We covered this a couple of days back in “Everybody remember where we parked!” Now The Officer Tatum comes back with another more impressive and gut-wrenching angle and better insight.
We covered this a couple of days back in “Everybody remember where we parked!” Now The Officer Tatum comes back with another more impressive and gut-wrenching angle and better insight.
Address for Donations, Complaints, Brickbats, and — oh yes — Donations
Your Say
Where the Sidewalk Ends
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.
by Shel Silverstein
My Back Pages
Search American Digest’s Back Pages
The People Yes
The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
The Vault
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
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Man, that was pretty close. Kudos to the brave Cop for saving the pilot’s life.
Now who or what will save the world from Covid?
According to “recent studies,” (unknown if they are legit or not) MARIJUANA may be the CURE for Covid!
Seriously—- https://nypost.com/2020/05/21/scientists-believe-cannabis-could-help-prevent-treat-coronavirus/
Will the government switch from ‘everyone must wear masks’ and ‘everyone must get vaxxed’ to
‘everybody must get stoned?’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnoxKXkPqEE
Welcome to the United States Of Idiocracy.
There is a video taken by a bystander on the same side of the tracks but much further over to the left side. He is very nearly hit with debris from the plane after the train hits it.
There’s something very wrong here in that this second video clearly shows yellow police tape strung up on the side roads, and closing off the side street to keep the bystanders away from the actual train crossing.
Question: If the police had ample time to neatly cordon off the area with tape, why did they not alert the train dispatcher via their emergency procedures that there was an aircraft on the tracks?
Question: Given this much time, why did they wait until (almost literally) the last second to extricate the pilot from the wreckage?
Take a look at that second video with close regard to the crime scene tape, and ask yourself how long it would have taken to neatly string and secure all that tape, and then review the two questions above. Something is a little weird about this.
Too much perfection is a mistake.
What part of the video was anti-liberal? It was removed for some reason.
Fixed that with a new video. Even more detail.
Each officer on an emergency scene for a traffic accident is assigned a task, one of them being to secure the scene by blocking off traffic with their car or orange cones and blocking off pathways if needed with yellow tape. This is done to keep others safe and to keep gawkers and busybodies with their smartphones from getting in the way and delaying help for the injured.
Officers are also trained to wait for paramedics and not to drag people from the wreckage, because they could end up killing them if their neck is broken or a bone punctures a major artery and they bleed to death. The injured person ideally should be assessed and stabilized before moving them.
In this situation, the police had no choice and had to quickly drag this man out of the wreckage and to safety. They clearly risked their lives to do so.
In busy areas such as this one, there are often multiple lines of trains using those tracks. I’m sure the dispatchers were rushing to contact the railroad companies that use those lines. My husband’s fire department preplans for these types of emergencies and they have emergency contact information for railroads, airports, utilities, underground pipelines, the FBI, etc. But it takes time to contact those emergency numbers and for those companies to radio the train to stop. There probably wasn’t enough time.
Even then, when a train engineer sees an accident up ahead, they have only a split second to decide whether to make a forced stop or not. Many of these trains are carrying highly hazardous, flammable, and deadly chemicals, and stopping the train must be done slowly so as not to derail. By the time an engineer sees something on the track, it’s often too late to stop on time.
In my area, we have freight trains and commuter trains on double tracks. Some of these are express trains, meaning they are traveling at a much higher rate of speed and do not stop at all stations. You never want to be in bumper-to-bumper traffic waiting for a light to change and straddling those tracks because you won’t get out of the way in time to keep from being hit by an oncoming train. These officers are to be commended for their quick thinking and for saving this man’s life.
Exactly so, Rose. Exactly so. Thanks for laying this out.