posted on July 20, 2006 04:25:31 AM
There's something about portable johns that vandals just can't resist
BY BOB SHAW
Pioneer Press
Of all the dark mysteries of the criminal mind, one bothers Dave Holm the most.
Why do people burn portable toilets?
"I know, I know — they think it's funny," sighed Holm, president of On Site Sanitation of Little Canada, the largest toilet-rental business in the metro area.
It's summer, and Porta-Potties are frightened. It's the time of year when Holm feels cursed by a centuries-old joke, as he sends out truckloads of spiffy new toilets only to see them return as piles of ash and melted plastic.
This year's vandalism is normal — normally disastrous. Holm expects to lose 35 units this year, in addition to about 500 other tipped over by vandals or by windstorms.
Ruined biffies sit in Holm's back lot like corpses in a morgue. He knelt beside a half-melted $2,000 toilet and examined the sparklers that set off the fire.
"I just don't get the humor here," he muttered. "It's kind of pathetic."
Holm has seen units that have been dragged behind trucks or thrown in rivers. He saw one flipped perfectly and left standing on its roof — waste dumped everywhere around it.
"Who would do that?" Holm said. " I couldn't pay anyone to do that."
The problem is everywhere. Millicent Carroll, spokeswoman for International Portable Toilet Association in Bloomington, described a notorious Georgia-based unit of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that rents two units each year — and buys one for fun.
"They hang it from a tree, bury it or put it in quicksand," she said. "This problem has existed as long as there have been outhouses and firecrackers."
But why? Can the toilet industry ever free itself from potty humor?
The problem is partly self-inflicted. Toilet-renting businesses are known for tacky names, ranging from Wizard of Ooze to Willie Makit. But when businesses want to be taken seriously, as victims of vandalism or providers of a public service, humor can backfire.
"If someone walks up to you with a 'Have turd, will travel' T-shirt, you aren't likely to discuss sanitation issues with them," Carroll said.
In a world of other things to vandalize — cars, signs, hydrants — those who rent and sell portable toilets say their goods are being specially targeted.
Most portable toilets cost about $700.
"If you broke out three car windows, that would cost the same," Carroll said. "No one would consider that funny."
What spooks the biffy-renters most is the determination of the vandals. Rick Anderson, owner of Jimmy's Johnnys in North Branch, chained a dozen toilets near a school in Forest Lake last summer to make sure they couldn't be tipped.
"Someone cut every one of those chains and tipped them," Anderson said. "They were on a mission."
On Site dispatcher Omar Hernandaz spread out six Polaroids of torched toilets on a countertop recently; one showed the remains of a toilet in the middle of a freeway on a construction site — vandals had stopped a car in traffic to burn the toilet to the ground.
Halloween is the worst time of year, with the Fourth of July running a close second.
"This was the worst July Fourth I have ever seen," Hernandaz said.
To gain dignity, the industry is counterattacking.
For the discriminating tush, On Site owner Karen Holm rents a six-toilet posh-potty with oak floors, piped-in music, heat and air conditioning — even art on the walls. It rents for $1,500 per weekend, compared with $100 for the classic one-seater.
Company officials willingly offer toilets and hand-washing units as tools to fight diseases spread in big crowds and say that when vandals dump a toilet onto the ground, the impact on public health and the environment is obvious.
"We are sanitation workers. We protect the health and welfare of the public," Holm said.
But officials have resigned themselves to at least some vandalism, and don't always refrain from humor themselves. Carroll, in particular, has a reputation for joking about her work.
"If you think I can be straitlaced after working here for 16 years," she said, "you have another thing coming."
