crash bam BOOM

For the second Saturday in a row, Mark and I were privy to the aftermath of a pretty horrendous bang-up on Washington Street...right underneath our window. Early early this morning (around 4 a.m.), we were both jolted from sleep by a loud boom. Mark rushed to the window and yelled that there was an accident...I ran out and saw the melee: One car was haphazardly parked in the middle of the road, it's passenger side completely smashed into the back of another parked car. Cars on either side of that one were damaged and worse yet, there was another car sitting upside down on the sidewalk directly across the street from us. I freaked, thinking for sure there were people trapped inside any of these cars, but we soon realized that only one moving car was involved...the rest were parked (and empty). Two obviously drunk guys stumbled out from the wreckage, seemingly perfectly fine otherwise. Police, paramedics, and the FD had all arrived within minutes (it is a small town, after all!), and we continued to watch the drama unfold as they carted the driver and passenger away in cop cars, then tended to two folks in the back who at first we didn't see...when we realized there were two guys back there, Mark thought that they were for sure dead. But eventually we saw them moving and the paramedics took them away...

We later found out that the driver first smashed into another parked car right down the street, which sent him careening into the first four cars on our corner. The impact sent one flying into an area that just hours before was packed with people eating outside at the Elysian Cafe. The driver had to have been going at least 80mph (in a 25 mph zone) to cause the damage he did...at least two if not three cars totaled.

Funnily enough, exactly one week before, another accident occured on our side of the street in which one car smashed into another car adjusting a parking spot. That one wasn't nearly as bad (at least no one needed to be carted out in a stretcher), but also caused a parked truck to jump the curb and smash into the mailbox in front of our building.

Makes me think twice about parking on Washington Street...