Generally speaking I can get pretty down about government, from the local level all the way to the feds. Heck I can often get down just about my fellow human beings. Wondering if they have any compassion whatsoever. Now I know people die in car accidents far too often, but in my 39 years I've never actually been in the middle of one where people were dieing in front of me and watching citizens trying to help.
That changed today.
My dad had gotten into town late last night and brought over his power washer to clean the siding on my house and wash the deck, then stain it. He felt the stain I got was the wrong kind, so around 8:45 AM today we ran to Lowes.
We picked up what we needed and headed back towards home. It started about a minute out of the parking lot.
I was in the process of reading the instructions on some wild flower seeds I had picked up when I heard him say, "oh shit, oh shit." For some reason I quickly looked in the side mirror and all I saw was car parts flying up about 30 yards behind us.
We quickly doubled back.
Now we know in hindsight what happened, and surprisingly the five of the people that saw the wreck actually happen (I was not one of them) all saw the exact same thing. A 1992 Dodge Ram conversion van had cross over the center line, moved to the far left lane of on-coming traffic, nearly missing two cars, and hit a 2008 Buick LaCrosse. No skid/break marks. Just a 55 MPH vs. 55 MPH head-on.
I first came up on a women in the middle of a four lane road (no median), stumbling and talking into her phone. My father ran to the car that had been hit by the van.
I won't post the pics they are somewhat graphic, but the link to the story in the local paper is here.
Now before I go on, folks if you see a wreck like this, even if you had no part in it, it might be a good idea not to just keep driving. You can be late for wherever you are going by a few minutes.
I had no idea if this women was in one of the cars and hurt. And to be frank, she couldn't complete a sentence. I then realized both my father and myself had left our phones in the car. And the people running to the car with my father didn't have phones out either.
I grabbed it from her and found a scared shitless husband on the other end. By this time I could see she wasn't hurt and told him to dial 911, huge wreck on 161, quarter mile up from SWIC.
I saw my father trying to climb up on the right front panel of the car to get to the driver through the front windshield. Three men were trying to open the passenger door.
I started to move towards the van. A person walked by me and said "he is dead." He joined the other three trying to get the passenger door open.
I have to admit I was more than a little stunned to notice he had been thrown at least 15 feet through the windshield.
The lady with him, and she couldn't have been more than 21, started yelling, "he is alive, he is alive."
I knelt down for a second and I wish I could say I did something "heroic" but I didn't. There was blood coming out in large amounts from his mouth, eyes, nose, and his head in general.
I walked back to the other car and stepped into the field to get away .....
Now this is the "good" part. My gosh did the police, fire fighters, and ambulances get there fast. On the ground my father and I bitched about it while it was happening, but when it was all over and we looked at our watches, what had seemed like a long time, had been a matter of minutes.
I've heard people in the past that say with things like this time slows down, well it sure did for us.
And although I can fault a few folks that didn't stop driving past, all those that were right around the crash did and ran to try to help. No clue if we helped, but isn't it the effort? We wanted to.
The local farmers, and this is a rural area, maybe a house every quarter mile, showed up on 3-wheelers with fire extinguishers, crow bars, axes.
The police, knowing I would suspect a reporter might show up, got the car draped in traps so his body couldn't be seen.
And even more stunning for me, the police had a Chaplin out in under 30 minutes to talk to the women I found in the middle of the road and the women helping the gentlemen from the van. Both ladies needed that.
It was a bad, horrible situation. But, well the citizens tried and government got there.