Saturday, October 28, 2006

Signal 41

So this afternoon I'm driving back from our men's retreat. As we get close to Florida and Bearss there's an accident with an overturned car. I have no idea how a car managed to flip there, but it did. Even though there's already one engine on the scene, I feel kind of guilty just driving by, especially when I see that they're actively working inside the car. If I had been by myself, I might have pulled over and offered another pair of hands or some muscle. But I didn't. I did however pull out a scanner and listen for a couple of minutes. I heard a heavy rescue unit responding as part of the call. A heavy or technical rescue unit carries lots of tools and supplies for hard extractions. Everything from vehicle entrapments to baby in the well. Then I heard the engine on-scene tell the heavy rescue to downgrade to a non-emergency response. Hmm. Is that good or bad? A couple seconds later, "Driver is signal 41." Dead. Not just dead. Dead in a way that it's obvious that there is no hope left. It was heart-wrenching, knowing that we'd just passed a few dozen feet from someone that had just passed away in the past dozen minutes.

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