Saturday, July 08, 2006

After the Rainstorm.

An email from the Elmira-Chemung Transportation Council:

"The two truckers that lost their lives in this incident could see that the water was crossing in front of them a little higher than the existing pavement; however both assumed it was water crossing the road and figured they could drive through it slowly, not knowing of course that there was no road left."

Note how deep the gully is. Now imagine how the truckers saw it. Surely, it must have looked like a pool of water flowing across the lanes.

Please do not drive into a flooded roadway. Not even slowly, thinking to back out if it gets deep. You may not get the chance.

I used to attempt to cross a shallow-looking flooded highway. (Because a Tracker has lots of clearance.) Never again.

pb
Little Pond

3 comments:

Karen of Scottsdale said...

How tragic! We have a similar problem here where summer rains can cause flash flooding, even in areas where is not raining. People are warned all the time not to drive into a flooded roadway. Last year we watched the news as horses were being rescued from an overturned trailer when a driver thought he could make it across the flood road. The horses survived, he did not.

The county will send you a bill for your rescue, especially if you drive through a roadway that is marked do not enter when flooded.

Darlene said...

Yikes, those poor truckers. There was no way they could have known what it was like under the water they saw. And realistically, this could happen to any of us!

Salar37_Shushan said...

I know I wouldn't have tried it! Somebody always does though. In my last job, my husband found himself rescuing some of them.

Susan