HURRICANE WARNING (Biographical)

In examining stone buildings, monuments, and memorials for the National Park Service in the 1980s,* they wanted to know if the dome of the Jefferson Memorial was made of limestone or concrete as the contractor was given his choice on this. I told them that was easy. It must be concrete because he could make the ceiling with just a few molds and repeat the casts for the ceiling, but, to do it from limestone, each block would have to be machined which would be very expensive. Well, they wanted to know the answer anyway, but I wasn’t to knock off a piece of material from the ceiling with my rock hammer, even a little piece, and wasn’t to drop acid on it. All I could use was a flashlight and a hand lens (a little powerful magnifying glass or loop). I told them that there was a good chance I couldn’t tell the difference between limestone and concrete, but they said I should make my best effort.

So they had the scaffolding put up , I don’t know but maybe 20 feet, to a ledge just under the ceiling. They wouldn’t permit drilling of anchors into the memorial for scaffolding, of course, so it was a free standing scaffolding which swayed back and forth quite a bit. I was to climb the scaffolding, wait until it swayed near the ledge, and step off onto the ledge. All this was made a little more exciting because there was a hurricane warning. Well, I did this, nervously, because I wasn’t sure the scaffolding wouldn’t fall over. Even with the flashlight, the lighting wasn’t good, and I couldn’t tell whether the ceiling was made of concrete or limestone. To be honest, I probably couldn’t have told the difference even with good lighting. Workmen below kept calling me to hurry up because a hurricane was coming. I waited for the scaffolding to sway back to the ledge, stepped onto it and climbed down. As soon as I got off, the scaffolding was taken down. It turned out that the NPS had spent $25,000 to put up and take down the scaffolding only to hear from me that “I don’t know.” Incidentally, the hurricane never appeared.

*See http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2010/12/muammar-qaddafi-and-me-biographical.html for more details on the acid rain program.

MUAMMAR QADDAFI AND ME (Biographical)

A concern of the 1980s was acid rain. A program was formed called the National Acid Precipitation Program or NAPAP for short. The National Park Service (NPS) was in charge of acid rain damage to materials, including building stone. In 1983, they requested someone from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to help set up stone test sites. I was Assistant Chief Geologist of the Eastern Region at the time and had plenty to do; however, none of the scientists who knew something about building stone or acid rain dissolving carbonate minerals would volunteer for the duty. The Assistant Chief Geologist for Program said in a meeting that it would be a pity if the U.S.G. S. couldn’t respond to the request. Though I knew nothing about building stone and little about climate, I volunteered. I thought I would learn something about climate in the job. It turned out that I didn’t, but my previous experience helping set up the Lunar Sample Program in NASA proved invaluable. I also had a certain knack for conflict resolution that became important as progress was made setting up the stone detection sites. The NPS also wanted me to examine memorials, monuments, and other stone buildings for pollution damage. I begged off saying that I knew nothing about this subject, but they asked me just to do my best effort. The first monument to be examined was the Jefferson Memorial, which was completed during WW II because President Roosevelt thought it would be good for the morale of the nation. I was accompanied by a well known mineralogist from the USGS who knew nothing more about pollution damage to stone than I did. It was a memorial I had been to as a tourist many times and never noticed any problems. It was amazing, however, that when you started to look for stone damage, you could see it all over the place. We had carte blanche to examine the memorials and monuments so we even went up on the roof and down into the basement which I didn’t know existed before. There were long, perhaps a yard long, and thin stalactites coming down from the ceiling as acid rain filtered down through cracks in the main floor of the memorial. On the roof, there were small clots of grayish material standing slightly above the surrounding marble, i.e. in positive relief. Sometime later, I remembered that I had forgotten to measure by how much relief these clots were so I requested permission from the NPS to go back up on the roof again and got permission from the Park Police to do so. When I got to the kiosk guarding the stairs to the roof, the guard called someone on the phone and then someone else. These calls were taking quite a bit of time so I asked what the problem was. The guard told me that Qaddafi, the dictator of Lybia, had threatened to kill President Reagan so permission also had to be obtained from the FBI and CIA. I said, “For heaven’s sake, why didn’t you tell me. I would rather these organizations had never heard of me. I would have come back some other time.” I did, however, get permission to go up on the roof and got my measurements. It was true that from the roof of the Jefferson Memorial you did have a good, if distant, view of some windows in the White House.