Spectacular Crash

I cannot remember ever having witnessed a serious crash, but in a way I did yesterday. I was waving to a couple of guys  who had just come to remove a whole lot of 'junk' from the apartment where Dot's late brother, Dick, used to live. We, Dot and I, were clearing out the apartment so that it could be put on the market to be sold and I was outside in the street waiting for the guys from 1800gotjunk.com.au to reverse their truck into a parking space near the entrance to the apartment block to collect various items, some saleable and some just rubbish.

As the duo were doing that I heard a massive thud on 'Harrow Road' which runs close the apartment block and that was followed by second thud as a car that appeared to have been tossed into the air hit the ground. I rushed around the corner to find absolute chaos and the driver of mangled vehicle amazingly climbing out unscathed and he then dragging his injured wife (or girlfriend) out of what was left of the vehicle and placing her on the pavement. After witnessing this, I look a few metres up the street and then saw a whitish van lying on its side and a guy climbing vertically out of the passenger side of that vehicle seemingly unscathed.

Just have a look at the debris of the first car I mentioned! How on earth did the two occupants get out alive!?

The second vehicle appears to have been less damaged by the event and may have been the result of collateral damage - see below.

Soon three things happened. First, Harrow Road is a very busy thoroughfare, and suddenly a mass of traffic became stranded until a member of the public stepped in and sensibly redirected traffic around the accident. Later the police took up this role. Secondly, a large crowd rapidly appeared from surrounding apartment blocks, ordinary housing and an old folks home. And then, of course, the fire service, ambulance, police and tow trucks all turned up to clear away the mess. And it transpired that members of one of Australia's TV stations (Channel 7) were filming nearby and they rushed to fim the mess. I personally talked to one of the policemen and pointed out that further down the street a large truck was parked and I said that, at the time of the crash, I saw that truck adjacent to the destroyed vehicles, but travelling east down 'Harrow Road'. I merely comment that the truck driver, who at the time was still in his vehicle, might have seen what happened. From later news, I gathered that the truck might have been the instigator in some way of the serious collision.

What did surprise me was the speed at which the busy road was reopened for traffic. The fire people cleared away the debris, some of which littered the roadway:

That was after a police photographer captured all of the scene. The tow trucks pulled the damaged cars / van off the street.

The police interviewed witnesses and the ambulance staff helped put the injured woman on a stretcher and loaded her into their vehicle. And of course I snapped all the images I've added to this post. After all this frantic activity, the blokes from 1800gotjunk.com.au backed their vehicle out into the street and took off. And Dot and I got in our Rav4, which was filled with a large quantity of salvageable, went to see her elderly cousin at Brighton-le-sands on Botany Bay for a short meeting after which we set off to return home in Armidale. Since we departed at 4pm and the journey home usually takes 6-7 hours we didn't get all way on Friday, but reached a motel in Scone at dusk after a mostly pleasant journey north once we escaped Sydney's chronic traffic at peak hour. 

That may be the last time that either of us visit that apartment, which has been valued at c. 360,000 GBP (or 600,000 AUD). Cash in hand is a lot more useful to us than getting a rental income stream!