Emergency on Highway 2

I was trying to think of a witty way to begin this blog so that it wouldn't sound so serious, but I can't think of anything. So I may as well just say what happened today. I will preface this by saying that no one was seriously injured.

Sharleen and I were driving back to our shop in Snohomish from Skykomish, which is in the mountains just inside of King County. We were a little early because we finished the road that we needed to work on, and we had business to tend to at the shop (e.g. cleaning our truck because it's covered in mud from all the rain, taking care of the new brushcutter because we're only just getting it back from the mechanics on Monday and needed to work out the details today). Also, the fair opened today and we were fairly (no pun intended) certain that the traffic would hold us up for at least thirty minutes. All of this by way of explaining why Shar and I were headed east on highway 2 at 3:13 this afternoon.

Between the towns Startup and Sultan, there is a road called (fittingly) Sultan-Startup Rd. It loops around highway 2. As we drove past, a silver car was stopped on the highway, left blinker on, preparing to turn left onto the Sultan-Startup road. We were driving in the opposite direction.

When we were directly to the right of the silver car (in terms of distance, my body was about 10 feet away), a red pick-up truck slammed in the back of the silver car.

Ever fill a balloon with confetti and then pop it? That's what the collision looked like. Glass sprayed everywhere and the silver car shot forward about 500 feet. Its back tires exploded. Whatever the exhaust pipe is connected to fell out of the back of the car and dragged along the pavement. I saw the initial crash to my left out the driver's side window; the rest I saw in the rear view mirror.

We pulled off the road as soon as we were able to, about .4 miles from the crash. Shar called 911 because I was driving (though she had to use my phone because she has a Blackberry and can do everything on it except make a phone call. It was one humorous moment of this whole ordeal.). Then we looked at each other and both said, "We have to go back."

See, we're both certified flaggers. It is recommended, though not required, that in an emergency situation a certified flagger handle traffic until the road is clear. So we whipped back around and got back to the scene of the accident before the cops got there. I grabbed my gear and a sign and started flagging immediately; Shar (former Navy, so she knows what she's doing) went to check on the drivers.

The guy in the silver car was a younger guy, probably 25 years old or so. The man driving the red pick-up was an older gentleman, probably between 60 and 65. The steering wheel hit him in the chest and he was complaining of chest pain. Considering the speed of the impact and how little damage there was to the truck, I think it was definitely good that EMS took him to the hospital because I worry that he may have taken the brunt of the impact in his chest. He didn't even tap the breaks before he hit, so he was moving really fast and may have had internal damage.

So anyway, in order to deal with the incredibly high volume of traffic (remember, the fair opened today), I had to don my orange and practically dive in front of the traffic in order to get them to stop. Once the Sultan police, sheriff, and state patrol (yes, representatives of all levels of law enforcement) and EMS showed up about three minutes after Shar was able to start flagging the other end of the "zone." We controlled the traffic for about an hour while the cops cleared the whole mess from the road. They kept thanking us for stopping to help.

Once the vehicles were cleared (the sheriff drove was able to drive the truck into a driveway, but a tow truck had to come for the silver car), the troopers used their cars to block traffic in both directions where Shar and I had been standing so that we could go back to our truck and leave. We got out of there around 4:15. And actually, we weren't even late getting back to the shop. We weren't able to take care of the equipment like we wanted to, but we were so glad to be able to go home on time (more or less) that we didn't mind losing the usual "close down" window that we get on Thursdays.

So the adrenaline is still pumping pretty hard, but at least it's over. I think what scared me the most was being to close to the accident the second that it happened. If the silver car had been pointing its wheels toward the road he was going to turn onto (like 80% of drivers seem to do), he would have careened right into us. It was a close call.

I am glad we were able to help. My heart stopped pounding as soon as EMS showed up, and then it was just like a normal day at work (albeit with a LOT more traffic than I'm used to. Then again, I usually work county roads, not state highways). The day had been pretty slow and lazy, and then it exploded into a grand finale just before the end. What a day.