8
That dig in Arizona where a backhoe hit a kiva roof
I was on a CRM survey outside Tucson back in 2021. The backhoe operator was scraping off overburden and punched right through a kiva roof, about 3 feet down when we expected 6. Everything stopped, the project manager went pale, and we had to patch paperwork for the state. Has anyone else had a heavy machine surprise an intact feature on a salvage job?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
sullivan.abby1d agoMost Upvoted
Punched right through a kiva roof" - yikes, that's the kind of surprise that turns a Friday afternoon into a paperwork nightmare. We had a similar thing happen on a pipeline job in New Mexico, backhoe scraped off what looked like sterile fill and suddenly we're staring at a pit house floor, complete with a fire hearth still full of charcoal. The operator just sat there with his hands up like "not my fault, not my fault." Took us three days to re-screen all the spoils while the client's lawyer called every hour.
9