Tales from Uganda...Jerry makes a swift recovery of his toppled engine on Biglorryblog

Reguilar readers of Biglorryblog may well recall the recent story from Biglorryblog's 'Good Man in Africa' Jerry Burley whereupon some of his 'friends' managed to overturn a low loader carrying a rather expensive  (and heavy) engine.

And there it is looking very sorry for itself...Well here's the ending of the story and how it was recovered. But I'll let Jerry tell it as he's so much better at it!

"Hi Brian, you have already seen the pictures of the end result of this accident to US$2m worth of 7 mega-watt engine and its ballast trailer,  lying rather forlornly on their side, but I have just found the detailed ones of the actual recovery itself. They are pretty much self-explanatory."

Jerry goes on: "At the time, we had no cranes of our own as the new Groves hadn't arrived, so were dependent on third party units we would much rather not have used, but there was no alternative. This was a very risky lift in some ways, as if a cable had parted neither crane alone could have supported the mass of the engine at time of lift commencement; I personally hate being involved in two-crane lifts as the square law of problems applies - double the lift (ie number of cranes), quadruple the headache."

"I guess the EHS nazi's will, quite correctly, take a dim view of the lack of PPE (and there are undoubtedly gaping holes with respect to hard hats and overalls, stinking hot days notwithstanding) and with the myriad bods milling around watching and generally being a distraction, pretty hard to stop on a public road in Africa with a free floor show like this. I am not sure what the chap squatting with the assault rifle next to the engine as the lift starts thought he was up to, but whatever it was it would have been much better done somewhere else, that's for sure." And he's the  bloke squatting down just in front of the corner of the engine..BLB and the picture below is the guys putting in a ground anchor/pivot point.

Meanwhile Jerry continues:"The old ex-Swedish military Volvo recovery truck was absolutely magnificent as an anti-clockwise restraint, to counter-balance and resist the cranes clockwise lifting moment, its main rear winch cable being attached to the centre of the engine upper as you may be able to see. The two forward-facing cables are from the front winch, passed around a snatch block and back onto the truck itself to double the line pull and  are attached to the big, mahogany timber ground anchors that were buried to hook them on to. I note the power company did come along in the end and knock down the 33kv overheads, as can be seen by the coiled conductor by the engine and 'men in white coats' in one view (not looking for me in this particular case....)"

And here ikt is...the right way up. Jerry tells me: "We had spent US$10,000 of the clients money on lifting accessories alone, before we even started the job and all-in it took three days. The planning took a further three days, including speccing the cranes, winches, snatch blocks and strops to meet the requirements for line pulls based on the total weight of the unit, CofG calculations and a good fiddle factor to take into account "unplanned occurances. Still, cheaper than a new engine I guess - each turbo is a couple of hundred grand alone, and there is a 12 month lag on resupply so I am told, and both survived the fall and our lift! " Now click tbrough here for more....