"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.
