There's an accident. Northbound on Eastern at Desert Inn, I run into the roadblock. There must be a dozen police cars and emergency vehicles—one fire truck says Heavy Rescue Unit. I don't register that till later, though—what snatches my attention first is a body scrunched in the passenger seat of a blue-green car. The remains of a blue-green car. I have never seen a car so demolished—I have a hard time believing it was ever a full car. The roof is missing. The back is now coming out of the front. There are no tires: Where are the tires? I'd like to think I'm not the kind of person to rubberneck—I mean, what business is it of mine? But I am that kind of person.
Soon I'm standing on the curb with 20 or more onlookers. Three cars appear to have been involved in the crash. A white hatchback is rear-ended. A light-blue sedan is smashed up. A young Hispanic man standing next to me says, "Some druggie. They took a big bottle of pills out of her car." His friend says, "The cops were chasing her."
It's more than 100 degrees; noonish. The firemen have on full fire coats. A gray-headed guy wearing a wrinkled pair of green plaid cotton madras and no shirt is snapping pictures from the curb. Sweat beads on his burnt-orange skin. "Damn, " he says. "Can you believe this mess?"
Across town, where I am supposed to be, a group of community leaders is meeting in a small, air-conditioned hearing room in the Clark County Government Center to talk about growth in Vegas. I've been there many times before. It's a beautiful building as government buildings go—full of terra cotta stone accents and smart architecture. Right about now, they're watching slides about flood basins and planning; they're talking about infrastructure. TV reporters are interviewing county officials in the hallway by the water fountains. Later we'll see the broadcasts, and the frenzy about growth will be palpable: It's got to be handled; escorted, managed. It's got to be met head-on with a plan. Controlled.
Across town at Desert Springs hospital, just about a half-hour before one of the victims from the car accident will be wheeled into the ER, a group of nurses is protesting their labor contract. The news release says they are going to be wearing costumes of some sort, but I don't know if they did or not, because I never made it there, either. I sat on the curb and watched the deconstruction of an accident.
The blue-green Plymouth Duster—I can tell it was a Duster only because on a hunk of scrap metal I see the Tazmanian devil script that says "Duster"—is a snarling mess of speed gone wrong. They've excavated one person from its clenched interior. Now they're trying to extract another. Rescue workers crowd around. They have the stretcher waiting. I see a large metal drill. I hear what I believe is car-cutting. We see a glimpse of the man as he is pulled out, limp. I see an elaborate tattoo on his arm. He's wearing long shorts. It's hot out.
Most of us here were on our way somewhere else. But we stopped. And stayed. And watched everything warp into slow motion. As emergency workers lift a victim off of the street, an older white guy in Docker's and an oxford tells me, "It happened to me once. When you're laying in that stretcher, you just think there's nothing you can do. Everything just stops. You have no control." Then he says something about this scene possibly prompting a lawsuit.
A young black man points to a wheel rim that lays in the street. "See that?" he says, "They pulled that out of the front seat. That's how smashed that car was. That was the back wheel rim." A fireman picks up a lost steering wheel from the pavement and carries it to his truck.
Now the rescue workers are laying the last victim on a stretcher. She's wearing a long floral skirt and a neck brace. Soon, she'll be on her way to Desert Springs hospital. I wonder where she had been going.
Vegas has a nurse shortage. Vegas has a need for more cops. Vegas has a need for more houses. More water. More teachers. More mental health care. More roads. More infrastructure. More services. We're trying to catch up with the population influx. We're hurrying. We're sitting in well-appointed rooms showing slides, trying to think, trying to plan, trying to direct the flow of wild growth.
In tomorrow's paper, we'll read about that meeting. Or about the fight over the location of a new Wal-Mart. Or the price of housing gone mad. Or the rising cost of electricity. We'll read about a few robberies, a few murders, a few car accidents: Things get out of control. You try to keep it together. You try, even, to capitalize on it. This wild growth means money. A thriving economy, a famous destination, a good life.
A spokesman for Metro tells me later that this is what happened: "You had a vehicle northbound in the southbound lanes. The officer tried to catch up to the vehicle. He put on his lights. She didn't respond. She refused to pull over. She continued. And that's when the accident happened."
Was it head on?
"T-bone."
Two people went to UMC's trauma unit. The other one went to Desert Springs. I drove past the hospital later. Outside, a long banner over the front doors said, "We Love All Our Employees," no doubt in response to the protest. Management saw it coming, I think.
Of the driver who was northbound in the southbound lanes of Eastern, going who-knows-where, the Metro spokesman said the officers "were thinking maybe there were drugs in her system or something ...
"When they got to her, she had no idea what was going on. No idea."