Hardened reporter?
Because of my job, I know a lot of police lingo. When I look at the real-time California Highway Patrol traffic reports, It's not a bunch of senseless codes. For instance, "poss 1144" and "1039 air ops" mean, respectively, "possible fatality" and "start a medical helicopter." Such calls are virtually always actual fatalities, not just possible ones. They don't generally affect me, because there's just no way I could personalize everything I see without going mentally insane. But one call did jar me tonight.I happened to glance at the CHP site and saw that someone had gotten into an accident while using a quad-runner (one of those little four-wheel all-terrain things that are smaller than cars). An air ambulance had been called, then canceled as the man was pronounced dead at the scene. Fatalities take longer to investigate, so it was while before they called for a tow truck.
But then, more than three hours after the initial 7:45 p.m. accident, crews at the scene were asking for a chaplain. The man's wife had gone out looking for her husband and had seen the tow truck hauling away her husband's truck and quad-runner. That's how she learned what I already knew.
Why did I write such sadness on my blog? Maybe it's because someone said yesterday that I'm one of those heartless media types. Though he quickly assured me it was a joke, I do sometimes wonder if I'm hardened. I remember, as a teenager, climbing through some woods with friends so we could see an accident that had closed the freeway. It was the first time I'd seen so much wreckage strewn over such a great distance, and the first time I'd seen a sheet covering a body. Even then, I didn't personalize it. I didn't think of the lives that had been permanently turned upside down while a camper crossed the center-divide and smashed a Honda into pieces.
I sometimes wonder if I, the person who does not cry, am lacking some fundamental feelings. But then I looked at a Web site and suddenly felt compassion for a woman who had just seen a tow truck and learned of the death of her husband. Maybe I'm not completely hardened.
Posted by Layla at 12:26 AM, July 11, 2004
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