A couple of fatal seconds

A non-fiction personal narrative about a crash in downtwon St. Louis

A Couple of Fatal Seconds

“Oh my gosh!,”  I say seeing billowing black smoke just a few yards behind us.

We were on a family vacation with my grandma, aunt, two cousins, and my family.  We spent two nights in St. Lous than three nights in Memphis, and lastly we were driving to Springfield for our last stop.  On the way from Tennessee to Illinois, we had to drive through St.Louis.

We were piled into my aunts tan toyota van.  My sister and I were both in the very back, with pillows, suitcases, and other luggage piled all around us.  My two cousins, Randy and Zak, were in front of us, luggage was piled around them too.  My aunt was in the front driving, with my grandma in the passenger seat.  My parents and my brother were in our silver chevy suburban, just in front of us.

All was normal, we were driving on an interstate in downtown St. Louis.  We were just in St.Louis a few days ago, touring around.  We went to the city museum, Grant’s farm, Gateway Arch, and Union Station.  Already we were on our way to the last destination of our vacation.

My cousins and I were playing a card game called the t- shirt game on top of the luggage in the narrow passage between the first and second row of seats.

Suddenly my aunt slammed down on the brakes to  avoid crashing into my parent’s suburban, which was just in front of us.  We went  from going sixty mph to zero mph in a matter of seconds.  I remember cruising along on the interstate, well on our way to Springfield. I remember, sitting in the back seat laughing and playing the game with my cousins and sister, not a care in the world, when, all of a sudden I lurched forward, my seat belt locking and catching me before my head slammed into the back of Zak’s seat.  I looked up, surprised to see that instead of easy flowing cars, we were in bumper to bumper, non-moving traffic.  The cars stretched out in front of us for as long as I could see. It came out of nowhere, and we were lucky that we could slow down in time. Lucky that the car behind us could slow down in time.

“Oh great,” I say to myself,  “We are never going to make it to Springfield in this traffic,”  I say as I try unsuccessfully to see the end to the traffic.

“Oh don’t worry we will be out of this in no time.  And besides, at least we are together, we can make this fun,”  My grandma reassured us.  That was just like my grandma, being positive and optimistic, finding the good out of every situation.  So we all knew that we would most likely be sitting in this traffic for a while.

After a couple of seconds of sitting in the dense traffic I look behind us, out of the back window of the trunk of the van, to see how long the traffic stretched on behind us. My aunt had insisted that the luggage could not be piled up blocking the back window, hence the luggage taking home every where else in the van.  Where we were just seconds before, just a few yards behind us, was now engulfed in jet black smoke and sunset red flames.

My mouth dropped open in shock.  I have never seen anything like this close up and in person.  I was expecting to see a lot of new sights on this vacation, but this definitely was not one of them.

“What is that?,” I say dumbly even though I know very well what it was.  Everyone turns to look out the window, even my aunt, taking her eyes off the road and her hands off the wheel, thinking that we were going to be stuck here for a while, she was right.

“Wow!,” Says Zak, transfixed, just as I am at the sight unfolding behind us.  “It looks like it is a car crash.”  My sister and I share a look, unable to grasp the situation that we were in.  I gave her a reassuring smile, after all, I was the oldest of the three kids in my family, I had to show responsibility even in times like this.

“This traffic jam came out of nowhere,” my aunt says, “Somebody probably couldn't slow down in time.”

“Hopefully they will be ok,” my grandma says. Again, being optimistic. We all nod in agreement.  But we know that with those flames licking high up into the sky, that it would be next to impossible for the victims to get out of their burning vehicles.

Soon we could smell the burning rubber from inside of the cramped van.  I was silently freaking out and texting all of my  friends to tell them of the situation that I was in.

It was ninety degrees out, plus the heat from the ever raging fire.  The van eventually began to overheat from sitting in the non-moving traffic.  We crowded around and leaned towards the vents in the ceiling of the van that spewed out a trickle of cool air.  It doesn’t help the fact that there was six people in that van as well as a week worth of luggage for all of those people.  Meanwhile, the traffic now goes on for miles and miles behind us.  In the midst of it, the semi truck and UPS truck continue to burn.  I wonder how the emergency crews will ever get to them to rescue them in all of this traffic.

Suddenly, the four lane traffic jam is moved into three lanes.  What are they doing?! I wonder.  Then, it is moved into two lanes, making the endless line of vehicles even longer.

After a lot of sitting and waiting and not moving and staring at the same landscape, we finally made it out of the traffic.  It seemed like we sat in that traffic for eternity, it felt like it would never end.

It took us four hours to drive two miles.  And trust me when I say this, it was the longest four hours of my life.  Normal traffic jams are terrible, but this, well, let's just say that you were lucky that you weren't traveling through downtown St. Louis that day.

 When we finally sat down to eat at a restaurant just outside of our hotel in Springfield, my dad looked up information on the crash in St. Louis on his phone while we waited for our food to come.  

The semi truck driver was not able to slow down fast enough and ran into the UPS truck; which then both vehicles exploded into flames.

The semi driver, died.

I was left kind of speechless, as well as the rest of my family as we took into consideration how close we were to that crash.  That fatal crash.

This makes me wonder, what would have happened if we would have left two seconds later, drove two seconds slower.

I could have been in that crash, my family could have been in that crash.

We could have died, just like that poor semi driver.  I thank God that we didn’t leave two seconds later, drive two seconds slower.  Our happy, care-free vacation could have gone terribly, awfully, fatally wrong.  But it didn’t, all because of a couple of seconds.

A couple of seconds can be a lot.  A couple of seconds could mean the difference between life; or death.