good times with mercury

So yesterday I made a nice name for myself here... As bus captains we're required to snip the little vile of mercury off the thermostats and drop it into a bottle of water. Well, we've been so fortunate the past couple weeks to have a buttload of FEMA water shipped to camp and it comes in cans (and tastes like, in my opinion, when an annoying little kid splashes around in a hotel hot tub and water gets on your lips... mmm... salty body sweat and chlorine...). So I did not have a bottle at the site and decided instead of bringing back a little vile of mercury that was bound to get lost or crushed, to bring the whole thermostat back. As I was getting ready to place the vile into a plastic bottle to take outside to our mercury bucket, it was knocked out of my hands and shattered at my feet. Mercury went everywhere. I was laughing hysterically... for some reason it was funny at the time. But as more people walked by and a couple of us were pushing it into a pile in the middle of the hallway, I kept hearing comments about how scary mercury was. And then someone looked it up online and found out it is in fact pretty scary despite my mom always telling me she played with it all the time when she was little.

I went to ask our firemen who are always on site what to do. They weren't there so we called. Soon we had two fire trucks in front of the building and my little area outside my room was entirely blocked off with yellow tape. People were mad cause they couldn't get to their rooms. The firemen were annoyed because now they had to follow some protocol and evacuate the area and call EPA when all they wanted to do was sweep it up and forget about it. Then they started hassling me about how I had to go through decontamination and stuff. The director of the camp was furious that we didn't tell him. Some big wig army guy that oversees this whole operation showed up and they pointed me out to him... "she's the culprit..." Some dirty firemen began making crude comments to me about having to strip down there and take a chemical shower. I had to get out of this place.

So I went to get some pizza with some people. And as we were leaving, the director of the camp called. "The EPA is here. They need you to come back immediately so they can write up a report and get you decontaminated." I came back and they were taking pictures of the scene. More of the building had been blocked off. Everyone was standing around, tapping their feet, giving me dagger eyes (ok, not really... I might have been dreaming that part up). And they pulled me aside and asked me a bunch of questions. Apparently the EPA does not understand what a thermostat is because they didn't understand how much mercury there was. I even knew that. It's just a drop!

A haz-mat team pulled up and suited up in big yellow tyvec suits and masks and headed in. After a long time of chin-rubbing and "hmms" they decided to get a special vacuum that apparently sucks up the mercury. They sucked it up but the big scare was what was still in the air. So they had this little machine that tests the air quality and it was still too dangerous to enter. (The crew leader for EPA was quoted as saying "I'm not risking my mens lives to send them in there!")

So they took my clothes... and my teva sandals I was wearing at the time. They put them all in special bags and put a machine up to them to test the mercury levels. They were all 2 times the safety reading so they asked if I was really attached. I said yes. We only get a couple pairs of shirts and shorts and I have to wear them every day for work and get them sweaty and smelly. And my tevas... well, they're my tevas and yes I'm attached.

They took my information and told me they'd call me back to let me know if the decontamination process worked out with my clothes. Otherwise, they will have to be disposed of. Finally around 10:30 or so we were allowed back into our rooms and all the doors were left open all night and day to air the place out.

Didn't sleep at all last night cause I kept having these little anxiety moments where I was sure I was going to die now of mercury. And I never would have worried except for the stinking EPA stressed me out so much and took my clothes. So bus captains are no longer allowed to handle mercury. We have to leave it for hazmat at the site. People are now getting trained about mercury. The big wigs are having meetings about it all. Everyone important is asking "Why the hell did that bus captain have mercury in the building?!!" And I'm thinking why do we always have to find blame in someone? It was an accident! We'll move on. And I'll just go crazy by the time I reach 30.