What's that smell?

JM - Twice in the last week the answer to that question has been unpleasant, if not toxic. Last Thursday I came into the 10th grade room and they had the window open to let in some air. But it wasn't smelling too great. I went to look outside. On the other side of the driving course which is behind our school is some kind of factory building. It emits yellow smoke sometimes, and black other times. But this wasn't the problem that day. It was a group of men on top of the roof, doing some repair or sealing work. They had shovels, hard hats, and a giant pile of buring car tires. They were melting the tires for rubber to patch/seal/? the roof. The unlucky guy was the one that had to maintain the fire, adding tires and shifting them around, sometimes the black smoke blowing so you couldn't even see him at all. That can't be healthy. Here's a pic of the action.

Now the crane which has blocked the view out our living room window for 4 months finally started moving about 3 weeks ago. It looks like they're going to build a building behind us. This afternoon I was checking out the action when I got a lesson on how to effectively deal with unwanted trash on the construction site.

Step 1: Pile all the trash you don't want into the middle of the site and then light it on fire.

Step 2: Add a bunch of metal wiring that is coated in thick plastic on the top.

Step 3: Collect more garbage (especially plastic!) to add while the fire grows.

Step 4: Walk directly in the path of the nasty black smoke to add more to the burning pile.

Step 5: Let it burn until it turns the sky grey and gives everyone in the building next door a headache (and maybe black lung). Those black specks in the picture are pieces of ash floating by.

We look forward to seeing what other innovative approaches are used while this building is constructed!