Let me preface this whole thing by stating that monday’s comic will be up sometime tomorrow, probably before noon. It has nothing to do with the following stuff, I just managed to leave my power adapter at work on friday like a dumbass, and didn’t realize it ’till just now, so all my files are on the laptop, which is out of juice. So, that’s that. Now, story time.
Liz and I spent the weekend up in Tahoe, trying to beat the heat down here in Sacramento (it’s been over 105 for the past week, and one of the downfalls of living in a beautiful victorian house is that they don’t come standard with beautiful victorian air conditioning. So it’s hot.) Go fig- Tahoe was near 90, too. Oh well.
Anyway, we were having dinner with Liz’ parents this evening at Pasaretti’s, this little italian place off of Highway 50, just south of the Y. (people who have been to tahoe know where this is.) We were sitting out on the patio, ’cause we had our little dog with us. All of a sudden, we hear a thud, as best I can describe it, and into our view, a car comes FLYING down the road. I don’t mean it was going fast. I mean, it was AIRBORNE. You ever see those movies where a car hits something, and does that crazy airborne flip? I can now guarantee to you – it happens. The first I saw of it, the undercarriage of the car was facing us, and the car was pointed INTO THE SKY at about a 70-80 degree angle. It then hit the ground, and flipped once more before it came to a rest upside down on the side of the road.
At this point, Mike and I (Mike is my neice’s S.O. – good guy.) jump up and haul ass out to where the car is flipped over. Traffic slowed down to look, but Mike was the first one to get there, and noone else had gotten there at the time. As I ran out (He’s faster than me. I’m old and slow.) I noticed a car in the intersection missing a bumper, but not much else. I got to the flipped-over Explorer (it held up remarkably well, believe it or not. Point goes to Ford.) where Mike was helping people out, and we got the back open, and I helped one of the ladies inside to get out. (She was pretty dazed – she was still trying to get stuff out of the windows, didn’t even realize the back door was open.) At that point, I noticed the guy who was helping out was bleeding from the arm pretty badly, so Mike got him out of the way and over to sit down on the sidewalk (I was shocked. The dude was acting cool and collected, just doing his part. Didn’t even seem affected.) We also started looking for a dog that was ejected from the car – someone saw it run off, but nobody knew where to. Hopefully they found it – Mike and I were looking for it for a good 10-15 minutes. Not really sure what everyone else was doing at this point – kind of got into tunnel vision. I know Liz pulled the bumper of the other car out of the road so traffic could pass, and Stephanie was trying to help bandage the driver’s hand, but he wasn’t really too interested in medical attention at the time. *shrug*
So, breakdown of what happened, as best I can tell. Ford Explorer going down 50 at a high rate of speed. (The posted limit is 35 – there’s no way that car could have flipped and gone as far as it did going 35. Had to have been going 55-60. This wasn’t a rollover – this was an AIRBORNE FLIP.) Small sedan pulls out of the adjoining road without looking, Explorer hits the front end of the sedan. I’m betting that because the sedan had a low front end and the explorer had a relatively high front end, the sedan just acted as a ramp, flipping the explorer into the air. At this point, I gather, both one of the passengers as well as the dog were ejected from the vehicle – I hear the guy even hit a tree, but I don’t know. Vehicle came to a rest, and we helped the other passengers out. Amazingly, the only injuries were to the guy who got ejected (Cuts on his arm and back of his head, but relatively minor) and to the driver, who had a pretty deep cut on his hand, but again, relatively minor. The other three passengers were PERFECTLY FINE. Dog – still don’t know. Odds are they found it. They had a lot of people searching – lord knows Mike and I covered a lot of ground. Mike kicked some serious ass out there, though. He helped people out, bandaged ’em up, the works. The man was a machine. I did what I could – helped people out and helped look for the dog. Most people were just standing on the other side of the road staring, even way befor emergency services got there – kind of peeved us off.
But yeah – that was my afternoon. I took two things from it – one, I now know how I react if the shit hits the fan, and it’s good to know. I never really knew what would happen, because I’ve never had anything like this come up before. And two – FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WEAR YOUR FREAKING SEAT BELT, AND I’M NOT EVEN JOKING. The three ladies that were in the car that were unhurt were all buckled in – the dude who got tossed out was NOT. I know it’s been said a million times to you throughout your life, but just add my voice to that one. And if you have pets in the car, keep them restrained as well, either with a doggy seatbelt adapter, or in a secured cage. It’s just not safe to have them running around the car, and if these people had had the dog in a kennel or somesuch, if wouldn’t have run off.
So that’s the end of my PSA for tonight. I’m gonna go read some Harry Potter, and get some shuteye. Comic’ll be up sometime tomorrow morning. Take care!
Addendum : I was informed that details of the crash can be found at the Tahoe Daily Tribune’s Website. Turns out the driver of the smaller car was drunk – didn’t know that. It does explain why she passed out after the accident, though.
