Tuesday 16 December 2008

An interesting drive down

We gave up trying to observe in the early morning, it was completely pointless and with hours of cirrus yet to come from the west there was no hope of being able to do any work on sky.

Soon after leaving the relatively safe paved road on the upper part of the mountain we came upon this sight. This isn't the first time I've come across a crashed vehicle on the mountain, nor will it be, I'm sure, the last, but there's always the worrying thought that you're the first people to come across the wreck and there are injured people inside.

Of course we stopped and immediately went to give help, but the wreck was empty and it was obvious there had been helpers there already. After making sure things were secure we continued the drive down to HP in the hope of finding out a little more. On the way we passed a police truck on its way up to the wreck and spoke to the officers, who didn't seem to know too much. We said we'd pass on any news we heard via their dispatcher.

At HP we heard the occupants were already on their way to hospital and it didn't sound too bad, so we called the police to let them know. Maybe I'll find out a little more tomorrow, but I hope everyone is OK.

If this had happened another mile down the dirt road, it may have been a different story. That's where if you go off the road, you keep on going...

3 comments:

Zuzana said...

Aw, what a terrible sight. This brings back memories about a treacherous drive down the coast of former Yugoslavia when I was a child; we would see wrecks like this one all the time.
I am happy to hear you made it home safely.;))

Anonymous said...

That's some scary shat...

I blogged about the NASA SCARAB demonstration and the comments ended up drifting to the subject of the Drive down the Mountain

http://damontucker.wordpress.com/2008/11/13/day-on-mauna-kea-with-nasa-developers-and-the-moon-rover/

I thought my brakes were about to give on me as well!

Hilary said...

Yikes.. that sight would haunt me for a long time. I'm glad to hear that the occupants were mostly ok.