Small Town Life

I walked my dogs down at the River Walk this morning and was on my way back to my truck when I heard someone yelling for help. Moments before, just when I had reached the spot on the trail were I could see the parking area, I had watched through the trees as something big came around the bend in the road above me heading toward the small bridge that crosses the river. (The road out of town climbs as it reaches the bridge and the parking area for the River Walk is just below where the bridge starts.) I was annoyed when I saw how fast this thing was moving because everyone seems to come around that bend at an unsafe speed. This is dangerous because there are trees on the south side of the road that block your view of the bridge.

When I saw this vehicle coming I looked around for my dogs to make sure they were not up on or near the road. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a blur of motion up on the road near the bridge and heard the crash of metal on metal. It was the same kind of noise that a big empty trailer makes when it bounces up in the air and slams back down after hitting a bump. Next there was this long pause of absolute silence and for some reason I found that more disconcerting than the loud crash.

I again looked around for my dogs and found them sniffing around the trees surrounding the parking area. I then glanced back up to the road and saw a white truck pulling a flatbed trailer with a load of hay bales piled on it stopped on the south side of the road and just east of the bridge. A man riding a bike was heading in the direction of the bridge. For a second I thought maybe the truck had almost hit the man on the bicycle. By that time I had reached my truck and starting calling my dogs. I heard the sound of running feet up on the road and saw the man who I thought was riding a bike race back from the bridge and down the side road that leads to the parking area. He was shouting for help. He got half way down the side road and then turned around and started running back up to the main road. I yelled out to him and he stopped, turned around, and ran back down to the parking area asking for help and saying he or it was in the river. I turned and started running toward the river and stopped short when I saw what was there.

A sprayer had gone off the bridge and was now lying on its right side in and across the water. I could hear someone screaming inside the wreckage. It took me a few seconds to understand what I was actually seeing. Something about those huge tires looming in the air above me seemed alien in a way. As I stood there wondering what to do I heard the man who ran down from the road say they had already called the police.

I turned around and ran back to the parking lot and quickly put my dogs in their kennel and then raced back to the river bank. I could still hear the man screaming so I knew he was alive but I was worried that the cab was submerged in the water and that he was in danger of drowning. I wasn't sure how I was going to get across the river without wading into it but then noticed that the rig had taken all of the bridge guardrail with it as it went over and a long section of it stretched across from my side of the river to the sprayer. I used the guardrail as a balance beam and carefully walked across it to the other bank.

I made my way through the brush and around the sprayer arm to the cab and found the driver. He had been throw out of his seat and now lay on his back across what was left of the cab, his head and shoulder propped up on what had been the passenger side roof. The shape of the cab had been so distorted by the impact with the ground that it looked like both seats were now jammed toward the driver's side of the cab. He was badly hurt and in pain. He wasn't wearing a seatbelt when he went off the bridge but seeing how the dashboard of the cab was now about six inches away from the driver's seat this probably kept him from loosing his legs.

He had a smear of blood on his forehead and a bloody scrape on his left ear. He told me that his shoulder was killing him, that his right leg was numb, and that his hip hurt. He was trying to get up but I told him not to move. Help was coming and I would stay there until it arrived. I spent my time with him keeping him still, talking to him, and picking broken bits of the windshield off his face and out of his ears. I also put my hat, the one I am wearing in the photo below, over his face to keep more pieces of glass and other debris from falling onto his face. It seem to take forever but help finally arrived and I got out of the way as the fire department and the paramedics tended to him. It took about 20-30 minutes to remove him from the cab.

From what he and the men in the truck told me, something like this happened. The man in the sprayer, the one I thought was traveling too fast, came around the bend just when the men in the truck pulling the bales of hay were on the bridge. The man in the sprayer said he had no brakes and "there wasn't enough room for both of us there." The man driving the truck steered as far to the right as he could and the sprayer started passing him but then the driver side spray arm caught on two of the bales of hay, pulling them off the trailer. The driver of the truck watched in the side view mirror as the sprayer hit the guardrail and then fall off the bridge.

They airlifted the poor man in the sprayer to Denver Swedish Hospital and say his condition is serious. He has a broken clavicle, broken ribs, a dislocated hip and right knee, and maybe a punctured lung.

While typing the above sentence my phone rang and when I answered it I learned the man in the sprayer, Gary Brown, had died.

I feel like I should have done more but I am also glad I was there when he needed me.

I really did think he was going to make it.