Traffic tie ups

[CoolBreeze]

"Back in the day" when there was a traffic accident, cops, a wrecker, and ambulance were called and the scene cleared up quickly. This is pretty much still the case all over Europe.

When I joined the fire dept in 75, we didn't run accidents unless called. Now, every fender bender involves at least two fire trucks, an ambulance, a couple of cops or more, sometimes the wrecker and often the supervisors. We used to move quickly to open the lanes. By the time I left, a minor accident turned into an hour long affair. Too many people standing around shootin the breeze sometimes.

Add two hours (or more) if a volunteer fire dept is involved. They don't get a lot of action, but when they do, they like to milk it for all it's worth. Usually in no hurry at all.

Right now, I-64 westbound near Scott Depot is closed as of 8am. A tractor trailer wrecked and killed it's driver. The truck caught fire. As far as I know, no other vehicles were involved. This accident happened around 1:30 this morning. So it's almost EIGHT HOURS LATER, the guy is dead, and the Interstate is blocked in the westbound lane, while the eastbound is down to one lane.

There is no reason for this.

[genlock]

The incident commander must wait for the media so he can get some
face time on the 6 O'clock news. Very important for volunteers.

[CoolBreeze]

Exactly right.

[Hoosier Daddy]

You can thank the creation of the cell phone and the trial lawyers for this mess. First, every emergency services agency now wants a policy that over-reacts and over-responds to every unknown call. Therefore, every crash gets full police, fire and EMS response if there are "unknown injuries, unknown entrapment" because WHAT IF they are needed (<3% of the time) and we didn't send them? Attorneys have a big hand in this, because of the number of incident response requests and 9-1-1 center tape holds requested and the attention-getting litigation that ensues when 9-1-1 makes a mistake. Agency administrators want to be able to defend their actions as being overly cautious rather than sending a bare minimum response which might need to be upgraded once that first unit arrives. 'Precious minutes lost which could have saved a life', the attorneys will say, and the fire chiefs and 9-1-1 directors will cower in a corner.

25 years ago, people actually stopped at a crash site and asked if anyone was hurt. Then they drove to a pay phone or a neighbor's house and requested the appropriate help. Nowadays, the crash gets a drive-by with 50 or 60 people calling it in via cell phone. "Not sure if anyone is hurt or not, but it looks really bad", so we send the entire 3rd Batallion just in case. If you add the calls from people who can't remember if they are at the 16 or 17 or 18 milepost when they saw the crash and have no idea whether they are in the northbound or westbound lane, well, many 9-1-1 centers send someone to every address they are given "just to make sure".

Not sure if there is a good answer to this.

[Mr. Jones]

Not sure if there is a good answer to this.

I just read it.

[Big Media]

I was traveling east on I64 yesterday. Somewhere around the Blue Sulpher bridge, about a mile east of the mall, there was a single vehicle in the ditch on the west bound side. One car, one occupant, no injuries.

This minor non-collision required two fire trucks, two EMS crews, one B-ville Police car, and a wrecker. One lane was blocked and traffic was backed up for at least a mile.

I absolutely agree with Jerry on this. This kind of overreaction causing this kind of delay to other motorists needs to stop.

[genlock]

The report pads are out.
The cops, ems and firemen fill them out.
The more reports, the bigger slice of the budget pie.
The more time on scene, the bigger number in box 19 or whatever.
The reason a lane is blocked is so that the excessive number of responders
is not in hazard to be run over by gawkers.

[CoolBreeze]

You're not far from wrong:

For over a year for instance, we ran an alarm call 2 to three time a day to the same building. It was that 3 am call that got to me the most. What was setting off the alarm?

Cockroaches.

It's the Captains job to inform Metro what they have found, and I always said "cockroaches in the smoke detectors". I was told by my superiors to stop saying this, and just to say "malfunctioning detector". I refused, because it WASN'T malfunctioning. So, they transferred me to another station.

I know what your question is: Why didn't they get rid of the cockroaches? Here's why: Municipal fire depts (and others) receive their budget on the amount of Calls they run. In the old days, there were many more runs than what are made today. With proper smoke and fire detectors, and older buildings being torn down or updated, the fire depts have little to do COMPARED to the old days. So ways to get those run numbers up were devised. Usually this means to come up with some lame excuse to run fender benders and the like. But sometimes a superior will take advantage of an oddity, like cockroaches. Our run numbers that year exceeded the norm thanks to cockroaches, and we got more money into our budget.

Two things happened as a result: You were inconvenienced as a driver, and your taxes were raised to offset the larger budget... thanks to those roaches.

[CoolBreeze]

Bye the way... this traffic tie-up on I-64 (which is STILL going on at 6pm) is a perfect example of what I'm talking about:

Officials had directed people to the new off ramp just ahead of the accident. That way, they could easily go straight and get right back on the Interstate. Only one problem: The is a traffic light at the top of the ramp. Hundreds of cars had to wait in line for that light to turn. Most of the time, there were NO cars coming through that intersection, but the Lemmings that we call Americans didn't have the guts or sense to run that light. More importantly, THERE WERE NO OFFICIALS (police) at that intersection to control traffic! Why the hell not?

Because they were probably too busy at the scene getting their pictures taken. This is outrageous.

[SHADOW]

Okay... I listen to the local scanner frequencies, and here is how it went down. About midnight a call went out about a single car accident at the 40 mile marker location of the new Scott Depot Interchange. A fire truck and ambulance arrived on the scene only to find the vehicle had already left. They reported to dispatch, car body parts, paint scraping left on a retaining wall, and tire tracks in the snow at the site of impact. No vehicle. About fifteen minutes later, report of another auto accident at the same location. The emergency crews arrived to find FIVE cars wrecked by skidding on the black ice on the interstate surfice. Three of the cars so badly damaged that wreckers were needed. The other two left on their own after making an accident report with the sheriff's deputies. The officers should have asked for salt trucks. When they didn't, Dispatched should have asked them if they wanted the DOH. It's not rocket science. It's common sense.

I went sleep and was awaken at 1:30 A.M. when dispatch called out the fire, law enforcement and ambulance for yet another accident at the same site. This time an 18 wheeler hit the retaining wall under the overpass of the new exchange, and burst into flame with the driver trapped in the cab. Five different fire departments were called into the scene, one each from Cabell and Kanawha Counties, the other three from Putnam. Five tankers pumped water into the fire. After a while, the scene commander noticed the water had frozen so badly the rescue workers were having trouble walking. Since fuel had spilled from the truck, he asked dispatch to call out a hazmat cleanup team. He also requested Department of Transportation to the scene, because the truck was licensed by the state of Indianapolis. A few minutes later he called for State Highway DOH to spead salt on the black ice caused by all the water they dumped onto the fire. When the Dept of Highway snow plows arrived , they could not get on the scene because of the fire and fuel. So they sat in their trucks until they were asked to help with traffic control.That's when one of the workers was hit by a car, and was tranported to the hospital.

The driver's death and the state worker hit by a car, might have been averted if Putnam Dispatch had DOH snow trucks salt the highway after the first six wrecks. Just the facts. Channel 8 said the wreck happened on the high sky overpass... it didn't'. Channel 3 said the accident happened at 2:00 A.M. Neither made any mention of the accidents of an hour earlier at the same location. I don't watch channel 13. The reason westbound cars were not allowed to exit the off rank and go directly to the on ramp around the accident, is that the scene commander had emergency response vehicles going EAST IN THE WEST BOUND LANE and did not want them to meet head-on traffic. That lasted until about 4 A.M.

The police and firemen don't like cameras and reporters, and keep them at a distance. They DO LIKE the cute young females, but don't tell them what they aren't smart enough to ask. That's why the only offical spokesman, was a Fire Dept. Chaplin. Think about how your life is in the hands of under-trained or incompetant personel.

[CoolBreeze]

Man!.. that's CRIMINAL! If they didnt call for salt after 5 cars had wrecked, someone's head should roll. If the trucking company gets wind of the "real story", someone's will.

Let me add something about the Turnpike mess to this thread:

While ALL THOSE PEOPLE were stranded on the Turnpike without food or water for 20 friggin hours in the middle of the night into the next day, the northbound lanes were OPEN! Why in hell didn't someone take those people food and water and fuel to keep their engines running? With all the little kids and no bathrooms or ANYTHING, NO official had the common sense to use the northbound lane to help them!

Is this the kind of incompetence that we must deal with after the feds and state purchased all those damned emergency parade vehicles that they display all over the counties? Come on people! What is this... some damned 3rd world country??

[AmpedNow]

Man!.. that's CRIMINAL! If they didnt call for salt after 5 cars had wrecked, someone's head should roll. If the trucking company gets wind of the "real story", someone's will.

Let me add something about the Turnpike mess to this thread:

While ALL THOSE PEOPLE were stranded on the Turnpike without food or water for 20 friggin hours in the middle of the night into the next day, the northbound lanes were OPEN! Why in hell didn't someone take those people food and water and fuel to keep their engines running? With all the little kids and no bathrooms or ANYTHING, NO official had the common sense to use the northbound lane to help them!

Is this the kind of incompetence that we must deal with after the feds and state purchased all those damned emergency parade vehicles that they display all over the counties? Come on people! What is this... some damned 3rd world country??

Doesn't the turnpike have its own plows and stuff? Blame them if they can't even plow their own road that they overcharge everyone to drive on. Or worse, not have enough foresight to send someone out to go help.

As a side note, we need more traffic cams around the state along the major highways. They would know instantly if something was wrong along the way.

With that said, the weather people underestimated the intensity of this storm... 2-3 inch per hour snowfall rates is insane. I'm hard pressed to think of another time when I remember it snowing so hard.

But I agree. Send the national guard out with supply trucks to help those stranded people. In Virginia, there were over 500 vehicles stranded along I-81 that night. The national guard made it to most of them.