I did what I could do.  At first I told the young man, "You're going to be OK, help is on the way."   Although he did not appear to be conscious, I didn't want him to feel alone.  His deep convulsive breaths gave some hope.  He was hanging on.   His body was strewn sideways across the backseat, right leg at a right angle to his torso, pinned to mush under the steering column.  His left thigh bone protruded from the wrangled flesh, thigh muscle inside out.  His left foot dangled from sinew.  Dust and debris covered him and hid the red of the blood.  It looked like a war scene after the bombs stop.  The frazzled young lady who was on the cell phone pacing down the off ramp was near.  She is what made me stop and why I also knew that help was on the way.  ... Read more.

When I saw smoke coming from inside the dashboard, I ran back to my car and grabbed a sawzall.  The source of the fire was hidden beneath.  There was no front end left.   The motor was at rest some 25 feet from where the car hit the tree.  I cut through the dashboard and instructed another man to pull it up.  A NYS Trooper appeared with a fire extinguisher and doused the source through the opening made.  This is the last I remember of the man breathing but at last help was here.  Another responder pointed to the front roof support, "Cut here. 

"Here.
"Here.
"Here."

As I cut the last roof support, the fireman holding the Jaws of Life nudged me aside.  Another fireman instructed me to fetch his fireman's coat to protect himself from the sharp steel as he and a dozen firemen peeled back the roof.  With the roof out of the way, the Fire Rescue crew frantically went to work on the young man.  The firemen continued with the Jaws of Life, chains to the tree, and pulled the steering column from the man's leg.  Once extricated, EMS moved him onto the rescue backboard as others continued resuscitating him, pumping his chest and air into his lungs.  The State Troopers kept order with the traffic, searched for others potentially thrown and started investigating.  They were eager to learn the man's identity.  There were dozens of responders yet everyone had a role, everyone contributed.  It was perfectly orchestrated.

Watching these professionals at work was something to behold, to bear witness to maestros of emergency response.  I was in awe.  They would have cut this man out and worked on him whether he was rich or poor, straight or gay, Muslim, Christian or Jew, conservative or liberal, even if he screamed that he voted to cut public services. The only words spoken by the responders were direct in saving this man's life.  There was no debate.  This is not what they do.  It was a pure moment, perfectly executed with one urgent purpose.  Unfortunately, it is a moment that happens at least 45,000 times a year, the number of Americans who die in automobile accidents each and every year.

I cannot imagine anything but the public sector providing these emergency services.  There is no profit to be made nor could it work churning and burning workers like a fast food joint.  Experience is the name of this game and contradicts the volume required to make a buck on a national scale.  Yet, there is an awful lot of clamoring these days about cutting the public sector to the bone, busting collective bargaining, privatizing agencies and in some cases charging victims a crash tax.  Oddly enough, the very politicians clamoring not only rob these noble responders their jobs by their corruption, the pols rob from them the dignity of their work by eroding the confidence of the public sector.   We find politician after politician double dipping, in pay to play self enrichment schemes to refusing to disclose sources of their outside incomes and somehow fleecing us that they serve the public all the while diminishing what real public servants do.  Sure unions are no angels.  Many of their sins lead straight to a corrupt election law of law-makers for life, but rubber rooms, LIFO, undeserving pension getting bureaucrats dominate our imagery of what's breaking the budget.

Mayor Bloomberg is trying to cut over 4,000 teachers and 20 firehouses.  Newsday headlined 1,200 teacher cuts for Long Island.  Yesterday, for the first time on local news, reporters focused in on the signs of protesters, "Cut War Not Teachers."  Finally, one of the primary budget busters -- war -- is coming into context in its effect on local level of government.  War is a Racket wrote Major General Smedley Butler long ago in 1935.  To stay in business (i.e. get re-elected), politicians, especially high profile executives looking to rise, dare not rock their party lines to make the connection of how war robs our municipalities via the trillions of dollars diverted from a finite tax base in a Ponzi scheme of debt and increasing political power through fear.  Four disastrous wars (yes Libya and drone bombing Pakistan count) and a 10 year manhunt later, the politicians still find ways to scare us further with incessant warnings of increased threat of retaliatory terror attacks...and quietly lots of OT for the NYPD further eating at the budget.  

Weeks after 9-11, the Taliban did offer to capture and extradite Bin Laden to US custody in exchange for evidence implicating him to the 9-11 attacks.  President George Bush, in the height of irresponsible chest thumping governing, rejected the offer and chose endless war.  Despite the perception Pres. Obama is trying to propagate of Osama Bin Laden as a doddering porn-watching fraud of a decade bygone, Bin Laden achieved one of his primary objectives of bringing the U.S. to its knees economically as the $14 trillion debt-ceiling debate rages in Congress, like Ju-Jitsu, by using our greatest strength against us.

The business of war marches on at close to $1 trillion spending annually in our federal budget, virtually unscathed, while all else is cut.  To be sure, the Bushes, Rumsfelds, Cheney's and I'm sure many Democrats as well, have made obscene fortunes from their investments and directly working for or running "defense," finance and oil companies.  Governments need to run massive deficits in war.  The bankers floating the bonds always get paid, from both sides of the conflicts, win or lose, ask the Rothschilds.  To pay principle and interest, public services are cut down the line, federal to city or town.  Wouldn't it feel good to come clean Senator Schumer, Mayor Bloomberg, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, Governor Cuomo and President Obama in condemning war and supporting our local public sector heroes and our citizens who need the vital services?  After all, in terms of tragedies, fifteen 9-11s happen every year on our roadways alone.  Watching the young man dying today, I thought of the tens of thousands soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan killed, maimed or who have run over an I.E.D, and the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed.  This is how each and every one of them would have suffered and for what?  Oh, I'm sorry...the truth might not get the pols re-elected, promoted, hired once retired or bring them hundreds of millions of dollars on the speaking circuit.

I don't know the young man's name.  My deepest condolences go to his family.  Do know that your public sector service workers did everything they possibly could do to save him.

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