Helicopter crash landed on "my" building

[JW Insider]

For several years I worked for the same company, and when I moved into 787 7th Avenue, I had my first corner office on the 40th floor. An incredible view of Central Park and the Hudson River. The building is over 50 stories, and they used to have a company subsidized restaurant with several chefs to accommodate staff meetings and high profile clients on the top floor. I could get fantastic meals and make appointments with friends and family to come on up and show off our "Windows on the World" private restaurant. Then a French company bought our company out for a few billion, and all those expensive (and wasteful) perks disappeared, but I got to keep my nice corner office for a few more years.

So I'm retired now, and haven't been in the building for a while, except to pass through the marble lobby as a scenic shortcut, and check out an art museum they still keep in it.

But today, a helicopter crash-landed on the roof, and it killed the pilot. It also started a fire and a full evacuation ensued. They say it took half-an-hour just to get down from the 29th floor, so I can imagine what it would have been like from the 40th or 50th. It must have felt like 9/11 to some of them.

https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/manhattan-helicopter-crash-june-2019/index.html

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

WOW ... he had 20 years experience with a helicopter before he got killed.   That to me is amazing.

Then .... he decided to NOT wait out the weather.

There are old pilots .....

There are bold pilots ....

But there are no old, bold pilots.

That's how "The Big Bopper", and Audie Murphy died ...

Bold pilots, who ignored the weather.

 

[Melinda Mills]

Another example of ignoring the weather:

El Faro Captain Michael Davidson twice decided to stay on course while sailing into Hurricane Joaquin the night before the ship's demise, despite suggestions from crew members that he alter the ship's route. October 2015.

[TrueTomHarley]

55 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

For several years I worked for the same company, and when I moved into 787 7th Avenue, I had my first corner office on the 40th floor. 

It may be that the pilot was one of your detractors here who hadn’t realized that you were retired.

[JW Insider]

28 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

It may be that the pilot was one of your detractors here who hadn’t realized that you were retired.

Fortunately, as most of you have probably guessed, Billy the Kid and I are really the same person, 😎, and I/we would have been prepared for everything a-la-Rambo, Apocalypse Now, and probably a John Wayne movie or two, too, that I have forgotten about.

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

( JTR squints his eyes and rubs his hands together slowly, as if putting on hand lotion ...)  "So THAT"S your caper, eh, El Bandito?"

[Space Merchant]

@JW Insider One of the IT Techs I had briefly trained was in the city the day to do a job when this happened, he was on the phone with us before these events came to pass.

[JW Insider]

25 minutes ago, Space Merchant said:

One of the IT Techs I had briefly trained was in the city the day to do a job when this happened

Small world. I didn't get back into NYC until 2 days after it happened. I called a friend who works in the building who said that it wasn't really a big deal to evacuate. They felt the shaking in the building so they knew it was a real event, not just a drill. I asked him if it reminded him of 9/11 and he said he really didn't think about that. He was still in college then, and didn't start work until 2005 or so.

Reminds me: I live in the NYC area, and remember that back in 2001, just after 9/11, we "restacked" employees in two of our midtown buildings in order to open up entire floors for people that needed to relocate from WTC.

While waiting for a commuter train just three weeks later outside the city, I remember a chilling conversation that happened immediately in front of me, before the train stopped and opened its doors. The woman was wearing extraordinarily high heels:

• Man: You're back at work already?
• Woman: Yep! Still got the same bills.
• Man: You weren't wearing those shoes when it happened were you?
• Woman: Are you kidding? If I had been wearing these I never would have made it out in time. [laughing]

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

About five or so years before the Twin Towers went down ... I was offered a job there, and turned it down, as I viewed it as a fire hazard that could not be escaped from without a fast opening parachute, and a 12 gauge shotgun with solid lead slugs, to shoot out a window ( It takes about 400 feet to get line stretch on the suspension lines of a parachute ...). and even then, survival would have been problematic.

I miss the money ... but not being dead.

 

[Space Merchant]

@JW Insider Some people tend not to take minor and or medium threats seriously unless it concerns them, major things have a lasting effect on some until it happens again. As is with all, the good people and the bad people, all events are unexpected, Ecc. 9:11. A safety is but only a placebo, for even in your own home one isn't safe.

[Space Merchant]

On 6/16/2019 at 10:02 PM, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

About five or so years before the Twin Towers went down ... I was offered a job there, and turned it down, as I viewed it as a fire hazard that could not be escaped from without a fast opening parachute, and a 12 gauge shotgun with solid lead slugs, to shoot out a window ( It takes about 400 feet to get line stretch on the suspension lines of a parachute ...). and even then, survival would have been problematic.

I miss the money ... but not being dead.

 

As long as you have an income to support yourself and family, you are good. You'd be surprise that some folk out there would break every bone in their body willfully just to flaunt cash around. And there is a lot of people like this.

Life itself is more valuable than money. You can lose money at any time and get something, big or small back anytime, but for life, once it is loss, it cannot be received again until God's Will is realized, until then, that no 1-UP mushrooms for any of us.

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

 

• Money does not impress me, but if I had enough of it, I would go to the Kingdom Hall in a huge old steam Locomotive Train, belching columns of fire and black smoke and burning coal embers, with clanging bells and blasting train air horns, ... having a construction crew of hundreds lay railroad tracks in front of it all the way from my house to the Kingdom Hall parking lot, and in front of the train, have circus elephants in tutus dancing and blowing trumpets.