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08/26/2004 Archived Entry: "Careful Where You Dump!"

Be careful where you dump, or you could make the national news as well as be the butt of the late night comics' jokes! The driver of one of the buses for the Dave Matthews Band allegedly dumped his holding tank through the grates in a bridge directly onto a tourist boat in the river below a couple of weeks ago in Chicago. Although he has denied it, apparently video security cameras at some local businesses helped pinpoint the source, as well as one witness catching his license number. According to an article this week in the Chicago Tribune (click here), the holding tank could be emptied by a toggle switch behind the driver's seat. If that's true, I can see how it could have happened accidentally if the switch somehow got bumped. That can't happen on the coaches I drive -- you have to manually open a valve outside the rear of the coach to dump the holding tank -- impossible to do when you're driving. The driver faces a $70,000 fine for the incident which sent at least five persons to the hospital to get checked out, and ruined the clothing of several more. Jimmy Kimmel did a video "re-enactment" on his late night show on ABC last night; it was pretty funny -- unless you're a motorcoach driver.