On February 17, 2010 a reader observed emergency responders in highly dangerous conditions on a snow covered highway in rural Pennsylvania. His eyewitness report is backed up with a photo. We wish we could say that this is an unusual occurrence. Unfortunately senseless behavior occurs much too frequently. Respondersafety.com welcomes readers’ reports and photos such as this and will publish them in the interest of encouraging emergency responders to protect themselves while helping others.
Please find attached a photo that I took about 30 minutes ago at the
scene of a MVC in North Central PA. Unfortunately due to using a cell
phone camera and taking the photo through the windshield the photo isn't the greatest. But if you look REALLY closely inside the yellow box that I put in the photo you will see the figure of a person. That person is a
fire police wearing a gray hoodie on a snow covered roadway in light snow conditions with heavy overcast.
Although he is holding a flag he did NOT
have on an approved safety vest or any other type of protective clothing
making him very difficult to see standing in the roadway.
At this same scene just prior to this were two other fire police that were stationed beyond the crest of a hill making them unable to be seen by approaching traffic from one direction.
There was nothing warning traffic from that direction of the presence of an incident or anyone conducting traffic control.
They did however have on their safety vests. But due to their
positioning there was nearly a secondary incident because traffic having
to quickly come to a stop.
I'm sending this to you not only because of the obvious hazards that
were present but because today here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania we honored a member of our fire police who died in the line of duty less than one week ago.
The members of the fire service and our fire police
need to start protecting themselves and taking all appropriate measures
to ensure that they do not become the next statistic.