China would never. They want NK there to act as a buffer between them and other countries they aren’t friendly with (namely South Korea). If they took out Jong-Un, they’d open the country up to getting friendly with enemy states and would have to worry about places like the US being right along their border.

Yup. This is one of the big dangers of tractors. They have enough torque and the tires are built to get traction on dirt that they can be very easy to flip over backwards and crush the driver.

When you find stuff like a boot somewhere, how do you know to call in experts on this stuff?

I’m out digging all the time for work (utility company) and we dig up all kinds of “junk”, 99% of it, to me, just seems like old trash that got buried. How would I know to say “wait, let me see that” before tossing it into a trash bin or something?

One things for sure, their internet connections will be flawless with all those cables laying around afterwards.

Oh for sure, I don’t blame them one bit. Temps dropped 40 degrees over night. It was wild.

And no worries on the rest part. The way our rotation works out, worst case scenario you’ll be out for 2 hours and will have at least 4 hours back home without having to worry about it. Can suck when it’s non-stop, but more or less it’s rare that it’s like that.

South eastern KY

I work for a water utility and it’s crazy how unprepared people were for this weather.

We’re in an area that sees cold weather, but not this cold. Average lows might dip down into the teens a couple nights a year, but they’re somewhat rare.

We were seeing windchills near -30F which is just unheard of. Waterlines are bursting left and right. People just didn’t have their homes set up to deal with this level of cold.

The utility’s lines are fine, they’re all buried plenty deep enough to deal with a weekends worth of arctic cold, but the homes in the area aren’t.

I had 4 calls last night myself. The other 2 guys on call had at least as many as I had. I might not have 4 calls in a month lol.

A boil water advisory is required any time pressure drops below 30 psi as per the EPA. Any state requirements supersede that as long as they are <30. My state, for instance, puts their minimum psi at 20.

99% of the time, when we have a main break, everything comes back fine and safe, but we are required to issue the boil water notice.

It takes 2-3 days to get the bact results back, depending on how busy the lab we use is. But in most cases, it’s completely fine.

Edit: I actually had it backwards. The EPA minimum is 20 psi. My states is 30 psi.