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Rescue 911

In November, the roads are slick in Alaska. Everyone knows this. But the shiny gadgety buttons in my parents’ brand new GMC Yukon were more important to my 17-year-old self than paying attention to the roads.

My sister was in the passenger seat; I was driving her to a birthday party on top of West Hill. I was going too fast and the hairpin corner came too soon.

I slid through the curve and into a small pickup coming the opposite way. I pushed him into the ditch and his truck rolled onto its side. As everything came to a stop and time restarted, I jumped out of the car and found the driver climbing out of his driver’s window, now facing the sky.

I shouted to him, asked if he was okay, if he was injured at all. The only six words he has ever spoken to me: You need to call the cops.

Even though Homer is a small town, I didn’t know the family that lived in the house across the street. I didn’t even know their name. I stood on their porch, my whole body shaking, and prayed that someone would be home and let me use their phone.

When the operator answered, I told her there had been an accident. She asked which area, and I told her that it was the hairpin corner of West Hill. She rephrased her question: Which city? I hadn’t even known that our emergency number covered multiple cities.

There was another accident while I was in Fairbanks, a coworker in a company vehicle had ran a stoplight and hit a van. She called me while she was still in the car.

I tried to calm her down, to recite the facts to me without crying. The airbag had deployed. She didn’t know how the other person was doing. She was sure she was okay.

I convinced her to get out and check on the other vehicle while I called the police. I relayed her position and approximate time of the accident.

The company vehicle was totaled and the others had minor injuries. I attributed my calmness to not being directly involved in the accident.

How many times have you had to call your emergency number?

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thankfully i have never had to call. the two accidents i had as a teen were not bad enough that we wanted to involve anybody but ourselves. the time my car was vandalized we just called the police department non-emergency line.

the only time that a call needed to be placed, i was far too shaken up to do it. someone else called while i stood on the side of the road trying not to go into shock and start screaming.

Yea, I didn’t count the time that a car hit me on my bicycle and I asked someone to call 911 for me. That was fun, all of the fire trucks and ambulances that showed up for my bruised leg.

The only time we had to call 911 was when we hit the moose May 1992. We actually sent someone into Anchor Point to call. We waited for 2 hours (might be a slight exaggeration) for the troopers to show, because it was memorial day weekend. Then we got a ride to the Homer Hospital by the people who stopped to help us. I guess in Homer it is faster just to drive to the hospital.

We just had to call them last week. I was gonna blog about it but got to busy. A truck was abandon in front of our house at 2am last week with booze, 2 rifles, 2 ladies purses, and 2 cell phones. While our neighbor and Marty were checking the truck out 2 men who didn’t leave the truck there showed up, hopped in the truck and tore out of there refusing to wait for the police to arrive or answer any of our questions.

I called 911 when the showed up a week later and pulled out a rifle on our neighbors.

Half our neighborhood is filled with cops and Christians, the other half are crazies and meth-heads. Very strange combo.

Just once.
I was coaching at a soccer tournament and one of my players ran into someone and fell down or something; anyway, he thought he was broken so I had to call the ambulance, but it turned out he was just a big baby and had bruised his hip.

Rescue 911

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