How many times have you said you wouldn’t believe something unless you saw
it with you own eyes…especially in this day and age of photo manipulation!
And how many times have you unwittingly documented something with your
camera that got someone else out of a fix…because they were able to see it
though your eyes?!
Here’s how it happened:
Last April, almost a year ago, demolition began on the two-story apartment
buildings on two sides of our senior complex here in the Netherlands. By
December it was all knocked down, leveled, kaput…with nothing left but the dirt
to walk on.
First, bricks were knocked out to release the bats. Then the hazmat suits arrived, clearing out any traces of asbestos
lurking inside the 50-year-old structures. [We who watched just feet away
wondered if we, too, should have been insulated?]
When the salvage crews arrived to tear off the roof tiles, everything broke down to a
science. What to keep and what to toss became a methodical, poetic
flow. Leave it to the Dutch, I always say. They know what they’re
doing.
As I nosed around with the camera, I eventually met Hoomer, the
foreman. After introductions, he kindly asked if I’d send him my photos,
which I did through my blog posts. And that started a long camaraderie
throughout the next months as each phase of the demolition ended.
Hoomer operated the steam shovel that picked up building pieces like toothpicks. It was a game to
him, leaving no brick unturned. If he could rescue a window in its frame
or an entire staircase, he’d treat it with kid gloves, placing it gently in the
salvage truck.
Once nothing remained but rubble, the rock crusher came in to grind cement into gravel. It would become the foundation
of roadways here in the Netherlands, Hoomer said. Nothing would go to
waste.
By then it was December. The project was finally over and done with…I
thought.
Wrong!
Now was the time to shore up the land, so to speak…which had been the
problem to begin with. The buildings had been torn down [way too young at
50 years!] because the land below sea level was collecting too much water,
messing up the sewer and drainage systems. [Chalk it up to global
warming, I say, because we know the Dutch weren’t dumb 50 years ago. They
know how to pump out water!]
Which is where the unwitting part comes in.
Truckload after truckload of dirt started arriving. 4234 cubic meters
of dirt, to be exact. At 16 cubic meters per truckload, do the math:
265 truckloads!
So out came the camera again to document the real last phase of the
work. Now, PAY ATTENTION.
First, worteldoek (root-control tarps) were spread out on the ground
before the dirt was dumped on top. Until new apartments could be rebuilt
(once the economy righted itself), grass would grow…without weeds or roots
popping through.
However, when we bumped into Hoomer during last-minute sidewalk repair and
cleanup in January, he asked if by chance I had taken any pictures of the root
tarps being laid. The city’s environmental agency had received his bill
but wasn’t convinced he had done it, wanting proof by digging through the dirt
to see it with their own eyes.
Ironically, those were the only images of the entire project I had not yet
processed/posted. Once I sent them to him, he wrote back to say I had
saved his ass day!
You know what they say: the camera never lies. And some things
cannot be manipulated! Seeing is believing, even if it’s 2 or 3
persons removed.
