by Jack
24 Jul 2013, ROQUE BLUFFS MAINE – It was getting late and the sun was going down when Park Rangers were alerted that two women day hiking in the ocean side Roque Bluffs State Park got lost and called 9-1-1 for help. Seems these two had a poor sense of direction and could not follow the well marked trails back to the parking lot, a point that would prove to be critical later. Luck was with them, a local landowner found them and their dog and gave them rides back to his house, where a game warden picked them up and brought them to their vehicle, which was parked at the park. The women were dropped off at the park and they entered their mini-van to return home as the evening fog crept in.
About an hour later police received a second 9-1-1 call from the same women.
The women may have been disoriented by the fog, but instead of turning right, they turned left and drove in the opposite direction from their homes. This route took them to the small fishing village of Roque Bluffs, pop. 300, and eventually to the boat ramp. The women obviously did not realize they were travelling in the wrong direction, they also did not recognized they were passing through the town of Roque Bluffs and further they didn’t seem to notice the sudden decline and the rough concrete of the boat ramp. In a few seconds they were floating in ocean.
They hit with enough force to completely launch their van into the water and then they began to drift. As the van bobbed in the water it started to sink front first. The women frantically called 9-1-1 and advised the dispatcher they were sinking and to send help…again. Police responded code three, but not before the van went completely under in shallow water. The women were found in the back of the van, presumably following the last air pocket in the long minutes before the van sunk. Whatever plans of escape they had we’ll never know, but one thing is obvious, they never thought to roll down a window and swim the short distance to the shore. And no the dog didn’t survive either.
Poor dog, very sad.
Toby, that’s just what i was thinking. You know if a window had been down just a little that dog would have made it. Stupid humans.
Some people are of the opinion that the earth was created with a fixed amount of resources. Could be they have a point. One of these is human intelligence. The problem is that the population keeps growing. I have often wondered if a solution in this state might be to simply remove the guardrails along the highways for about 30 days.
RHT…thats a good start, I say remove the guard rails, the speed limit, the DUI law and all the stop signs, but make it for just 1 week each month for a year. Oh, and encourage texting too. During that one week we can stay off the roads and by the end of 12 months we should have culled the herd reasonably well.
I had a sister-in-law who got four moving violation tickets in one day. She kept going down one-way streets the wrong way in down town Palo Alto. When they came and arrested her for not paying the fines for those tickets and a bunch of others her husband let her spend the night in jail.
Last I heard she’s living in the Seattle area, so be careful if you’re up there.
WHY affect the normal course of highway travel. There has to be a cleaner way of dealing with culling the herd of incompetency, which is a idea with merit.
I was thinking more along the lines that we may want to do this regionally. Lets start with, say once a year in Washington DC. It would not matter if it was of National record anyway, especially if we printed it on parchment paper much the same of our Constitution. We know that they don’t seem to read that format, because of recent patterns they have formed of not listening to or understanding Americas needs, and achieving them within the limits of their powers.