By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Heroes
Thursday, Aug. 15, 12:44 p.m., southbound on Blue Star Highway from I-196 Exit 41 towards Saugatuck, an Allegan County Sheriff’s cruiser raced by, siren on, lights flashing, around stopped traffic through the 64th Street light beyond where, bottlenecked, I could see.
Did it fork right towards Saugatuck Sidewalk Sales downtown? Stay on Blue Star straight towards a photo-worthy calamity? By now I’d long lost it. Best bet was downtown, with a view across Blue Star Bridge to Douglas, where maybe it was happening. Butler Street browsers were sure to be spreading word.
Parking was packed but I lucked into a tight slot that opened suddenly in the public lot off the art center,, squeezed out with camera, and encountered Phil’s Bar owner Phil Suave bursting to brief me I’d chosen wrong: action was over the bridge, where a runaway car had knocked down a power pole, snapping juice to Douglas, and was now nose-down in the Kalamazoo River, driver not responding. I walked west along Culver Street where views across Coghlin Park confirmed through rain something at least was happening.
By now bridge was likely closed, detours around to attack from the other side sure to take untold more precious time and maybe someone there had already shot compelling action pictures. Damm, late to the dance again.
Oh well, while here why not try pix of bright-slickered bargain pickers wielding bumbershoots, snapping up summer’s residue and connecting the way old and new friends do?
Two walking cops with radios filled in around Phil’s account, which I shared with others avid to learn, connect more pieces passed on so far just by word-of-mouth. Again shot a redheaded violinist, 17, I’d first seen last week in Douglas, this time sharper and framed more symmetrically by a door frame. Since I wasn’t there, at least I was here. Why not?
Southbound Blue Star was closed; had to try at least. Drove through stacked traffic back out to Exit 41, took freeway five miles south, glimpsed flashing lights across lake over Schultz Park, approached Douglas via Exit 36 north on Blue Star, same way the fated vehicle had, and found side road access past Center Street blocked too. Did mine count as a rescue vehicle?
How could I presume? Knew a back access via Hamilton Street through Safe Harbor Tower Marine, where staff outside ship’s store waved me through to jounce down gravel road to the Red Dock, there a parking spot. Now which lens to attach to camera? Full kit too heavy to lug climbing hill to bridge vantage, yet would likely need longer but flexible reach. Old 70-200 mm telephoto might do trick.
At one time I’d chased wrecks and fires, loose herds of buffalo gone three days now red-eyed and hungry, closer, closer; shot longhorns from a horse I had no clue how to rid;, at least not brought camera the time I skydived …
Soon after I’d started as Wayland Penasee Globe sport editor, but of course did everything at small weekly, a radio dispatch scanner was plunked near Mac computer on my desk, spitting static and interrupting my concentration writing for calls almost always trivial but now and then worth chasing.
Fires might get me Page 1 if I could get there with flames still raging. Otherwise first responders, whom I soon came to know by name, might have beaten me; I’d have to settle for shots through smoke of dark-uniformed teams wearing oxygen masks lugging tanks, axes and hoses, reflecting in sprayed-water currents underfoot framed by skeleton structures left charred and/or collapsing. In that case, not everything was lost.
Nearing what the scanner suggested might be a fatal crash (kid on bike hit by semi, guy in Gran Torino failing to beat train at crossing way out by Martin chicken farms …), scenes would be cautioned-taped faraway until crash reconstructionists and summoned-to-scene county medical examiner finished work.
Still, maybe I could get an Aeromed chopper landing, rescuers proffering victim skyward from twisted Torino wreckage dwarfed by now-halted nearer-by locomotive framed by tracks leading eyes 3D-like to action scene.
Gas leaks, medicals, bomb threats in schools, calls too faraway or humdrum-sounding (minor property-damage accidents, damn, just dents) never mind. At desk I’d keep writing.
The car in Kal River was gone by the time I came. Shot the power pole splintered, curling lines down, transmitters now stopped popping. A sheriff’s boat and diver were still in the water with raindrop plinks now more numerous around them; gapers, cones and cruisers still there too. There was that at least.
Returned home to a cell call and video sent me by eyewitness Ethan Barde; he described shocks popping staccato-like in lines falling overheard. A report with detail that night from Douglas Police Chief Steve Kent, who’d stayed late to do it.
Saugatuck Township Fire District IT director Erik Kirchert, Danish and a data geek like I like who once worked for Chicago Tribune, furnished more about lifesaving story.
And you ask why I love it here?
