Diesel Flood, Split in Two: Canter

We have three diesel tanks that were just filled up on Wednesday with an additional total of 3000 gallons. One tank holds 4300 gallons, a second holds 1000 gallons, and the third holds 1300 gallons (we also have a 2000 gallon gasoline tank). The 1000 gallon tank had a leak in a couple unions/joints that we have wanted to replace for a while. Yesterday, we had one of the Canadian Baptist Haiti Mission board members (the Canadian President) working on it (thank you, Mr. Martin!). When he went to replace the joints, he loosened a couple fittings and then had to temporarily tighten them back up. When he went to tighten them, the joint at the bottom of the tank broke and there was no way to shut it off - 1000 gallons were starting to pour out (this was just waiting to break for whomever worked on it - it wasn't anything that Mr. Martin did that broke it). He ran to tell Mr. Kyrk and then ran back to the tank. He quickly grabbed a plastic bag and held his hand to "stop the bleeding." Mr. Kyrk called me to tell me we had an emergency at the Diesel tanks so I ran over there (this was at 4:30-5:00PM). I saw Mr. Martin left "holding the bag."


Mr. Kyrk went to the woodshop to make a wooden plug for the tank. When I got to Mr. Martin (after taking a picture) I grabbed the bag to take over for him. He loosened the connections and Mr. Kyrk got ready to pound the wood plug in. We counted to three, yanked the pipe off and plugged the hole. The first part of the emergency mission was complete.

The second part was to somehow empty the 1000 gallons. We started by topping off all of the diesel vehicles that we could (only 5 of them either needed diesel or were available). Then we decided to use a water pump to pump diesel into the other almost-full tanks (this stuff sounds easy, like we just went to grab the pump and start, but nothing is as easy as it sounds. We needed to disconnect the pump from where it was connected, we needed connections for the garden hoses we had (praise God that we had them), we need to create a new extension cord end because of a mismatch, and I am sure there was more. We started to pump into the tank that we had been using for the generator and vehicles - it was three days worth of use emptier (not much). While pumping we had a break in the line and had to stop to find a replacement hose (we ended up cutting off the other end of the output).

After a few more issues, we got about 500 of the 1000 gallons into the two other tanks. Until about 9:30PM it was Mr. Kyrk and I babysitting the pumping job. We then called it a night, because there was nowhere else to put the rest of the diesel - the wood plug would hopefully hold for a few days until we made space for the remaining 500 gallons.

Boring Car Stuff...

I think that it was Thursday that I found out the Canter's frame was cracked right in the middle between the front wheels and the back wheels. They had welded it before I knew about it and had gotten a chance to look at it. When saw what they had done, I didn't think that it would be OK. They only welded it on the outside and didn't give it more support. Well, it broke completely apart on Friday a little ways further up the mountain. The inside basically caved in. We found the best of the thickest metal we had and drilled a bunch of holes in it. The Haitian guys then headed off to try to put it back together. They were successful enough to get it pulled back to the mission last night and here are the pictures.


The windshield is busted out:




This will be a big project in the upcoming days (weeks?). I think we may try to get the frame back together to see how it holds. Then we will see about fixing everything else. There are brake lines, the exhaust, the drive shaft, the hydraulics for the dump, and I am sure more, that goes to the back half, so all of that will have to be checked out. Job security (once again).