but glad you're safe!

Thank you. No need to be sorry though. I kinda did need that lesson before something worse happened. lately I've noticed that I really started to lack in terms of doing things in a safe manner. It was only a matter of time before something happened. I guess now its time to start going back to the way I used to be. Overly prepared and sometimes a bit too safe.

It's funny how we get so used to doing things the easy way, taking for granted that nothing could possibly go wrong. That when karma teaches us nothing is in our own control.

A fire burned your daily driver in 2017? Do I smell an insurance claim and a deduction?

Originally Posted by t00nces2

A fire burned your daily driver in 2017? Do I smell an insurance claim and a deduction?

I actually cancelled the insurance on that one a week ago. Too bad It didn't hit the new Tacoma I was using to pull it away from the house though. I am getting pretty tired of paying for that one.

I have a similar but much less dangerous story to reinforce your point. 2 little welds on my trailer fender popped loose a while ago. I can have them re-welded for free. It's been like that for a while so I never think about it, just got 2 bungee cords on it. Well I had an 1800 lb load on a few days ago, stacked up looking kinda crazy-scrapper style, and I didn't know it but something was pushing the wheel guard (attached to the fender) against the tire pretty hard. Never happened before so I didn't know to look for it, but if I just checked my load better I might have noticed it. Well after just a few minutes down the road the friction blew my tire. I'm now stopped on a 2 lane road just after a curve, 55 mph country road, and a ditch is on my right so I can't pull over very far. I also don't have my spare trailer wheel.


Thankfully my dad was able to bring the spare and some half decent jacks, and park to block the traffic some.


"I don't need my spare, my trailer tires never go flat" "Ah i don't wanna go all the way out there just to get that welded." "Who cares, it's fine" etc, etc. Stupid. So easily avoided. But at least it taught me to look for stuff rubbing on my tires. And I got a big jack kinda like a farm jack from that load that i'm gonna keep strapped on my trailer now, right under my spare.


Also glad you're ok.

its crazy how the simplest things can cause the biggest problems if left avoided.

An old timer that i used to work with used to say : " Plan your work and work your plan."

It just seems like life is busier lately. I'm usually pretty methodical in the way i do things. You know how it goes .... you start a job .... you stay focused and on task .... complete that task and THEN go on to the next task.

Lately it's about multi tasking. You start a job and then get called away for something more pressing. You get back to the job and then have to think: " Okay ... now where was I ?

You lost track of where you were and it's all to easy to miss a small detail like a fuel line or an electrical circuit that hasn't been de-energized.

The weather is a factor too because it's been so cold outside lately. You get tired after you've been out in it for awhile. It makes your brain numb and you don't think.

A lot of it just seems to be about being self aware enough to know that I'm compromised in some way. The first and last hours of the day are when i make most of my mistakes.