Bridges May Ice in Cold Weather

(For this story I will refer to a friend of mine as "Dawgma". That isn't his real name but I want to protect his anonimity. He is a Sherrif Deputy for a Texas county)


Dawgma e-mailed me early last week and said he would be in the Dallas/FortWorth area that next Sunday and invited me to meet up and watch the Sunday Night Dallas Cowboy game at local sports bar in my home town. Instead, I invited him to come to my house to watch the game because the drinks are cheaper and the chairs are more comfortable. Minus the pitter-patter of little feet running in and out of the living room, it is an optimal football viewing venue. A few days later he called back and asked if I wanted to ride along to do a prisoner transport to and from Newton Texas (about 300 miles from my house). He told me on the phone that we would leave at 5AM, eat breakfast, get the prisoner from Newton at 11AM and be back at my house south of Fort Worth at about 3PM. I knew this was probably an overly optimistic time estimation but I had babysitting covered till late so it didn’t matter. Sunday night came and we ate dinner and watched the Cowboys beat the NY Football Giants. Dawgma told me that he would be back between 6:45-7:00AM. Dawgma then left at about 11pm and drove to the next town to stay at a motel. I watched the recorded season finale of Survivor and HBO’s Summer Height’s High, read a few things online, set my alarm clock for 6AM and went to sleep.

6:50AM was the first time I heard the annoying shriek of the alarm clock. I rocketed out of bed and ran to the shower. I threw on some clothes and was read to go just at the time Dawgma pulled up in front of my house at 7:05AM. We were on our way. The transport vehicle was Dawgma’s usual everyday police truck. It was a late model Chevy 4x4 Silverado crew cab with all the bells and whistles. I couldn’t help but notice that people seem to get out of the way when you are flying down the highway in a police vehicle and the general courtesy level of your fellow motorists seems to increase by ten fold . Also, for some reason people feel the need to wave at people riding in police vehicles and I’m not quite sure why. At about noon we made it to Japser. We had about 15 miles to go till we were in Newton. We stopped at restaurant and ate lunch because we would only be able to get drive thru once we picked up the prisoner.

After lunch, we got back on what we thought was the correct highway to Newton and drove for about 10 miles. We then realized that we had gone the wrong way. I grabbed the map and found what looked like short cut that would cut across from where we were to where we needed to be. The road was narrow but paved and we were able to move along at quite a respectable rate of speed. There were pine tree farms along the first part of the road and I theorized that logging trucks frequented the area. After about 5 miles of this road it narrowed and turned from paved to dirt. The red mud of east Texas was damp and soft and we had to slow down to a safe speed. Tree farms turned into goat farms as we made our way through this east Texas hell hole. We saw a few toothless locals clearing land on the side of the road and all I could hear was the banjos from the movie “Deliverance” playing as we made our way through. I offered to take Dawgma’s rifle and jump in the bed of the truck to give us 360 degree suppression fire if things got too hairy. We felt a little better knowing that we had an escape plan.

Finally, the dirt road turned back to paved road and we quickly made it back to the highway to Newton. We found the prison and pulled into the parking lot. We had to wait outside the gate for someone to come outside and check us in. They put Dawgma’s guns in a lock box outside of the prison gates and we drove forward as the prison gate shut behind us. We went into the office area of the prison and Dawgma and the prison officials exchanged paper work while another worker made copies of our ID’s. The prisoner was strip searched and we then left the gated area towards the truck. Dawgma put the prisoner in leg shackles and secured him in the back seat. He retrieved his guns once we were outside the gate and we were on our way back to the Dallas/Fort Worth area aka “the metroplex”.

We decided to take a different way home. This new route would put us at I-45 at Corsicana instead of driving straight up north to I-20 and then cutting west through the metroplex so that we would miss the rush hour traffic . It was mostly uneventful on the way back. We laughed and enjoyed our usual amount of locker-room junior high humor as we drove through the back roads of East Texas. We were about ten miles outside of Corsicana when it started to sprinkle. Every mile or so Dawgma would say out loud, “It’s 31 degrees” and “Now it’s 30 degrees” etc as he watched the digital temp gauge on his rearview mirror. I laughed and called him a “candy ass” for worrying about the dropping temperatures. We made it to the highway and stopped for drinks and a bathroom break at a gas station. The biting wind burned as it blew over my face while walking back to the truck. There was no question it was getting colder and fast. We loaded up in the truck pulled out of the gas station parking lot and on to the frontage road.

The on ramp connected to I-45 immediately after the bridge that went over highway 287. As we were merging onto I -45 we saw a late model black midsized SUV (Explorer) that had rolled several times and stopped on the driver’s side in the 15 yard wide grassy median 20 yards from the bridge. The SUV was perpendicular to the highway and the back bumper was about 5 feet off the road leaving about 15 feet between the front bumper of the car and the guardrail that separated the northbound and southbound lanes of the I-45. The driver was a gray haired man and it looked like part of his arm was caught under the weight of his own vehicle. There was 1 motorist who had stopped and was kneeling by the windshield of the SUV. No emergency vehicles were on the scene yet so Dawgma, although well out of his jurisdiction, cut across the two lanes of traffic and put on his overhead lights. He called for an ambulance and fire truck on his police radio. The motorist who had stopped ran up to the driver’s side window of the police truck and told us that there was someone trapped and that they needed help. Dawgma told them that he had called for help and that they would be here shortly. The worried motorist ran back over to the SUV.

We had been sitting in a spot 20 yards down the median from the rolled over SUV for what seemed like a few minutes. I noticed that cars and trucks didn’t seem to be reducing their speed despite the icy conditions and flashing police lights as they blurred past the accident scene. I had an epiphany: “One car slid on the bridge and rolled in the median. That means that more cars could slide on the bridge and crash. Perhaps we should move closer to the bridge and out of the line of fire.” I told Dawgma what I was thinking and he put the truck in reverse and backed up towards the bridge. I rolled down the passenger window halfway as we were passing the rolled over SUV. Just then, the motorist started to run and said “Oh my God” as he was looking at the bridge. A 90’s model Isuzu SUV came sliding into my peripheral field of vision and slammed into the rear roof of the black Explorer. Shrapnel and debris hit the side of Dawgma’s truck like machine gun fire as the Isuzu blazed past. It finally slammed into the guard rail 30 yards from the Explorer. We had moved just in time. If we had have parked there for 15 more seconds the Isuzu would have smashed into the police truck.

As the Isuzu came to a stop I heard a loud “BAM” and was looking around for the next collision. I couldn’t see anything. Dawgma asked, “Did you see that?” I said, “No! What the hell happened”. He pointed to the outside shoulder of the highway. All I could see where two jagged 4 foot tall bent metal posts on the side of the road. Apparently, a car had taken out a large highway sign and went down the steep embankment into a ditch on the outside of the road. All I could think was, “Holy shit…I don’t want to be here anymore.” Dawgma put on his reflective vest and grabbed some road flares. He told me to stay with the prisoner. We watched as he ran over to the Explorer. The driver of the Isuzu immediately jumped from her vehicle and threw open the rear driver’s side door. She was franticly digging in the backseat and I thought, “Oh God, there is a child in there”. She quickly emerged carrying a midsized dog. I was relieved at the site of her beloved pet. She was visibly shaken and made her way over to the black SUV to check on the trapped driver. Just then, a local sheriff deputy pulled up followed by a state trooper, a fire truck and an ambulance.

The local police shut down the bridge as they worked the accident scene. They began pulling the roof of the Explorer off with the “Jaws of Life” (stupid name IMO). Dawgma spoke with a few police and fire officials and came back to the truck. We sat there for a few minutes with his police light on the working firemen until they could get their own light set up. Once they were situated we pulled away and left the accident scene.

The highway was empty as we traveled northbound. There was plenty of traffic in the southbound lanes but no one traveling in our same direction. Up in the distance we saw several taillights pulled into the median and 1 set of head lights perpendicular to the highway. As we slowed down we could see several motorists waving with both hands for us to stop. There was an upside down green extended cab Mazda pickup in the middle of the grassy median. This median was quite different from the last. The area seemed to be about 200-300 yards long and about 100 yards wide. The southbound lane had large bridge (to accommodate a road that merged with the northbound lane) just before the median with no guard rail beyond the bridge itself. The southbound lane was also about 30 feet higher than the northbound lane well beyond the bridge. There was a steep drop off about 50 feet long at about a 70 degree angle. As the drop off met the median the slope was more gradual and ended at a flattened area about 30 yards wide. The flattened area sloped up to the northbound lane at about a 20 degree angle. We originally pulled down to the flattened area to talk to the helping motorists. They asked us to call 911 and I did. I gave the operator my location and explained the situation.

Dawgma and I both agreed that we shouldn’t be parked down in this flat area for the same reasons as the last accident scene. He pulled the truck up to the inside shoulder of the northbound lane. Dawgma put his vest back on and grabbed his flashlight. He tried to turn it on and it was out of batteries. He put it back in the flashlight holder and was about to go down to check on the passenger of the car when a Dodge Dually pickup pulling a car hauler trailer jack knifed on the highway and came rolling down the steep embankment. The truck and trailer landed about 50 yards away from the overturned pickup. Appropriate amounts of “holy shit” and “oh my god” were exchanged and Dawgma hurried over to the upside down mazda. One of the motorists who had pulled over/came down the embankment without rolling over ran up to the passenger side of the truck and said “He needs his flashlight.” I said, “It’s broken” and the guy ran back to the wrecked Mazda. A few seconds later the same guyran back up to the truck and said “He needs it to break the window” and I gave it to him. Dawgma was on his hands and knees and broke driver’s side window of the pickup. I kept thinking, “I hope he get’s his ass out of there if another car comes down that hill.” I was a nervous wreck. After he broke the window he was on in a prone position reaching into the cab of the pickup. I watched the swerving and sliding vehicles on the highway above and it seemed like an eternity for him to get up off the ground.

He finally was able to help the lady climb out of the truck and slowly walked her up to the police truck out of harm’s way. She looked to be about 60 years old and slightly overweight. He moved some stuff around in the backseat and made room for her next to the prisoner in the warm cab of the truck. I offered to let her have the front seat but she declined. With the lady safely in the backseat, Dawgma went over to make contact with the driver of the Dodge pickup. Apparently, the driver wandering around his vehicle and looking for his cell phone while repeating “why, why , why” Dawgma told him to get away from his wrecked vehicle because it wasn’t safe but the driver refused.

Dawgma was looking around in his truck for some road flares. The lady from the truck said to Dawgma, “Sir, could you please get my keys out of the truck? They have my house keys on them and I don’t want anyone to get them.” Dawgma said, “Yes ma’am. That reminds me, you have something else down there that I need to get too….something that I carry with me all the time.” I said, “A cell phone?” Dawgma replied, “No, I saw a gun as I was getting her out and I need to go get it.” The lady said, “Sir, I have the gun right here in my purse.” Apparently, one of the bystanders had picked up her gun and cell phone and put them in her purse while Dawgma was helping her up. Dawgma said, “I need to hold on to that. I promise I will give it back as soon as the ambulance gets here.” She agreed and said “Careful, it’s loaded” and handed it to Dawgma. I thought, “Oh good, I’m sitting in front of a prisoner who was 1 foot away from a loaded pistol!”

Dawgma started to put the gun into his pocket but it was too large. He handed it to me and told me to keep it with me in the front seat. It was a holstered .41 Glock. I thought, “Jesus, Grandma!” and put the gun below the police radio on floor. Dawgma took 3 steps towards the lady’s car when a silver Ford Excursion came sliding backwards and sideways down the hill, narrowly missing the rolled over green pickup. The driver came to a stop and then pulled forward and went around the overturned vehicle and started to go back up the hill. The driver of the Excursion then changed course drove over to our side of the highway and pulled up on the shoulder. All 4 of us just sat their with our mouths wide open. Dawgma said to the lady in the backseat, “Ma’am, if it’s all the same to you I’d rather just leave your keys there.” The lady enthusiastically agreed. A tow truck pulled up behind the police truck at about that time and Dawgma disappeared behind us to talk to the tow truck driver and make contact with the driver of the Excursion. The backwards trip down the embankment did a number on the transmission of the Excursion but it was still drivable. The driver left the scene going northbound up I-45 and Dawgma later told me that the gear shifter read “R” while it was in “Drive”. (Oops.)

Just then, a new Ford F-150 pickup came rolling down the hill and landed near the car hauler where Dawgma had been previously standing and talking to the driver of the Dodge pickup. Dawgma told me that it almost landed perfectly right on the car hauler trailer. The highway patrol showed up and 10 minutes later an ambulance showed up. The lady was moved to the ambulance and we left the scene and were once again on our way home. We took the back roads towards my house and came on another wreck. This time, the local first responders were on the scene and TCOB. We worked our way around that wreck and drove without incident the rest of the way. We made it back to my house at about 9PM. Dawgma still had to pick up another prisoner 1 town over from where I live and drive another 6 hours back to the jail to drop these guys off. He had 6 hours of sleep (I assume) and had been on the road for 15 hours. I told him “I don’t envy what you are going to have to do” to which he shrugged and replied, “It’s my job”.