It seems to me that too many of these "Emergency of the Month" stories are about motor vehicle accidents. I don't want to give the impression that that's all we do but, this month I have to tell you about a weird one.

Thanks to the Air-Bag and seat belt this driver wasn't seriously hurt but his car was pretty much a write off. It's always good to see the driver standing beside the vehicle when you pull up because that usually indicates the extent of the injuries you'll have to deal with.

There were a couple of vehicles parked on the side of the highway. That was how we found this accident. There was only one car involved and it was on the grass beside the road. What made this unusual was that it was 30 meters off the road and up a hill. To add to the bizarre nature of this accident was the fact that when we examined the scene it looked like the car was going down the hill when it crashed.

Reconstructing motor vehicle accidents is the responsibility of the police. They are trained and do it quite well. Firefighters approach it as something of a hobby. We mostly rely on guess work, but some guys are pretty good at it. Here is the evidence that was immediatly obvious.

• the car was 30 meters off the road on the right side
• it was damaged on all four sides
• slightly uphill there was a mark in the dirt that looked like the car had dug it and flipped over
• there were two small trees knocked over about 10 meters and 30 meters east of the car
• there is about 100 meters of guardrail along the side of the highway immediately east of the accident site

I was having a hard time figuring out how this guy had managed to get his car so far up this slope. I looked at the length of the guardrail and thought there was no way he could have left the road at the far end. Then one of the guys took me down there and showed me some marks on the shoulder of the road.

Our reconstruction guessed that the driver had dozed off and awakened just in time to see the end of the guardrail coming straight at him. He made the correct choice of going for the ditch instead of back out into traffic. He went down into the ditch, drove through some bullrushes and up the hill. He made it right up to the top of the hill and knocked down the first tree. Continueing along the top of the hill, he took out the second tree and then started down. Here it looks like the front bumper dug into the ground and the car flipped end over end, dumping the contents of the trunk and landing on the wheels. In all he traveled over 100 meters on rough ground up a 10 meter high hill and finished it off with a full flip in the pike position. - Level of Difficulty: 6.4

He's lucky to walk away from it.

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FIRES These are stories about recent fires;

• House Fire
• Tanker Truck to a Garbage Bin Fire
• Tanker Trunk to a Hopper Fire
• Car Fire
• Warehouse Fire
• House Fire
• Apartment Fire
• House Fire

MOTOR VEHICLE ACCIDENTS These are stories about car and truck accidents;

• Single Car Rollover
• Head-on Crash
• Rush Hour Accident
• Single Car Flip
• Car vs. Garbage Truck
• Van Rollover
• Sport Utility Vehicle Rollover
• 500m from the Dealership
• Left Turn Mistake

RESCUES These are stories about rescues we have made;

• Man Trapped in a Trailer

HAZARDOUS MATERIALS These are stories about emergencies involving Hazardous Materials;

• No Calls

MEDICAL We go to a lot of medical calls, but it is not fair to the people involved for me to describe their medical problems here. I can tell you about one incident and how it effected me;

• Stress

OTHER Sometimes interesting things happen around the Firehall;

• Skunk in the Firehall