You will no doubt recall that devastating rollover crash last month in Raleigh, North Carolina, that totalled out a nearly-new tiller truck. (Review the Firegeezer report HERE.) Within a couple of days it was learned that there was a video of the accident caught on the “dashcam” of a transit bus, but it was embargoed while the accident investigation was ongoing.
WTVD
Jeff Harkey, the publisher of FireNews.net has been keeping an eye out for its release and advised us that it has been made available. Now you can view the crash as it happened. The latest explanation that has come out is that the driver had decided at the last moment to turn at that intersection and he was (obviously) going too fast.
The video that you can view HERE appears to show that the fire truck was going through a red light, but it looks like all the cross traffic was stopped for it. There was also a “red light violation” camera operating and it caught the accident from the viewing angle of the truck’s path. STATter911 has posted that one and you can view it HERE.
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Perhaps I’ll check in to what’s going on over there in Greece with their uncontrolled wildfires nibbling at the edges of Athens. I am not so concerned as I ought to be about them because they go through this routine every year and still they haven’t put any fire protection resources in place to both prevent them and to attack them when it happens. The citizens are rightfully outraged every year when these fires sweep into a city and burn down hundreds or thousands of homes and not a single fire engine shows up. This is followed by some grand mayoral posturing in front of the cameras and then a month later the Prime Minister fires the poobah who is in charge of the national fire protection policy. Great promises are made and then the next year it happens again.
Now these aren’t usually homes that have been planted in outlying woodland areas that are vulnerable to this type of disaster, such as they do in California. By and large, these are established urban areas that are literally defenseless as the out-of-control fires just roll on into town overwhelming the one or two pumpers that try to save one of the 200 houses that are burning. It’s a shame when a government becomes so corrupt that it cannot provide basic protection against these things. The citizens are helpless.
But we’re going to be ready to help our citizens, so let’s get this equipment checked out. I’ll go start the coffee.
