It Can Always Be Worse!!
It's been a real downer of a week here in the middle of Iowa. We
had torrential rains and thunderstorms last Sunday night, Monday
night and then again on Tuesday night on top of already saturated
ground. The results have been devastating with loss to crops,
homes, vehicles and endless detours to get anywhere you might need
to go. Three people died when they tried to cross a flooded road
and were swept away in the flood waters. Not a good week!! Flood
waters have receded now and my wife and I went out for a ride this
morning down around the Des Moines river towards the South East and
it wasn't pretty. Anyway, that is just info to give you an idea of
where my heads is at for this ride today. So, we get out and the
temps are great, a bit overcast which is, also, great because it's
been so hot here and we have a very enjoyable ride and are on our
way home. Here is where the real story begins!! I've been taking
all back roads since about 9AM this morning. We stopped for lunch
in Oskaloosa, IA about Noon and it's now 1PM and I decide to jump
on I-80 for the last 30 miles as I'm getting tired and the heat is
now in the high 80's and the Interstate will get us home in about
15 minutes. We get on the Interstate and after about a whole 2
minutes we come to a screaching hault and into a slow moving
back-up that looks to go on forever. Being the type "double AA"
personality that I am with an extra helping of "hurry-up" syndrome,
I am not happy with this situation!! In fact I'm furious!! What a
bone head decision to ruin a perfectly wonderful ride by getting on
the expressway. We endure this for about 30 minutes and then we can
start seeing the flashing lights and their are a lot of them. I
tell my wife this is really bad. It was all of that and more. We
see that traffic going East on I-80 has been completely stopped. We
see a vehicle that looks like it exploded. We see 5 bodies laying
in the road covered with blankets and towels. How could this happen
on a perfectly lovely day on a two lane interstate with no entry or
exit ramps even close?? We get home and go on-line and learn that a
van crossed the median at a very high rate of speed and hit a car
going east bound head-on. Five were dead and the 6th was air lifted
to a Des Moines hospital in critical condition. I-80 was shortly
closed in both directions and still is as I write this, for Police
to try and determine what happened and clean-up the mess. My
inconvenience became infinitesimal to the poor victims of this
tragedy. My delay was miniscule to the delay of those motorist
going eastbound, they would be there for hours. This was not the
ending I had hoped for when we started our ride this morning. This
was not the ending I had hoped for after a very trying week full of
stories from our friends and co-workers about losing everything in
the flood waters. I had nothing to complain about. I shut my mouth,
rode home and said a prayer.
6 Comments
http://www.kcci.com/news/24632988/detail.html
A mini van going West on I-80 with 7 persons on board, including 3 teenagers and a 20 year old, with a 19 year old driver, allegedly clipped the side of a semi then veered across the median and struck a car head-on with 2 persons. The 2 people in the car were killed and 4 persons in the mini-van died. The Police suspect the driver of the mini-van may have fallen asleep. The driver of the mini-van and 2 passengers were the only survivors the driver is hospitalized.
There has not beem all that much detail yet but I will update when new facts are disclosed. After reading the article again I did not get all the facts correct in what I outlined above but I don't think it matters that much. Six people are dead. Thid is exactly the type of vehicle and occupants I listed in my recent blog about " who are you riding with" and profiling the types of drivers I do my best to avoid. Whether the 19 year old driver of the van with 6 young people aboard was distracted by something going on in the van, texting or fell asleep makes little difference. His distraction or driver error is responsible for the death of 6 people. That will be a terrible burdern to live with for the rest of your life. What is truly sad is that if you were in a car or on a motorcycle that was headed in the opposite direction as the car was in this incident there would be little if anything you could do to avoid it. The classic "in the wrong place at the wrong time" scenario.
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