2/27/09-Grand Central Food

Today was my 5th and hopefully not my last trip to the Grand Central Food Station. Today, I brought my dad so that he and I could go on the night shift around the city. First we, well I handed out food, while my dad just talked with some of the workers. There were a lot of pastries left over so I took a lot of them home, but I have no idea where they are now. After that was done, we got assigned to the Bronx van, so that meant that we would be giving out food in the Bronx. The people in our van were our driver, another volunteer, my dad, and I.

Getting up to the Bronx there was a lot of traffic, but we made it with plenty of time to spare. We went to our first stop and everything went according to plan. We stopped, there were some people waiting there, there handed out the food, and we were on our way. Same with the second stop, but on the way to the third stop, disaster struck. As we were driving along, a black sedan comes out of nowhere and cuts diagonally across the road, does a U-turn, crashes into another car, and explodes. We parked our car about one hundred feet away from the crashed car, and when we get out, what do we see? We see the engine from the sedan. It flew about one hundred feet away from the car and landed in a side street.

As we walked towards the car, there were car parts strewn everywhere. There were hubcaps a wheel or two and small bits of twisted metal. As my dad, one of the volunteers, and I tried to move the piece out from the street, we kept on slipping because the ground was strewn with oil. Our driver had gone to assist with the other car, the car that had been hit by the sedan.

As we approached the sedan we saw that the front had been completely totaled. I mean the hood and where the engine should be was just a hideous pile of twisted metal. I as stood there waiting; I was wondering where the EMS guys and the police were. Even without the Emergency Crew there, there were a lot of people working with the red car trying to get the doors open and doing other stuff to help. About two minutes later I hear the first sirens. And about five minutes later, the whole block was filled with flashing lights. When the ambulances would arrive, people would flag them over to the red car to help. I must have counted at least thirty or thirty-five EMS, police cars/vans, and fire trucks.

As the emergency personal did their job, some people would run up to the sedan and peer inside. After one woman looked in, I asked her what she saw, and she said, “There’s a lot of blood.”

Soon the firemen started to work on the sedan. They tried to get the car open by themselves, but that would not work. One guy shattered one of the windows so he could open the door from the inside, but that also did not work, so they used their last result; The Jaws of Life.

The Jaws of Life are basically a type of scissors and a hydraulic jack that can either cut metal or push metal apart. When it is being used, the Jaws of Life sound like a jackhammer.

The firemen finally get the car open and take a look inside. Some other and I looked on to see what would happen. The fireman looked into the car, paused in there for about a minute, came back out, reached into his bag, and pulled out a big white sheet. That is when I new that whoever was in that sedan was dead.

After another five or ten minutes, the police told us to move back beyond the road. My dad and I went back to the van, and waited for the other volunteer, and the driver to come back. When they did come back, the driver got into the car, but then he got out and went to the side and just put his head on the side. The other volunteer went out to comfort him, because it was obvious that he was crying.

When he came back, he said the he was too shaken up to drive, so my father drove for the next three stops. After the third stop, the driver took over and we drove back to the Grand Central Food Station.I have to say that that night was one of the most memorable nights of my life. I will always have three images stuck in my head. The first one is people waving the ambulance over to the red mini-van. The second one is the fireman using the Jaws of Life to open the door. The third and last one is the fireman bringing out the white sheet, and placing it on the dead man.