Greetings! I have a story for you, perhaps something for the dummy files. This past weekend I had the pleasure of watching a Tower crane dismantling in my hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The dummies in this case were not the crane dismantling crew, nor the crew in charge of the mobile lattice boom crane doing the dismantling. Both of those crews performed beautifully, and what I saw of that job was masterfully executed. The dummies were some of the pedestrians and passers-by. Allow me to describe the scene. A large apartment building under construction, in the 20 story range. Right next door is a YMCA, and this neighborhood is right in the heart of downtown Halifax. So the street in question is normally a busy one. On this day, the street was closed off to traffic due to the dismantling operation, which needed a great deal of space. The only way up that street was the sidewalk on one side, opposite the YMCA and new building. This is where I stood, keeping just behind the caution tape which had been strung up. While I watched the dismantling take place, numerous people looking to go to the YMCA walked right past the crews of labourers on the ground, ignoring the tape and verbal warnings, and just walked right across the street, right under and around all these dismantled crane components and the two mobile cranes which were working at the time. (In addition to the one doing the takedown, there was a smaller one helping to dismantle the jib once it was brought down). I talked to one lady wanting to get into the YMCA, and when I told her how she could still go for her workout, just with a bit of a detour around the corner and to an alternate entrance, she cursed and swore, saying how "*expletive deleted* retarded" the whole thing was. I guess she didn't seem too worried about part of a Tower crane landing on her head. One of the labourers doing traffic control told me that he had been sworn at and threatened for not allowing people to cross through the work area. But the people who cursed at the labourers were not the worst of the dummies, no! The real dummy awards should go to the numerous people I saw duck right under the caution tape barriers and run right across the street, running the gamut of heavy machinery and crane parts just to save two minutes of walking! As far as I know, the labourers are not allowed to physically restrain somebody from crossing the barrier- doing so might get them charged with assault or something like that. And calling the police would have been pointless- By the time the cops arrived, the dummies would be long gone. That is, if the cops bothered to come out at all. It's a minor miracle that none of these dummies got hurt- I'm sure that if they did, they would have been the first ones to sue. One for the dummy files, -Aimee Brooks, Tower crane operator gonna-be

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