Scary moment

darth_sekhmet, stacymtf, and changelingjane and I were driving back from My Friends Deli/Restaurant to go to the hill where I usually go to watch fireworks. Suddenly, up ahead of me, I saw a car in the left-most lane of the freeway suddenly turn 90 degrees to the right and plow straight into the wall underneath this bridge. I freaked out.

As soon as I understood what happened, I pulled the car over and we all ran over to see if the driver was okay. There were several other people that also stopped. As we approached, it looked like the vehicle's passenger side tires had become severely damaged, and caused the car to turn sharply to the right. The front axle looked like a pretzel. The vehicle was basically totalled. There was extreme damage to the interior of the vehicle as well, with the stereo having popped out of the dashboard and all sorts of other things. The vehicle apparently did not have air bags AT ALL. (It was an old conversion van.) The lady inside the vehicle seemed alive and conscious, but there was blood running down her neck and onto her blouse. She was somewhat incoherent, not fully aware of what was going on. darth_sekhmet noted that her eyes were dilated, and it was pretty clear that she had a concussion.

We called the police, (after waiting on hold for several minutes... stupid 4th-of-July morons were probably over-taxing their resources) The lady kept moving around, looking around, and trying to light a cigarette, and we all kept telling her to stay put. darth_sekhmet asked the lady a few questions to make sure that she was going to be okay for a few minutes while the ambulance came, and the rest of us stood around and looked helpless. I called 911 to make sure that they were aware of the situation, and they were, since two others had already called. One of the people with her was a member of the National Guard.

After a little while, we assumed that everything was taken care of, and got back into our car and continued our journey to the fireworks hill. Several people were staying with her, and we saw the ambulance go past as we left. It shook us up quite a bit. That lady was really really lucky to be alive. Cutting across four lanes of traffic at dusk, with smoke from fireworks combining with the humidity to create a dense fog, and then careening into a wall without air bags generally sounds like a death sentence to me. Yet the women seemed to have only a few bits of physical damage. She was talking clearly, albeit somewhat incoherently, and didn't seem to be in much pain.

Anyways, keep her in your thoughts, prayers, well-wishes, and what-have-you tonight. Hopefully everything went well and continues to go well for her. I really wish I could find out if she turns out okay or not, but alas, I doubt that's possible.

Amusing moment of the night

Taking changelingjane home after fireworks was interesting. There were fireworks all over the place. The fog was so thick that we couldn't see more than 10 feet in front of us. As we drove around, there were bangs and shots and all sorts of noises. People standing next to fireworks of some sort would manifest out of the fog like ghosts. The street was littered with bottle rockets, fire crackers, and other things. People would set off their rockets while we were passing. It felt like being in a war zone. As changelingjane left the car, we were joking around, screaming and pretending we were in a war zone. "Tango Foxtrot Charlie! GO GO GO GO!!!!! DUCK!" changelingjane dived, ran up to her front porch, rolled behind the porch banister thing, and peeked out, holding her umbrella like a gun and pretending to shoot at the people that were setting things off. It was scary and amusing, all at the same time. :-D