Sunday, June 29, 2008

These Are the People You Are Accusing : Part III

From Firefight, Page 425. This will be my last excerpt, although I will probably do one more review as a summary. Excellent book. Highly recommended.

The airplane had nearly disintegrated, but Dan Fitch's group found several huge cogs, bent and blackened, that weighed a couple hundred pounds each; it took a couple of workers to handle each one. Other objects nearby looked like large gears, and strips of metal that appeared to be fan blades. Workers realized that they were pulling apart the remnants of one of the aircraft's two engines. The aluminum cowling that had encased it all had been torn away, but the guts of the engine were there.

FEMA crews used a blowtorch to free the core of the motor from the column in which it was embedded. Then Fitch and several others used pieces of six-by-six to pry the motor loose from the column and push it off the pile. With the help of some Old Guard troops, they rolled the heavy piece of machinery onto a dolly and finally managed to push it outside. The whole effort took the better part of an entire shift.

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