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Person flees scene of rollover accident on Reservation

By Howard B. Owens

There is a rollover accident on Council House Road on the Tonawanda Indian Reservation.

There was initially a report of a serious injury and Mercy Flight was being dispatched.

There is also a report that a person has fled from the scene.

Alabama Fire and Mercy EMS are responding.

UPDATE: A first responder says there is nobody in the vehicle.

jeanne chamberlin

I dont understand, I dont know how many times i have read these reports with absoutly no details,Was it a truck was it a car and was it blue or black or was it a ford or chevy ect. ect,so here I sit and i wonder gee I hope it is not my brother beacuse he lives on the rez or I hope it was not so and so ,I mean why bother posting any thing if you aren;t going to give any kind of details at all. I just dont get it. So something rolled over and it was a serious injury but the person fled so how do you know this? and im not so sure a person can run if they are seriously injured. I just dont know .

Jul 30, 2010, 2:40am Permalink
Gary Spencer

Jeanne,
most of these posts are what Howard here's over the police/fire scanner, the details he posts are the details he hears, the usually don't say "a blue Ford truck" over the scanner. Once more information is given, more is revealed. I think Howard posts info like this because if people see emergency vehicles going here or there , or if you live in a town and here the fire whistle go off, people want to know what is going on. Like I said, most of the time, once more information becomes available it is updated. Police/fire monitors are fairly inexpensive, if you had one you could listen for yourself (but then you would go crazy every time you heard about an accident!!)

Jul 30, 2010, 6:57am Permalink
Jeremy Yasses

Howard,
It seems to me almost every accident victim has to be airlifted via mercy flight or mercy flight has atleast been called but can't land due to the conditions. I don't remember mercy flight being used nearly as much as in years past. Is it because they are owned by the same company as the ambulance service now? Doesn't mercy flight cost a lot? It would be interesting to know the numbers from recent years of accidents vs mercy flight calls. Don't get me wrong I'm grateful that we have the service and that it is needed in some situations, just not sure if as many as they are being used. Such as the story above, who dispatched them if there wasn't even a victim to be found? Just a thought.......

Jul 30, 2010, 7:11am Permalink
Howard B. Owens

Jeremy, remember to factor in -- The Batavian reports every Mercy Flight call we know about. That never happened before. So you're hearing about it more.

It may be interesting if at some point we can get historical data and see how much Mercy Flight is being used now. But just remember, it's reported a lot more now, too.

Gary, you're spot on. We provide what details we can, because we've found that many, many readers (I get constant feedback from people in the community all the time) love being able to get an answer to the question, why did that siren just go by? Or what are all those fire truck doing at the end of my street? etc. They are quite happy with the level of detail we can provide. If it turns out to be something more major, we go to the scene, or wait for the incident report from a responding agency, or if necessary will place follow up calls.

This particular incident, I imagine, will result in a report from the Sheriff's Office if there's an arrest. Otherwise, we'll never hear any more about it.

Also, if you ever hear sirens and there's nothing on The Batavian, it means a couple of things: Could be neither Billie nor I heard the scanner call, or (more likely) it's an automatic alarm of fire, or an ambulance responding a common medical issue, or just a call that doesn't sound like something that is going to develop into anything of even the slightest significance (we have a pretty low barrier for what we think is worth reporting, but even some emergency calls just don't rise to that level).

I hope that clarifies things for anyone who wonders like Jeanne does.

Jul 30, 2010, 7:49am Permalink

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