a night to forget
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a night to forget
http://www.surreyleader.com/
under "community"
After a Surrey Mountie managed to prevent a suicidal man from jumping to his death from a freeway overpass in October, his road supervisor, Cpl. Roger Morrow, circulated the following letter.
Written in 1984 after the young Morrow dealt with seven fatalities near Edson, Alberta in a single night, it describes the emotional impact of dealing with such events.
"I didn't sleep for about three days" after, Morrow says.
"I was only 20, 25 at the time and I'd seen more than my share of death."
Cpl. Morrow says he re-issued his Alberta letter to let his fellow Surrey officers know "they're not alone."
He calls the emotional after-effects of viewing tragedy something most police don't discuss.
"We rarely talk about it in my profession," Morrow says.
"It's just one of those things you don't talk about. I don't think it's healthy (to keep it bottled up)."
As a policeman you never know from one minute to the next what type of calls you may be required to attend. For the most part, shifts are pretty well routine. And then, there are those that you wish you'd never been working.
This night started out very quiet, especially for a Friday night on a pay weekend. The odd drunk was out on the street, trying to maneuver his way home, but no calls to the bar or domestic disputes.
Then the phone rings and you find out why it's been so quiet, things were just building to a peak.
The call comes in just after 1 a.m., an injury accident west of town. After running out of the office, camera in hand, you are racing through town, lights flashing and siren screaming. Your heart pounds and the adrenaline is pumping through your system.
While you're rushing to the scene, your hopes are for the people that are hurt, praying they're not too badly injured.
It's a funny thing, when you know someone is hurt and needs help, your car just won't seem to go fast enough and the road seems longer than the last time you drove it.
Finally you arrive at the scene, only to run down to the vehicle in a ditch and find out that your assistance was too late for the sole victim.
So you start by taking pictures and talking to horrified witnesses, controlling traffic and wondering about the persons family.
You get some identification from the deceased and try to clean up the area, not hurrying because you know that when you return to town, you have to wake up the surviving relatives.
But finally that time does come. When you knock on someone's door in the early morning hours, often times when they answer, their facial expression displays a feeling of foreboding. You ask to come in and sit down and try to break the news as gently as possible.
Gentle? I've had the misfortune of having to do this numerous times and the term gentle is never soft enough.
You watch in total sadness the shocked faces, the bitter tears and sometimes the disbelief in the visage of those left behind.
You try to comfort this stranger, but words are never enough. With hat in hand and head still lowered, you pay your last respects and leave for the office once more to complete the sea of forms and messages involved with these types of events.
After a couple of hours work, you close the cover on the file, notations left for the day shift member to follow up when the phone rings again.
"RCMP, can I help you?" The voice on the other end reports yet another accident, this time east of town. The caller tells you it's a bad one. You look up at the sky and wonder why this is happening, searching for divine intervention perhaps.
Again you depart the office, again wondering what you will come upon. As you approach the scene, you can see numerous vehicles off on the side of the road, four ways activated.
The highway is deadly black and in the glow of parked vehicle headlights, you see wreckage strewn everywhere and people milling about. You set your car as to protect people still driving on the highway and approaching the scene.
A quick visual scan shows two vehicles involved, one in the middle of the road, the other in the ditch. Between them an assortment of car parts, torn metal, oil and shattered glass. As you run up to the first car you can see the horror in the eyes of those who have come upon the scene.
You look inside, finding a family. Children and parents entwined in a back seat. In front, two men pinned in the wreckage.
Wait! Someone's still alive! As you leave him to be watched by a bystander, you frantically pry open doors to gain access to the others. Finally inside, you check for a woman's pulse, nothing... then only to realize beneath her is a second victim, a child.
The others in the vehicle need not be checked, their injuries are so severe.
Having assessed the first car, your mind flashes to the other vehicle involved.
You scramble towards it and find here another survivor. Seriously hurt, but conscious. His partner, the driver is not fairing so well however. Due to the severity of the damage, his body is inaccessible, but you can still see signs of life.
Desperate attempts to gasp at vital oxygen can be seen. His glazed eyes, physical condition and position however give you doubts as to his survival.
With the arrival of an ambulance, the jaws of life are set in motion. Having used this before, you pry at the drivers door. Heart still pounding, the door begins to move. Bending and breaking metallic sounds abound as the hydraulic arm separates a truly tangled collection of metal.
After a few minutes, things begin to open up and the ambulance attendant checks for signs of life, none. In the confusion, the two survivors are loaded into the waiting ambulance and rushed to hospital.
As you stand back and survey the scene, you find yourself looking at two automobiles relieving six people of their will to live.
The devastation is total and absolute in its nature and leaves you wondering, why? As you work to remove the deceased, the comprehension of what you've seen continues to haunt you.
Stopping to catch your breath you smell a familiar odor. It accompanies the lifeless frames as they are lifted onto stretchers, covered and taken from view. More families to locate, more people to console.
For those who feel my job is any easy one, for them, I have numerous stories such as this one.
For me however, the vivid memories are engraved forever.
This was truly A Night to Forget.
After hours out on the highway trying to take care of the basics, you return to the office.
Sitting back mulling things around in your mind, the phone rings again. The wife of one of the deceased calls and wants to know how her husband faired. You wonder what to do for a minute, then get her home number and address and tell her you will get back to her, knowing full well she will never see her husband again.
Living in another town, you call out a member to break the news. The next night around midnight, the phone rings again. It's the wife that called the night before.
Her voice is very, very faint. You can barely make out what she is saying, her sobbing voice coming out of the ear piece. You can almost see the tears in her eyes as she asks, " Is he really dead?
"Does this mean he's not going to be coming home?"
I found this in the local paper and thought I would share.
under "community"
After a Surrey Mountie managed to prevent a suicidal man from jumping to his death from a freeway overpass in October, his road supervisor, Cpl. Roger Morrow, circulated the following letter.
Written in 1984 after the young Morrow dealt with seven fatalities near Edson, Alberta in a single night, it describes the emotional impact of dealing with such events.
"I didn't sleep for about three days" after, Morrow says.
"I was only 20, 25 at the time and I'd seen more than my share of death."
Cpl. Morrow says he re-issued his Alberta letter to let his fellow Surrey officers know "they're not alone."
He calls the emotional after-effects of viewing tragedy something most police don't discuss.
"We rarely talk about it in my profession," Morrow says.
"It's just one of those things you don't talk about. I don't think it's healthy (to keep it bottled up)."
As a policeman you never know from one minute to the next what type of calls you may be required to attend. For the most part, shifts are pretty well routine. And then, there are those that you wish you'd never been working.
This night started out very quiet, especially for a Friday night on a pay weekend. The odd drunk was out on the street, trying to maneuver his way home, but no calls to the bar or domestic disputes.
Then the phone rings and you find out why it's been so quiet, things were just building to a peak.
The call comes in just after 1 a.m., an injury accident west of town. After running out of the office, camera in hand, you are racing through town, lights flashing and siren screaming. Your heart pounds and the adrenaline is pumping through your system.
While you're rushing to the scene, your hopes are for the people that are hurt, praying they're not too badly injured.
It's a funny thing, when you know someone is hurt and needs help, your car just won't seem to go fast enough and the road seems longer than the last time you drove it.
Finally you arrive at the scene, only to run down to the vehicle in a ditch and find out that your assistance was too late for the sole victim.
So you start by taking pictures and talking to horrified witnesses, controlling traffic and wondering about the persons family.
You get some identification from the deceased and try to clean up the area, not hurrying because you know that when you return to town, you have to wake up the surviving relatives.
But finally that time does come. When you knock on someone's door in the early morning hours, often times when they answer, their facial expression displays a feeling of foreboding. You ask to come in and sit down and try to break the news as gently as possible.
Gentle? I've had the misfortune of having to do this numerous times and the term gentle is never soft enough.
You watch in total sadness the shocked faces, the bitter tears and sometimes the disbelief in the visage of those left behind.
You try to comfort this stranger, but words are never enough. With hat in hand and head still lowered, you pay your last respects and leave for the office once more to complete the sea of forms and messages involved with these types of events.
After a couple of hours work, you close the cover on the file, notations left for the day shift member to follow up when the phone rings again.
"RCMP, can I help you?" The voice on the other end reports yet another accident, this time east of town. The caller tells you it's a bad one. You look up at the sky and wonder why this is happening, searching for divine intervention perhaps.
Again you depart the office, again wondering what you will come upon. As you approach the scene, you can see numerous vehicles off on the side of the road, four ways activated.
The highway is deadly black and in the glow of parked vehicle headlights, you see wreckage strewn everywhere and people milling about. You set your car as to protect people still driving on the highway and approaching the scene.
A quick visual scan shows two vehicles involved, one in the middle of the road, the other in the ditch. Between them an assortment of car parts, torn metal, oil and shattered glass. As you run up to the first car you can see the horror in the eyes of those who have come upon the scene.
You look inside, finding a family. Children and parents entwined in a back seat. In front, two men pinned in the wreckage.
Wait! Someone's still alive! As you leave him to be watched by a bystander, you frantically pry open doors to gain access to the others. Finally inside, you check for a woman's pulse, nothing... then only to realize beneath her is a second victim, a child.
The others in the vehicle need not be checked, their injuries are so severe.
Having assessed the first car, your mind flashes to the other vehicle involved.
You scramble towards it and find here another survivor. Seriously hurt, but conscious. His partner, the driver is not fairing so well however. Due to the severity of the damage, his body is inaccessible, but you can still see signs of life.
Desperate attempts to gasp at vital oxygen can be seen. His glazed eyes, physical condition and position however give you doubts as to his survival.
With the arrival of an ambulance, the jaws of life are set in motion. Having used this before, you pry at the drivers door. Heart still pounding, the door begins to move. Bending and breaking metallic sounds abound as the hydraulic arm separates a truly tangled collection of metal.
After a few minutes, things begin to open up and the ambulance attendant checks for signs of life, none. In the confusion, the two survivors are loaded into the waiting ambulance and rushed to hospital.
As you stand back and survey the scene, you find yourself looking at two automobiles relieving six people of their will to live.
The devastation is total and absolute in its nature and leaves you wondering, why? As you work to remove the deceased, the comprehension of what you've seen continues to haunt you.
Stopping to catch your breath you smell a familiar odor. It accompanies the lifeless frames as they are lifted onto stretchers, covered and taken from view. More families to locate, more people to console.
For those who feel my job is any easy one, for them, I have numerous stories such as this one.
For me however, the vivid memories are engraved forever.
This was truly A Night to Forget.
After hours out on the highway trying to take care of the basics, you return to the office.
Sitting back mulling things around in your mind, the phone rings again. The wife of one of the deceased calls and wants to know how her husband faired. You wonder what to do for a minute, then get her home number and address and tell her you will get back to her, knowing full well she will never see her husband again.
Living in another town, you call out a member to break the news. The next night around midnight, the phone rings again. It's the wife that called the night before.
Her voice is very, very faint. You can barely make out what she is saying, her sobbing voice coming out of the ear piece. You can almost see the tears in her eyes as she asks, " Is he really dead?
"Does this mean he's not going to be coming home?"
I found this in the local paper and thought I would share.
Registered User
Joined: May 2004
Posts: 113
Likes: 0
From: MI
As a firefighter/Paramedic for 13 years, this is a little too close to home... It dose, hopefully, help some to know what we go thru all to often.
I respond to every scene hoping for the best, but ready for the worst. Knowing there is a father who will never see his son again, makes it hard to sleep at night.
Dennis
I respond to every scene hoping for the best, but ready for the worst. Knowing there is a father who will never see his son again, makes it hard to sleep at night.
Dennis
Administrator
Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 2,331
Likes: 2
From: Kalamazoo, Michigan
And there are people that can't believe I 'retired' from the fire service at the age of 42 years.
After 22 years, I'd had all I could take. I have no problem admitting that, but some people just have a hard time comprehending it.
chaikwa.
After 22 years, I'd had all I could take. I have no problem admitting that, but some people just have a hard time comprehending it.
chaikwa.
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