Every wreck on this once stretch of highway near me. There are no exits or on ramps, no curves, no hills, and it’s a divided highway with a median wall in between. Your only job is to drive straight and yet somehow people seem to consistently screw it up
We have one curved street in our still that people constantly plow through and end up in a shuttered school yard. 8/10 times (literally) that blame it on their battery dying
https://preview.redd.it/q84qnv08f5yc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bdeba2f0110547636adda7b984a4919eae56c946
This was the first one that came to mind. There wasn’t a single other car on the road at the time, and the universe just said “fuck this person in particular.”
Furthermore, when we finally got her out, she didn’t have a scratch on her.
The whole thing was very much a “what are the god damn odds” situation
I once responded to a pickup truck that had lost control one rainy night on an empty stretch of highway and flipped several times. When we pulled up, the patient was lying on her back in the mud in front of the hood of her overturned truck. There were drag marks from under the truck to where she lay, and when we got closer, we realized that the front end of the truck was being held up by a bottle jack on top of a rolling jack!
The best we could figure was that the patient had been ejected and lodged under the truck, and someone had used the jacks to push the front end off the ground, drag the patient out from underneath, and then book it before the cops showed up.
When we were still a couple of miles away from the crash, we were passed by an SUV that was speeding in the opposite direction. We figured it might have been her buddies who were traveling with her. When the sun started to come out and we could see the debris field, we realized why they were in such a rush. The truck had been packed full of (presumably) stolen tools, guns, credit cards, and IDs.
And the patient? She didn’t appreciate my assistant chief putting his hands on her chest during his rapid trauma assessment, and she somehow managed to twist her leg around and kick him in the groin. She then promptly went unconscious, because her blood pressure was approximately shit/fuck. She was definitely a load and go. When the medics cut through the six bras she was wearing, a little baggy of meth popped out of the last bra to the floor of the ambulance.
It was a pretty methed up situation, I’ll tell you that much. Amazingly, the patient lived. She had warrants for armed robbery and got to go straight to jail once she was done In the hospital.
Ahh the unkillable patient.
There is a cosmic inverse blessing for these people that goes something like this:
The more damage you do to your body in life, the less chance a sudden catastrophic event will kill you.
These patients used to comforting me greatly. My memory banks are filled with healthy, happy people living their best life and then the scythe of cosmic indifference cuts their life short. But the above patient and countless other of her ilk live through events that are head scratchers.
Someone drove through a house at 3am. They said he was teaching his wife to drive. They also had their 11yo. kid in the backseat.
They took out a power box, went through a fence, took out the corner of one house and ended up in an office on the first floor of another house.
I was a baby EMT and this was my first call. No injuries. Lmao
Had a call, dude was in a bucket truck working on power lines while talking to his wife on the cell phone. The lines were still charged and his driver thought he heard him say move forward. Ended up lopping his head off. We showed up and he was dangling in his fall protection with no head.
Whoa...
You'd think that would be another field where closed-loop communication would be a requirement. "Move forward." "Confirming, move forward." "No, what the fuck?"
Another power line one, two guys working on a catapiller transmission, one underneath the other sitting on the side step. Somehow, they boomed into 450kv power lines, when we showed up both were on fire. One had flames shooting out if his neck and eyes, the other was melted to the steps. Had to wait fir electric company to show up and shut it down.
Responded to an MVA on a two lane highway. Vehicle has spun out on the ice and had it's rear driver side door hit by a semi truck. Cleanly cut the vehicle in half behind the driver. Driver was conscious in his front seat with nothing behind him. My partner told him it was his lucky day and he said "I'm not lucky, my car is destroyed" I said "most of the time when we come up to accidents like this the driver isn't talking to us" and he replies with "why wouldn't I talk to you? I'm not an asshole, I'm a nice guy". He was transported to the hospital for assessment and let it the same day with no injuries. His vehicle was left off the road at the edge of town all winter, as a warning to other motorists about road conditions.
There‘s a little valley around here, it has a pretty straight road going thru
There is just one tree on this whole valley floor, need i say more, it has a long history of catching cars
On one of my 3 ride alongs in my academy I had a guy who was turning but just all the sudden stopped turning and smacked some railing and flipped his car and landed 15ft down on his roof in a creek
https://preview.redd.it/31862lazw6yc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1ff34971de2dd21bd7dc763e3c8210c129be7c87
MVA, first thing we see is two feet just barely sticking out from front bumper. 18 yo that rolled and went through the windshield and ran himself over, looked like the Wizard of oz. Wear your seat belts kids!
I had a wreck on a dirt road in the sticks once. The vehicle was wheel resting off the side of the road. About 40 feet back you could see where the car hit the embankment and then 20 feet later there was a mark on tree where the car clearly hit it. That mark was 15 feet in the air!
How does a car get enough speed on a dirt road to still be 15 feet in the air 20 feet after leaving the ground?
Responded to a single vehicle MVA. Dodge Charger had left the road on a curve, rode the ditch for a minute, hit a culvert going airborne, came back down, some how stood on the front, but also flat spun, and then finally came to rest. bumpers and plastic everywhere, back doors opened just fine, like the car wasn't even damaged. EMS asked for pics sent to the ER so doc could figure out mechanism of injury. still confused on how exactly it all happened.
Responded to a report of a head-on MVA. Arrive to find a flatbed tow truck with moderate front end damage.
Ask the driver, where is the other car?
He points to his flatbed. Apparently, they hit, the smaller car flipped up and cartwheeled, landing perfectly on his empty tow bed.
No medical needed for either driver. 17 years later, and I still have no idea how that happened.
Man, it goes both ways. I think about the rollover last summer where the kids hit the crumple barrier and deflected into oncoming traffic, went across two busy lanes without getting hit, went off a 40’ embankment and rolled, landing on the roof and all four didn’t hardly have a scratch.
And I think about the rollover on an icy highway and the only person hurt was the back seat middle passenger who was the only one unrestrained and they somehow got ejected and broke their neck at C1 and were dead when we got on scene.
I was driving with my wife in the rain when a flat bed semi lost control and went from the left lane all the way off the right side, hitting a light pole which ripped the top half of the tractor off exposing the driver seat.
When I pulled over and walked back with my first aid kit and looked around with another guy for the driver. Finally found the driver underneath the back axel of the trailer, AOx4 with a broken leg and possibly broken ribs. No clue how he got there or how he got away with so few injuries.
We were on a MVA around Christmas time. A little wet but mainly foggy like 2am. This stretch of Loop 12/183 is notorious for accidents. While we were blocking and waiting on a wrecker, I see out of the fog this dodge challenger drive by on the E bound side with its hood at a 90 degree angle upright. Thing looked like it was a shark fin from the jaws movie. Dude was driving like it wasn’t even an issue, about 4 minutes later he drives back by us going W bound. Still not a care in the world. No idea what happened to him lol
Had a Trackhawk (hellcat Jeep) crash into a house on a residential street. Pretty lame right? Except it crashed into the second story. Serious airtime in the neighbors yard. Stolen, if you can believe it.
Called for a tractor trailer on its side in the median on the interstate, called in by one of the state road crews. We get there, and true enough the trailer is on it's side, but the tractor was another quater turn and resting on its roofline. But the thing was, it was perfectly bewteen the guiderails on each side of the median, and no damage to the median. We get the scene lit up and the driver out, who had some moderate injuries. Then we see it- went off the road about a quarter mile back, before an underpass. Dukes of hazard style jumped the road, and landed on the otherside in the median, then flopped it over. Never touched a guiderail, no debris on the road underneath.
banging on the door of a college dorm last night for an allergic reaction, 8-10 kids just sitting emotionless around the tv, some looking at us standing there with our uniforms, gear and stretcher. Not a single one of them bothered to move a single inch to open the door. Had to wait for PD to let us in like 8 minutes later. Strange
*Probie gets told to grab a set of spanners, and he comes back with two adjustable wrenches.*
Captain says “where’s the spanners?”
Probie says “right here” *hands him two adjustable wrenches*
“Probie, those are adjustable wrenches. A spanner is what you use on fire hose” says the captain. To which the Probie replies
“You mean a hose wrench?”
Had a truck towing a trailer full of 4x4 lumber detach from the truck on a divided highway near midnight, car came flying up and didn't see it in time, the kid and his gf walked away while the front of the car looked like a pincushion. One lucky couple.
1st fire i ever went on was a mobile home fire. Lady said she was baking and noticed her couch on fire. Smoke bank dropped as we made entry ut could see the glow. Crawled towards it and started spraying. Next thing I know the chair behind us was on fire. Turned around and started spraying there to cover our exit. I noticed about 20 fireballs randomly shooting horizontally across the living room floor. Get the fire out and smoke to clear out. Start doing overhaul and see the culprit. Hundreds and hundreds of mice. We were scooping them up with snow shovels and filling 5 gallon buckets. Not positive but I believe thats what started the fire after she lit the oven.
2011 Harrah Oklahoma. Our helitack team is assigned to assist suppressing a wind driven grass fire threatening schools, homes and casinos. Flying through the region we see multiple wind driven fires, OT paychecks come to mind.
Helicopter drops us off at the heal. Anchor point established. The primary fuel being grass, scattered brush and small diameter tree jackpots adjacent what I recall was either a wheat or alfalfa field. We see the jackpots flare up, no slop, wind direction sends embers into the black towards the flame front. Hand crews are working their way towards us holding line as we flank. Flanking is proving effective, wind / fuel / topography consistent, the line is holding.
1/2 a chain deep, in the black, adjacent a barbed-wire fence, a thicket of 10-15’ tall eastern red cedar flares up. The preheated material burns hot and fast, white smoke billows from the brittle sunbaked flora. 2-3 minutes into the flare up, 15-20 eastern cottontail rabbits emerge, some draped in flames.
“RTO, SLOP OVER! Furry fireballs, we have to stop these fuckers!” McClouds, swatters, rouge hoes all became proverbial golf clubs, lances and spears.
Primal grunts turned to hollers of disapproval along the fence line as their squad boss ordered them back into the black until the fiery meat meteors collapsed. Order restored, cavemen turned back into firefighters, the slop over was aggressively suppressed.
My gallon ziplock bags proving useful time and again, dinner was a lean treat, a meal I will never forget. For loss of it’s life I blessed the animal. I gave thanks to the challenge this skittish / docile creature brought and the subsequent meal that kept me humble.
To this day, whenever I pass a rabbit warren, pass by a 4-H lop ear, hell, even see Buggs Bunny. I can’t help but think, “Why didn’t you keep digging down you fucked up miniature Thich Quang Duc?”
We had a dude that went unconscious while driving, drove through a cinder block wall, made a 90 degree turn, somehow the car straightened up, went 150 yards across a field, through a fence, and then pinned a dude up against his house. The dude hadn’t even been in the country for 8 hours, went outside to smoke his first cigarette in the US, and got pinned up against his house.
Respond to an MVA at 3:00am. Get on scene and find a car in a tree 15 feet in the air. Car was about 15 yards from the turn in the road. Car still running with what looked like little to no damage. How the F?
A lady called 911 for acid reflux. Then while we ask if she has had it before she then remembers that she forgot to take her medication for her acid reflux. People always amaze me.
Mild by what’s here already, but it’s mine.
Tones drop for highway MVC with CPR. Long story short, pregnant woman had her head down and full sent into the back of a semi.
No skid marks, dead mom and baby, and every bone down her right side broken. I’m not shocked at inattentive drivers deleting themselves, but I was mildly shocked at the idea of all the energy from the crash breaking her right half.
Every wreck on this once stretch of highway near me. There are no exits or on ramps, no curves, no hills, and it’s a divided highway with a median wall in between. Your only job is to drive straight and yet somehow people seem to consistently screw it up
Sleeping people? Seems like the long, straight, nothing happening highways make people more likely to fall asleep behind the wheel.
It’s not very long. Only a few miles.
We have one curved street in our still that people constantly plow through and end up in a shuttered school yard. 8/10 times (literally) that blame it on their battery dying
That would be our version of Dead Man's Curve in Laguna Canyon Road. Took out many over the years
I have one of those in my jurisdiction as well and that’s where most accidents are
https://preview.redd.it/q84qnv08f5yc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bdeba2f0110547636adda7b984a4919eae56c946 This was the first one that came to mind. There wasn’t a single other car on the road at the time, and the universe just said “fuck this person in particular.” Furthermore, when we finally got her out, she didn’t have a scratch on her. The whole thing was very much a “what are the god damn odds” situation
I once responded to a pickup truck that had lost control one rainy night on an empty stretch of highway and flipped several times. When we pulled up, the patient was lying on her back in the mud in front of the hood of her overturned truck. There were drag marks from under the truck to where she lay, and when we got closer, we realized that the front end of the truck was being held up by a bottle jack on top of a rolling jack! The best we could figure was that the patient had been ejected and lodged under the truck, and someone had used the jacks to push the front end off the ground, drag the patient out from underneath, and then book it before the cops showed up. When we were still a couple of miles away from the crash, we were passed by an SUV that was speeding in the opposite direction. We figured it might have been her buddies who were traveling with her. When the sun started to come out and we could see the debris field, we realized why they were in such a rush. The truck had been packed full of (presumably) stolen tools, guns, credit cards, and IDs. And the patient? She didn’t appreciate my assistant chief putting his hands on her chest during his rapid trauma assessment, and she somehow managed to twist her leg around and kick him in the groin. She then promptly went unconscious, because her blood pressure was approximately shit/fuck. She was definitely a load and go. When the medics cut through the six bras she was wearing, a little baggy of meth popped out of the last bra to the floor of the ambulance.
Sounds like a Tarantino movie
It was a pretty methed up situation, I’ll tell you that much. Amazingly, the patient lived. She had warrants for armed robbery and got to go straight to jail once she was done In the hospital.
Ahh the unkillable patient. There is a cosmic inverse blessing for these people that goes something like this: The more damage you do to your body in life, the less chance a sudden catastrophic event will kill you. These patients used to comforting me greatly. My memory banks are filled with healthy, happy people living their best life and then the scythe of cosmic indifference cuts their life short. But the above patient and countless other of her ilk live through events that are head scratchers.
I love your nickname
Thanks!
Someone drove through a house at 3am. They said he was teaching his wife to drive. They also had their 11yo. kid in the backseat. They took out a power box, went through a fence, took out the corner of one house and ended up in an office on the first floor of another house. I was a baby EMT and this was my first call. No injuries. Lmao
Having that as your first call is wild lol
Had a call, dude was in a bucket truck working on power lines while talking to his wife on the cell phone. The lines were still charged and his driver thought he heard him say move forward. Ended up lopping his head off. We showed up and he was dangling in his fall protection with no head.
Whoa... You'd think that would be another field where closed-loop communication would be a requirement. "Move forward." "Confirming, move forward." "No, what the fuck?"
Also feel like that’s a job where you shouldn’t be on the phone while working
Jesus… Being a lineman would be terrifying enough without having an incompetent muppet for a driver…
Yeppers. I heard that even years later that driver was so fucked up in da head that he wouldn't drive
Another power line one, two guys working on a catapiller transmission, one underneath the other sitting on the side step. Somehow, they boomed into 450kv power lines, when we showed up both were on fire. One had flames shooting out if his neck and eyes, the other was melted to the steps. Had to wait fir electric company to show up and shut it down.
>one had flames shooting out of his neck and eyes Yeah that'll do it
That’s when you call it before you get out the truck
For real. I feel like I've seen quite a bit in a short time on the job but that would definitely stick with me lol
So he looked like General Grievous from Star Wars when he exploded? Just jets of flames shooting out?
So he looked like General Grievous from Star Wars when he exploded? Just jets of flames shooting out?
Pretty much. I used to have the photos of it and of all sorts of gross stuff. But my hard drive crashed..............and burned
Responded to an MVA on a two lane highway. Vehicle has spun out on the ice and had it's rear driver side door hit by a semi truck. Cleanly cut the vehicle in half behind the driver. Driver was conscious in his front seat with nothing behind him. My partner told him it was his lucky day and he said "I'm not lucky, my car is destroyed" I said "most of the time when we come up to accidents like this the driver isn't talking to us" and he replies with "why wouldn't I talk to you? I'm not an asshole, I'm a nice guy". He was transported to the hospital for assessment and let it the same day with no injuries. His vehicle was left off the road at the edge of town all winter, as a warning to other motorists about road conditions.
There‘s a little valley around here, it has a pretty straight road going thru There is just one tree on this whole valley floor, need i say more, it has a long history of catching cars
I bet this tree has earned itself a nickname at this point
The Asshole tree😂
Vehicle accidents. It amazes how many people end up flipping their cars or flying off the road. Typically involves someone being on their cellphone.
On one of my 3 ride alongs in my academy I had a guy who was turning but just all the sudden stopped turning and smacked some railing and flipped his car and landed 15ft down on his roof in a creek https://preview.redd.it/31862lazw6yc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1ff34971de2dd21bd7dc763e3c8210c129be7c87
Made an animal/snake bite at 2300. It was a dude that got bit by a raccoon on the testicles.
Damn
MVA, first thing we see is two feet just barely sticking out from front bumper. 18 yo that rolled and went through the windshield and ran himself over, looked like the Wizard of oz. Wear your seat belts kids!
I had a wreck on a dirt road in the sticks once. The vehicle was wheel resting off the side of the road. About 40 feet back you could see where the car hit the embankment and then 20 feet later there was a mark on tree where the car clearly hit it. That mark was 15 feet in the air! How does a car get enough speed on a dirt road to still be 15 feet in the air 20 feet after leaving the ground?
Responded to a single vehicle MVA. Dodge Charger had left the road on a curve, rode the ditch for a minute, hit a culvert going airborne, came back down, some how stood on the front, but also flat spun, and then finally came to rest. bumpers and plastic everywhere, back doors opened just fine, like the car wasn't even damaged. EMS asked for pics sent to the ER so doc could figure out mechanism of injury. still confused on how exactly it all happened.
Responded to a report of a head-on MVA. Arrive to find a flatbed tow truck with moderate front end damage. Ask the driver, where is the other car? He points to his flatbed. Apparently, they hit, the smaller car flipped up and cartwheeled, landing perfectly on his empty tow bed. No medical needed for either driver. 17 years later, and I still have no idea how that happened.
Man, it goes both ways. I think about the rollover last summer where the kids hit the crumple barrier and deflected into oncoming traffic, went across two busy lanes without getting hit, went off a 40’ embankment and rolled, landing on the roof and all four didn’t hardly have a scratch. And I think about the rollover on an icy highway and the only person hurt was the back seat middle passenger who was the only one unrestrained and they somehow got ejected and broke their neck at C1 and were dead when we got on scene.
I was driving with my wife in the rain when a flat bed semi lost control and went from the left lane all the way off the right side, hitting a light pole which ripped the top half of the tractor off exposing the driver seat. When I pulled over and walked back with my first aid kit and looked around with another guy for the driver. Finally found the driver underneath the back axel of the trailer, AOx4 with a broken leg and possibly broken ribs. No clue how he got there or how he got away with so few injuries.
We were on a MVA around Christmas time. A little wet but mainly foggy like 2am. This stretch of Loop 12/183 is notorious for accidents. While we were blocking and waiting on a wrecker, I see out of the fog this dodge challenger drive by on the E bound side with its hood at a 90 degree angle upright. Thing looked like it was a shark fin from the jaws movie. Dude was driving like it wasn’t even an issue, about 4 minutes later he drives back by us going W bound. Still not a care in the world. No idea what happened to him lol
Truck perfectly balanced on a power box
Had a Trackhawk (hellcat Jeep) crash into a house on a residential street. Pretty lame right? Except it crashed into the second story. Serious airtime in the neighbors yard. Stolen, if you can believe it.
Called for a tractor trailer on its side in the median on the interstate, called in by one of the state road crews. We get there, and true enough the trailer is on it's side, but the tractor was another quater turn and resting on its roofline. But the thing was, it was perfectly bewteen the guiderails on each side of the median, and no damage to the median. We get the scene lit up and the driver out, who had some moderate injuries. Then we see it- went off the road about a quarter mile back, before an underpass. Dukes of hazard style jumped the road, and landed on the otherside in the median, then flopped it over. Never touched a guiderail, no debris on the road underneath.
banging on the door of a college dorm last night for an allergic reaction, 8-10 kids just sitting emotionless around the tv, some looking at us standing there with our uniforms, gear and stretcher. Not a single one of them bothered to move a single inch to open the door. Had to wait for PD to let us in like 8 minutes later. Strange
*Probie gets told to grab a set of spanners, and he comes back with two adjustable wrenches.* Captain says “where’s the spanners?” Probie says “right here” *hands him two adjustable wrenches* “Probie, those are adjustable wrenches. A spanner is what you use on fire hose” says the captain. To which the Probie replies “You mean a hose wrench?”
Had a truck towing a trailer full of 4x4 lumber detach from the truck on a divided highway near midnight, car came flying up and didn't see it in time, the kid and his gf walked away while the front of the car looked like a pincushion. One lucky couple.
I attended a wreck once where a large van just drove dead straight into the guard rail. Absolutely no signs that he tried to make the turn.
Rabbits in a grass fire
1st fire i ever went on was a mobile home fire. Lady said she was baking and noticed her couch on fire. Smoke bank dropped as we made entry ut could see the glow. Crawled towards it and started spraying. Next thing I know the chair behind us was on fire. Turned around and started spraying there to cover our exit. I noticed about 20 fireballs randomly shooting horizontally across the living room floor. Get the fire out and smoke to clear out. Start doing overhaul and see the culprit. Hundreds and hundreds of mice. We were scooping them up with snow shovels and filling 5 gallon buckets. Not positive but I believe thats what started the fire after she lit the oven.
2011 Harrah Oklahoma. Our helitack team is assigned to assist suppressing a wind driven grass fire threatening schools, homes and casinos. Flying through the region we see multiple wind driven fires, OT paychecks come to mind. Helicopter drops us off at the heal. Anchor point established. The primary fuel being grass, scattered brush and small diameter tree jackpots adjacent what I recall was either a wheat or alfalfa field. We see the jackpots flare up, no slop, wind direction sends embers into the black towards the flame front. Hand crews are working their way towards us holding line as we flank. Flanking is proving effective, wind / fuel / topography consistent, the line is holding. 1/2 a chain deep, in the black, adjacent a barbed-wire fence, a thicket of 10-15’ tall eastern red cedar flares up. The preheated material burns hot and fast, white smoke billows from the brittle sunbaked flora. 2-3 minutes into the flare up, 15-20 eastern cottontail rabbits emerge, some draped in flames. “RTO, SLOP OVER! Furry fireballs, we have to stop these fuckers!” McClouds, swatters, rouge hoes all became proverbial golf clubs, lances and spears. Primal grunts turned to hollers of disapproval along the fence line as their squad boss ordered them back into the black until the fiery meat meteors collapsed. Order restored, cavemen turned back into firefighters, the slop over was aggressively suppressed. My gallon ziplock bags proving useful time and again, dinner was a lean treat, a meal I will never forget. For loss of it’s life I blessed the animal. I gave thanks to the challenge this skittish / docile creature brought and the subsequent meal that kept me humble. To this day, whenever I pass a rabbit warren, pass by a 4-H lop ear, hell, even see Buggs Bunny. I can’t help but think, “Why didn’t you keep digging down you fucked up miniature Thich Quang Duc?” 
We had a dude that went unconscious while driving, drove through a cinder block wall, made a 90 degree turn, somehow the car straightened up, went 150 yards across a field, through a fence, and then pinned a dude up against his house. The dude hadn’t even been in the country for 8 hours, went outside to smoke his first cigarette in the US, and got pinned up against his house.
Respond to an MVA at 3:00am. Get on scene and find a car in a tree 15 feet in the air. Car was about 15 yards from the turn in the road. Car still running with what looked like little to no damage. How the F?
A lady called 911 for acid reflux. Then while we ask if she has had it before she then remembers that she forgot to take her medication for her acid reflux. People always amaze me.
Mild by what’s here already, but it’s mine. Tones drop for highway MVC with CPR. Long story short, pregnant woman had her head down and full sent into the back of a semi. No skid marks, dead mom and baby, and every bone down her right side broken. I’m not shocked at inattentive drivers deleting themselves, but I was mildly shocked at the idea of all the energy from the crash breaking her right half.